Political Ideology Primer

Since most of us were given little-to-no civics education in grade school and have been left to major media’s devices in order to differentiate between supposedly opposing political ideologies in current American terms, I thought I’d take a stab at condensing this overly-complicated and widely-misinformed subject into a more digestible foundation of definitions. The way I see it, all federal policy can be reasonably fit into one of three categories: economic, foreign, and domestic (civil/social). Within each of these categories exists an ideological spectrum with antithetical endpoints.

For economic ideology, it’s the market forces of supply versus demand that define the ends of the spectrum; one either believes demand drives supply or vice versa, and approaches each economic policy decision from that perspective. I’ve written in detail about this subject here.

Foreign policy exists on an interventionism/isolationism spectrum wherein nearly none of it rests entirely on either end; still though, every policy begins from a perspective and inches closer to the middle. One either believes our country should employ force and/or manipulation to police the world according to our righteous and superior morality, or one believes we hold no sole right to interfere in others’ affairs but through well-intentioned coalitions seek to stand against threats to freedom and democracy while conceding we have plenty of problems at home to address.

Domestic policy, or civil rights, breaks down much more simply: it’s either inclusionary or exclusionary; one either believes everybody is born equal, or one believes some groups of people are born inferior. This category becomes slightly complicated when attempting to define the basic human rights everyone is equally or unequally entitled to, but they tend to revolve around the basic human survival needs of food, shelter, healthcare, and education (even these are debated on the basis of whether they benefit mere individuals or societies in entirety).

As examples: A corporate tax rate cut belongs in the economic category and exists on the supply side of its spectrum; a federal minimum wage increase would exist on the demand side. The Iraq War vote belongs in the foreign policy category and exists on the interventionism side of its spectrum; a military budget cut would exist on the isolationism side. The Defense of Marriage Act belongs in the domestic category and exists on the exclusionary side of its spectrum; United States v. Windsor struck DOMA down and exists on the inclusionary side.

Now that we’ve defined the categories and explored their polarities, we can see how a two-party system would be expected to operate: each party picks an ideological side, plays tug-of-war, compromises, and enacts policy based on which party holds the public’s majority support at a given time. It’s not perfect, it gets messy, but it’s nearly as good as any other system devised by civilization as of yet, and has effected at least a modicum of progress. Perhaps if political ideology was better understood by the general public, we’d comprehend our own positions better and could operate under more of a parliamentary system rather than ‘red vs blue and nothing in-between,’ but that’s a discussion for another time.

So, let’s take a look at our major two-party system and how either falls along the ideological spectrum of each political category in today’s climate. Republicans: unabashedly supply-side, blatantly interventionist, and moderately exclusionary. Democrats: moderately supply-side, moderately interventionist, and moderately inclusionary. But wait… under a two-party system, shouldn’t the parties be further apart on these respective spectrums? Yes, they should be and they were for a long period of time; what’s commonly referred to as a New Deal Democrat was moderately demand-side, isolationist, and inclusionary (please note that “moderately” applies to their position along all three categories’ spectrums as they were nowhere near radical from a modern perspective).

What changed was the birth of Neoliberalism, a political ideology that encapsulates supply-side economic policy, interventionist foreign policy, and at least the perception of inclusionary social policy. A neoliberal’s stance can vary within the parameters above to give the illusion of delineation, but they’re all approaching policy from the same basic perspectives. This is precisely what people mean when they say they’re “fiscally conservative but socially liberal” or some iteration of that noncommittal declaration. Ronald Reagan was the first prominent neoliberal to popularize the ideology, as it fit easily into traditional Republicanism; following the age-old idiom “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em,” the Democrats took up the banner of neoliberalism with their poster boy Bill Clinton, cementing it as the only ‘choice’ for American politics.

We’ve had forty years of unopposed neoliberalism, and now we hardly recognize an actual divergent political ideology; it seems alien, even divisive, and most certainly radical. Most of us have only ever known laissez-faire economics, only known uninterrupted war, and seen very few baby steps toward social egalitarianism. Therefore, some of us welcomed the return of an opposing viewpoint, but change can be difficult and drastic shifts can be scary; a lot of us have shied away from this ideological reemergence, helped along by propaganda and taboos of old. We’ve drifted so close to authoritarianism and fascism that a lot of us crave “normalcy” without a clear understanding that a return to what has been “normal” for the past forty years is still demonstrably untenable, the very epitome of the lesser of two evils.

Some have attempted to correct the course of the major party relatively-closest to a New Deal ideology—and been met with adamant resistance by the established spokespeople and power-bearers of that party—with very little success. Others who maintain that a broken system cannot be repaired from the inside-out envision the emergence of an alternate party. Lots of people have clung fast to party loyalty regardless of what that party stands for, so long as their party claims opposition to the other party. Meanwhile the majority stands in indifference, apathy, or disillusionment, whether that’s based upon realization of the lack of real choice or ignorance is irrelevant; they’re not participating either way. Perhaps if we can all understand and subsequently discuss political ideology by using terms with agreed-upon definitions, we can discover where our common ground lies and unite under a banner not of false or meaningless labels.