Two main ideologies are found among Americans: American liberalism and American conservatism . As we shall see, both of these ideologies are variants of a more general and well-worked-out ideology known as liberalism. American liberalism and American conservatism are simply differing versions that have sprung up in a predominantly
liberal society. As you will see when we look at more established ideologies below, ideologies usually are determined by an intellectual structure—a core value or values, from which a number of disparate policy positions can be derived by deduction. For instance, you will see that the core value of liberalism in its general (not American) sense is that all individuals should be able to develop their capacities to the fullest; from this it is possible to deduce arguments for the defense of free speech, for democracy, for minimizing regulation, and so on. Since American political thought was dominated from the start by a general liberalism in this sense, Americans did not sort themselves out politically by competing deductive systems. Rather, ideologies in America have evolved as rival coalitions operating within a common intellectual structure.