1. Ideology is a set of beliefs or philosophies attributed to a person or group of persons. It hits on our aspirations to have a collective consciousness, on our desire to have something in common with others, which gives us a feeling of belonging to something beyond ourselves and with that mindset ideology becomes a necessary tool to gain social control over our families, corporations, political parties and the citizen of a country. Ideology affects people political believes, take the Democrats for example, they believe that the government knows what’s best for the citizen and that it is the government’s responsibility to take care of all individuals

2. The difference between conservative and Liberal ideology in US politics.

Conservative preaches about virtues of the private initiative and self-reliance, they believes that rich and poor get what they deserves, that the reason that people are poor is because they are too lazy and incapable. They blame our troubles on arrogance, insularity and the government knows best mentality.  Liberals sees a need for improving public services and environmental protections, they also support minimum-wage law, unemployment insurance and other wage supports.  Liberal policies generally emphasize the need for the government to solve people’s problems. Liberals support welfare because it provides for the poor without welfare life below the poverty line would be intolerable. While Conservative policies generally emphasize the empowerment of the individual to solve problems. An example could be the welfare system. Conservative oppose long-term welfare because they believe there should be opportunities to make it possible for poor and low-income workers to become self-reliant. 

3. Althusser defines Ideology as an important and useful tool that can be used in school, media campaigns, and politics. To my understanding he believes that ideology has very little to do with consciousness it is unconscious and also represents the imaginary relationship of individuals to their real condition of existence an example of that can be students. They live by a certain set of rules that they act and behave in the way that they believe is required