Such Traditionalism valued authority, hierarchy, and community, the values of Europe’s Ancien Régime, as opposed to modernity’s revolutionary principles of ‘liberty, equality, and fraternity’. Instead, the term designates a Traditionalist ‘Old West’ ideological stance in revolt against the twentieth century. In this study, ‘conservative’ does not mean ‘defending the established order’-the stance that one would associate with the British Conservative Party of Tolkien’s time (in which case Tolkien would have been anything but a conservative, given that he detested the established socio-political regime). ‘Conservative’, like ‘ideological’, is a highly contentious term (see Stuart 2006, 181). By this definition, Tolkien, like all of us, was ideological: some social and political issues mattered more to him than others did he had distinctive criteria for judging them. An ideology thereby establishes the salience of various aspects of the social domain-whether they matter, whether they’re noticed at all-and values them as beneficent or malignant, as virtuous or pernicious.
Individuals and communities necessarily regard their societies from partial points of view-‘partial’ in limited perspective, given that only God is omniscient, and ‘partial’ in values, since impartiality is a goal to which we may aspire, but at which we will never arrive. Here, following upon a galaxy of distinguished studies (see Stuart 1986), ‘ideology’ designates a viewpoint on the socio-political world. This is certainly not the usage in this book. ‘Ideology’ is, after all, a contentious term-a term often used pejoratively to assign irrational bias to one’s political enemies. Some readers will find attribution of an ‘ideological’ dimension to Tolkien’s works questionable, even troubling.
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