Most people approach politics through an ideology--- an organized set of related ideas that modify one another. For instance, one person may believe that everyone is basically selfish, that politicians are all crooks, that a citizen owes nothing to the state, that it is all right to cheat on one’s taxes, that gun control is a bad thing because it keeps us from protecting ourselves, and so on. This is an ideology--- a set of ideas about politics, all of which are related to one another and that modify and support each other. The belief that everyone is basically selfish helps provide a justification for the need to carry a gun, the wish to cheat on taxes helps make one comfortable in the belief that the citizen owes nothing to the state, and vice versa, and so on. Another person may believe that individual freedom is very important, that government should regulate people as possible, that the United States should try to protect any people whose government is oppressing them, and that the U.S. government should not tall people whether they may carry guns. This is also ideology, an organized set of ideas that modify and support each other. In this second example, the high value placed on individual freedom supports both a wish to protect human rights around the world and a reluctance to have the government regulate the ownership of guns.
Ideologies are useful to people, both for their own personal ease and satisfaction and for their public political activities. From the personal point of view, an ideology helps us to make sense reasonably easily and quickly of the varied political questions that come to our attention. In any given week, the newspaper will raise questions about the control or deregulation of oil prices, the busing of schoolchildren to improve racial balance, the level of support for retired people in the Social Security system, the size of the military budget, federal acquisition of land for parks and wildlife refuges, and so forth. If we had to consider each of these issues anew, we would have an awesome task.
However, if we approach each from the standpoint of a general ideology that we have developed over time, the job is much simpler. Most issues will turn out to be instances of more general principles, and can quickly be settled by applying the principles