PJ Media

I think ideologies are important because they spring out individuals’ fundamental world view. We can tell this because the same people line up on the same sides of many different issues. For example, knowing a person’s view on gay marriage allows one to have a good chance of predicting that person’s view on the Iraq war. Our great political conflicts spring out these different world views. Different groups of people actually have significantly different ideas about cause and effect in the world.

What is meaningless is the terms we attach to these groupings of world views. Liberal, progressive, conservative, Left, Right, etc are all marketing inventions with as much validity as “New and Improved.”