Ideology Paper

Joseph Pollard

Ideology paper

4 February 2016

Government 2305

Christine Gottemoller

        As American’s our everyday lives revolve around government, in one way or another. For some it’s directly, and for others it’s indirectly. The way you view the government depends on your ideology.

        An ideology can be defined as “a comprehensive set of beliefs about the nature of people and about the role of an institution or government.” Some examples we’ve talked about in government would be: a conservative, a liberal, a libertarian, a communist, a fascist, and a socialist. Your ideology is like the foundation supporting your opinions. In other words, it’s how you view the world. It doesn’t necessarily have to do with being a liberal, or a conservative, it can be from which religion you follow, or whether or not you text and drive. The list is endless.

        Deciding which ideology I most closely related with proved to be very difficult, and I’m not someone who is easily stumped by topics. I was really surprised when I couldn’t figure out how to start or end my paper. The content of my paper was going to be on my ideology, that much I knew, but actually writing my thoughts, and elaborating on everything was really hard. I finally came to the conclusion that my views are most closely aligned with those of a conservative. I chose conservative because I am someone who prefers the government to not regulate the economy, and I would like it to be allot smaller than it is right now. The government is huge Obama has his hands in everything.

        My beliefs are powered by events that formed my childhood. I am the youngest child in my family. I had a hard time growing up being the youngest as you can imagine. I grew up in a very strict household where we weren’t allowed to do anything without consulting my father. Learning about money was probably the most important thing about my childhood. I had to learn how to stretch a dollar to last a week. This helped me understand that you have to work for what you have, and that money does not grow on trees. Seeing my father come home so tired after work and seeing how hard it was to support a household of four was a tremendous thing to watch. My dad unlike myself was a democrat he liked the government to control everything I guess he felt safe like that. He liked government programs like wick, food stamps, welfare, public housing, I would get in these big debates with him over my ideology.

        This is probably the reason that I frown upon programs like the Lone Star Card, and other various programs like food stamps. Programs like these should be more strictly supervised and given to the people who desperately need them. What I mean by “people who desperately need them” is that we shouldn’t be giving people who can work, but choose not to, eligibility to receive these programs. It isn’t right for someone who is perfectly healthy and able to work to be on food stamps, or to be getting a check in the mail. It’s basically freeloading.