{"id":4240,"date":"2003-07-10T11:28:06","date_gmt":"2003-07-10T11:28:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=4240"},"modified":"2003-07-10T11:28:06","modified_gmt":"2003-07-10T11:28:06","slug":"the-place-of-ideology","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=4240","title":{"rendered":"the place of ideology"},"content":{"rendered":"

I have been approached<\/p>\n

by a publisher about the idea of writing a popular guide to politics for new voters,<\/p>\n

in time for the 2004 campaign season. I don’t know if this idea will come to pass,<\/p>\n

but it’s interesting.<\/p>\n

Perhaps the "ideal citizen" would make an<\/p>\n

independent and informed judgment about each issue and also each candidate, and<\/p>\n

then vote accordingly. But none of us has the time or energy to do this. Instead,<\/p>\n

we use shortcuts to make our voting choices. The most common shortcut, I believe,<\/p>\n

is to choose a political identity for oneself: for example, "liberal"<\/p>\n

or "conservative," or something somewhat more complicated, like "pro-choice<\/p>\n

conservative" or "social liberal\/fiscal conservative." We then<\/p>\n

learn how to identify the candidates who fit this label, based on clues in their<\/p>\n

rhetoric and a few issues that serve as proxies. If we are better-than-average<\/p>\n

citizens, then we choose an ideology in a provisional way, trying to stay open-minded<\/p>\n

and to understand the merits of alternative views. But we still use ideology as<\/p>\n

a cue. CIRCLE<\/a> surveys show that people<\/p>\n

who cannot place themselves on an ideological scale or identify the differences<\/p>\n

between Democrats and Republicans also do not vote. <\/p>\n

Thus I may propose<\/p>\n

to write a book that begins with a quiz, designed to identify the reader’s starting<\/p>\n

ideology or political identity. If a reader chooses "don’t know" as<\/p>\n

an answer to any question, he or she will be sent to pages in the book that introduce<\/p>\n

the relevant issue. Once the reader has completed the quiz and identified a provisional<\/p>\n

ideology, the rest of the book will help him or her to (a) think critically about<\/p>\n

the pros and cons of this ideology and (b) learn how to identify candidates who<\/p>\n

espouse it.<\/p>\n

\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have been approached by a publisher about the idea of writing a popular guide to politics for new voters, in time for the 2004 campaign season. I don’t know if this idea will come to pass, but it’s interesting. Perhaps the "ideal citizen" would make an independent and informed judgment about each issue and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4240","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4240","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4240"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4240\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4240"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4240"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4240"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}