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An ideology is an interconnected set of ideas that forms and organizes our ideas and attitudes about politics. Our attitudes on gun control, on same-sex marriage, on appropriate levels of taxes, and on many other issues cluster and connect with each other. If we know whether certain individuals support gun control, for instance, that information may often help us to make an educated guess about whether they favor allowing same-sex marriage, though we would not be able to predict this perfectly. An ideology organizes our ideas and attitudes for us. It also adds emotional intensity to our views on issues, as our attitude on each issue is reinforced and strengthened for us by the issue’s connection to the other attitudes in the ideological cluster.

In this chapter, we will present a brief overview of American ideologies. As indicated earlier, the four basic American values can sometimes conflict with one another. Not surprisingly, Americans’ ideologies relate to different combinations of these basic values. Two particular lines of conflict between values form the primary basis of Americans’ ideologies: the conflict between individualism and fairness and the conflict between individualism and moral beliefs.

The conflict between individualism and fairness, especially the broader interpretations of fairness, yields an economic left–right dimension or basis for ideology, with support for economic free choice at one end (the right) and support for government interventions (through regulations, taxes, and programs) to ensure economic fairness and equality at the other end (the left). Examples would include the dispute in 2017 over whether to provide tax cuts to people with large incomes and recurring disputes over whether to impose rules on banks to limit the fees they may charge customers.

ideology An interconnected set of ideas.

The conflict between individualism and moral beliefs yields what is sometimes called a “social issues” dimension or basis for ideology, with support for free choice in such issues as abortion, sexually explicit entertainment, and drug or alcohol use at one end and support for government interventions to enforce moral values in such issues at the other. Moral issues do not only figure on the political right, of course. Those on the left have also sometimes favored moral imperatives over individual freedom of choice, as in liberals’ desire to regulate hate speech. Currently in the United States, however, a constellation of moral values on the right is a major factor defining the political landscape.

As you can see in Figure 1.3, when we put these two dimensions together, we have a grid of possible ideologies. Individual Americans’ ideologies can be located on the grid, depending on how they feel about government intervention to ensure economic fairness and how they feel about government intervention to enforce policies based on religious views. For instance, a person who opposes intervention in either case would be located in the lower-left part of the grid (low on economic intervention and low on social intervention). The quadrants on the grid serve as the basis for describing the major American ideologies.

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Figure 1.3 Value Conflict and Ideology

We have divided the grid into four quadrants here for the sake of simplicity. In reality, both dimensions are gradients; one person can be located higher or lower than another or farther left or right, even though both are located in the same quadrant. Each dimension is a matter of degree. Where do you think you would fall on the grid?