I remember how people responded to Suskind's article; it seemed to confirm the image of the neo-conservative as a sort of right-wing Trotskyite, exporting a vision of free-market revolution and damn all else.  But there is a sense in which the statement itself is right.  (The scary thing is not how creative imagination is trumpeted but how "reality" is dismissed.)  

I'm reminded of something Bruno Latour wrote about science: that it is because facts don't speak for themselves that facts need the scientist, who acts as the facts' spokesperson, lawyer, mouthpiece.  And also of a line from Barbara Herrnstein Smith: that in the battle between belief and evidence, "belief is no pushover."