of course our masters are infected by an idea, that of unbridled greed, so much so that they are taking away the option of many who were comfortable with being 'consumers', the new global 'citizens', and leaving them in the dust.

is it splitting hairs to think what we need to immunise ourselves, both from rogue ideologies and from the idiot vacuity of 'i shop, therefore i exist', may be ideal_ism_?

at which point does the distinction become a difference? if i keep silence about my ideals, can that protect me from being an ideologue?

is ideology when people take an idea, judge it as ideal, and then make it into a movement? or is it when the supposed ideal is revealed to be bogus, but some insist on continuing to believe, revealing themselves to be ideo_logues_?

-lists on the waxing phase, -ologues on the waning?

i still think your 'mix' is the best summation. provided a society is tranquil, one could say the philosophies are congruent, in that they may be in spats, such as the ordination of women in the church, or whether to ban foxhunting etc, but there is enough harmony that it's tempting to say all their differences are small enough that one can talk about an 'umbrella' ideology, but it doesn't really describe the reality on the ground. sure, europe's countries are all 'capitalist', but there are so many degrees of commitment to capitalism here as to make the term near-meaningless, imo.

is capitalism an ideology? it doesn't have much idealism left to it, unless you count the delusions of the ayn rand crowd.

perhaps ideologies are simply ideas we don't resonate with...

'The history of public debt is full of irony. It rarely follows our ideas of order and justice.' Thomas Piketty