286 Party Ideology

<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Political Parties are nothing more than groups of Special Interests. They certainly have no common ideology even though both sides condemn the ideology of the other as if they did. In fact, progressives used to be Republicans, while Democrats were conservatives; it's all a matter of who has the most entrenched power. Today, the Democrats are a loose amalgamation of Collectivists, environmentalists, feminists & Liberals. Republicans are Holy-Rollers, business interests & Libertarians. This is the case because America's Two-Party system forces strange ideological bedfellows: people who would normally be at each other's throats must join in an enemy-of-my-enemy-is-my-friend alliance to have any societal impact at all.</p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">The result is that Republicans & Democrats have no ideology because there is no way to bring all the competing ideas under one tent except to ignore them. Because every gathering would quickly disintegrate into internecine squabbling, it's an unspoken rule that ideological discussions are discouraged during formal meetings: they never discuss ideology except to talk past one-another, even at the grass-roots level. Of course, this reality of Party politics is completely contrary to what the majority of voters imagine; voters who are looking to their Party for ideological clarity, and instead are confronted by a schizophrenic wreck.</p>