"No matter what those who write about ideologies do, the probability is that they will be accused of bias, and the accusation may have merit. I see in my dictionary the statement that the most pernicious kind of bias consists in falsely supposing that you have none. So, to give you an opportunity to either praise or discount my judgments, let me say that I regard myself as a progressive liberal. If this is bias, so be it. To me, however, the word bias connotes ignorance, unthinking, unreasonable prejudice, and if I am guilty of this at all, I hope that my guilt is minimal. Like the editor of the New Republic, I think of my political views as those that a reasonable, intelligent person would take, but then I have to confront the fact that some other reasonable, intelligent persons adopt views that differ from mine. In treating the various positions, my effort is to be objective, and I assume that you would want me to be objective; but the meaning of that word calls for comment. You would not want me to avoid all appraisals, for that would make the book a dull recital of facts. Neither would you want me to rig the analysis somehow so as to make all ideologies appear to be equally attractive. After all, ideologies do have consequences -- good and bad consequences for different sets of people -- and learning about these consequences is an important purpose of the book. What objectivity requires, as I see it, is not the avoidance of judgment but the fairness and reasonableness in selecting the questions to take up and in considering the evidence and arguments relating to them. I hope to be objective in this sense." -- Ideology and Political Choice, Vernon Van Dyke pg 2-3