grrrr tiger!
Yes, Heath is lame.
mock him eternally for this
Question 1
Why are the four dimensions used in the graphic more descriptive of ideology than simply liberal/conservative?
These four dimensions allow for further stereotypes of people by a shallow political label. The labels only serve as jargon for people like Rush Limbaugh who only insult the opposite political party of which they support, instead of actually indicating the way someone feels about government. Anything liberal is stereotyped as anarchic support for useless causes and conservatives as being fat cats trying to screw the working man out of a hard earned dollar. Though, from a less socio-political view and a more textbook approach, these 4 boxes help define if someone believes government should step more into economic and social affairs on a high or low amount. The conservative stereotype presented earlier is supported by the low government in economic affairs but high social, and the stereotype that liberals try to help people using money.
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Question 2
If the policy preferences can be used to describe a person's ideology, can a person's ideology be used to predict their policy preferences? Why or why not?
No, because in theory the government could produce a decent policy idea that would help everyone. This type of policy would increase government control on this scale, as it is based on broad issues that people generally put a negative spin on. ex. "Government should regulate business to protect the public from unscupulous corporations." Who WOULDN'T agree with that when the question is worded that way. People also tend to live in communities or feel that they are in the majority and would either support school prayer or not (the second prompt on the flash graph) and wouldnt want someone else making the decision away from their hands, another agree. Therefore, this graph is bias. To increase even a die hard libertarian viewpoint, one could say "Government should give everyone money for everything they want and remove all bad things from their life while securing world peace" Some would call this a fantastic success of democracy, though a megalomaniacal communist state could achieve the same thing. And I realize now that I am WAY off topic. So in close, it depends on what a policy favors if it would be good for the government to support it according to this very flawed graph, so idealogy cant be used because there are good and bad policies.
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Question 3
What other dimensions might be added to effective describe an individual's ideology?
Other dimensions that would be effective would be if the person is a tree hugging hippy democrat or a rich black man striving for civil rights amidst his desire for more money democrat. On the flip side, a nazi bone head (facist skin head, skin head does not equal nazi, but bone head does) since the bone heads typically support republicans, coincidence, I think not, and a typical fortune 500 CEO republican, since all of these groups have very varying values, you cant base someones opinins only on the fact that they like heavy or light government influence in their lives.
