1. Ideology is a collection of ideas, beliefs, and values that people hold that affect their ways of interpreting reality and making choices. It is a concept that people or organizations use to make sense of social, political, and economic phenomena. Ideologies run very much on a discourse level and inform how an individual would approach government, economics, social justice, and freedom.An example of ideology is a belief in the free market economy, which requires limited state involvement in the business sphere. Skeptics of this ideology believe people should be allowed to satisfy their self-interests because doing so will yield the most economic gains (Parenti, 2011). This belief system is evident in policies that advocate for less regulation, taxation, and spending on public welfare since the free market can better address these problems.Ideology only dictates how people perceive the world around them. It offers a perspective from which societies’ structures are filtered, assessed, and often judged. Ideologies are often used to reduce the immense complexity of society into narratives that are more inclined to specific values (CrashCourse, 2015). For instance, if the person holds conservative values, they might perceive welfare programs as defying self-reliance, while a socialist might see them as applicable to decreasing injustice. Ideologies influence decision-making processes, policies, and discussions in all spheres of social life.
  2. In the United States, conservative and liberal ideologies represent two major political stances. Conservative ideology presupposes that people should take personal responsibility for their choices, the government should be minimally involved in people’s and society’s affairs, and the free-market economy is the most effective. They also support national defense, anti-immigration sentiment, and property rights while vehemently opposing programs like universal healthcare for citizens, claiming it leads to bureaucracy (Parenti, 2011). On the other hand, liberals advocate for an enhanced participatory government in social responsibility and addressing the needs of citizens via health, learning, and welfare (CrashCourse, 2015). They highlight individual freedom, environmentalism, and equality; they consider health care a fundamental human right. Liberal values include equality and government regulation, while freedom and responsibility are conservative values.
  3. Ideology, according to Althusser, is a structural complex that serves as an ideological state apparatus that controls the minds of a specific social class through ideas and representations. In his opinion, ideology is a tool that supports the dominance of the ruling class in a capitalist society by establishing norms that perpetuate it (PlasticPills, 2019). In Althusser’s view, ideology is implicit primarily, working through such agencies of repression as the immediate family, schools, and the mass media, which help to construct subjects who ‘know their place’ in the social order and how to behave accordingly. An example of Althusser’s ideology is the education system, which, according to him, is aimed at molding members of society to fit a particular mode of being and become productive units in a capitalist economy. They consider that, as schools instill respect for authority, compliance with rules, and concerning achievement within the established economic architecture, they act as ‘ideological state apparatuses.’ Thus, one can see that through such institutions, people imbibe the ideology necessary for a capitalist society, which occurs unconsciously.

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