{"id":13415,"date":"2026-09-06T23:07:01","date_gmt":"2026-09-07T03:07:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu\/pol-100-0501-fall-2026-american-government\/?p=13415"},"modified":"2026-09-06T23:07:13","modified_gmt":"2026-09-07T03:07:13","slug":"hailie-ayala-discussion-3-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu\/pol-100-0501-fall-2026-american-government\/2026\/09\/06\/hailie-ayala-discussion-3-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Hailie Ayala- Discussion 3.1"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

1. Keeping in mind the material covered in this lesson, describe how you understand ideology in <\/strong>YOUR OWN WORDS.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hint: <\/em>One way to approach this is as follows<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a) Describe what ideology is in a brief paragraph (in your own words). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b) Give an example illustrating what you wrote in (a).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

c) Write another paragraph (or two), explaining to your reader with additional details, how you understand ideology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ideology is a kind of umbrella term to categorize the ideas, beliefs, values or characteristics that a person or group identifies with. It can influence your political, religious and societal beliefs. For example, as Americans we have a government that operates under a two party system, Democratic and Republican. Democrats lean towards the \u201cleft\u201d which coincide with liberal ideologies and Republicans lean towards the \u201dright\u201d which coincide with conservative ideologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My understanding of ideology is that it is something that can categorize people’s ideas, beliefs, and way of living into simple terms. You can identify yourself as a republican, even if not all your ideas and beliefs align with the umbrella term Republican or Conservative. Ideologies have labels that make them simple and easy to follow.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

An example of ideology is left wing populism. Left wing populism focuses on conflicts between \u201cbig guys\u201d and \u201clittle guys\u201d. AKA the wealthy and regular people. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. How do you understand the difference between conservative and liberal ideology in US politics? What seem to be the big differences, the dividing line? Given an example to backup your arguments.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hint: <\/em>try to identify key words (concepts) that play a big role in making someone consider themselves to be liberal or conservative. Then, explain in your own words what those keywords (concepts) mean.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

American conservatives believe in the free market and that it will provide the greatest economic opportunity and benefit to the greatest number of people. They also believe in a strong defense and that lower government spending will lead to lower taxes. And most of all they value liberty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

American liberals believe that the government can help solve problems and a bigger government can help solve more and bigger problems. Liberals are all for government intervention in forms such as regulations and higher taxes, especially when government intervention helps historically marginalized groups like minorities, women and the poor. Liberal don\u2019t believe the free market will be fair to everyone so they like to see the government step in on the behalf of consumers to protect the environment. They favor higher taxes or the rich and corporations. They also believe we spend more than enough money on the military. And most importantly to liberals they value equality. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

3. How do you understand Althusser\u2019s definition of ideology? Paraphrase it in your own words. Given an example.<\/strong> Hint: you may have to watch the second video again, and find the few places where Althusser\u2019s position is presented.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hint: <\/em>Remember, the discussion boards are crucial for us this semester, because they reproduce our in-class conversations. Try to be thorough and write more, rather than less. I will do the same, and make sure by the time we end our discussion, we have covered the key ideas on the module.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From what I understand, Althusser’s definition of ideology means sets of ideas that shape how people think and act in society. Mainly used to label beliefs or ideas in order to maintain societal correspondence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My example is how school teaches us to think that getting good grades will get us into good schools and lead us to success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

1. Keeping in mind the material covered in this lesson, describe how you understand ideology in YOUR OWN WORDS. Hint: One way to approach this is as follows a) Describe what ideology is in a brief paragraph (in your own words).  b) Give an example illustrating what you wrote in (a). c) Write another paragraph…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12012,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"portfolio_post_id":0,"portfolio_citation":"","portfolio_annotation":"","openlab_post_visibility":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13415","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-discussion-board-3-1"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu\/pol-100-0501-fall-2026-american-government\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13415","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu\/pol-100-0501-fall-2026-american-government\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu\/pol-100-0501-fall-2026-american-government\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu\/pol-100-0501-fall-2026-american-government\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12012"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu\/pol-100-0501-fall-2026-american-government\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13415"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu\/pol-100-0501-fall-2026-american-government\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13415\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13416,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu\/pol-100-0501-fall-2026-american-government\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13415\/revisions\/13416"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu\/pol-100-0501-fall-2026-american-government\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13415"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu\/pol-100-0501-fall-2026-american-government\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13415"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu\/pol-100-0501-fall-2026-american-government\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13415"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}