YouTube Transcript:
Ideology and POLICY MAKING [AP Gov Review_ Unit 4 Topic 8 (4_8)]

hey there and welcome back to heimlich
history now we've been going through
unit 4 of the ap government curriculum
and in this video that means it's time
to talk about how political ideologies
affect policy making so if you're ready
to get them brain cows milked well then
let's get to it so in this video here's
what we're trying to do explain how u.s
political culture for example values
attitudes and beliefs influences the
formation goals and implementation of
public policy over time or a simpler way
to say it is this how do our ideologies
inform the kind of policy we make if
you'll remember in the last video i
talked about the differences between the
characteristics of conservative and
liberal ideology and i won't rehash that
here but for now we just need to talk
about how people who hold those
ideologies get laws passed that reflect
their beliefs and probably it goes
without saying but hey i'm going to say
it anyway that the policies that are
made into law here in america reflect
only the beliefs of the people who
actually vote all things being equal if
more people who hold liberal ideology
vote we're going to have more liberal
policies and vice versa with
conservative ideology okay so with that
established let's consider two debates
and two laws that illustrate this point
first is the ongoing debate over making
english the official language of the
united states just about every year
conservatives in congress propose such a
policy and every year it dies now
conservatives want to do this because
they believe it will unite americans of
all backgrounds and then additionally
they argue that such a law would save
billions in federal and state spending
as it stands hospitals are mandated to
provide translators for patients who
need them many schools must hire
bilingual teachers and counselors and
some states spend millions out of their
election budgets to print ballots in
several languages and it's true a
nation's language is one of the most
powerful cultural artifacts to bind
people together in a shared heritage
however liberals reject the idea of
making english the official language
because they see it as a tool of
oppression and in some cases straight up
racist and precisely because language is
such a powerful cultural artifact
liberals argue that to require
immigrants to learn english at the
expense of their native language is
tantamount to an erasure of their
cultural heritage now this debate has
been going on for decades and it waxes
and wanes depending on not surprisingly
the numbers of immigrants entering the
nation however up till now it has been
just a debate and no official policy has
been passed either way but it is a good
illustration of how ideology affects and
informs policymaking the second debate
is related to the first namely the
debate over multiculturalism versus
assimilation the idea here is whether as
americans we should embrace
multiculturalism which values and
upholds the distinct cultures of the
people that live here or whether there
exists a normative set of american
cultural values that all americans
should assimilate to and this debate has
a long history going all the way back to
the u.s policy concerning american
indians in many cases during the process
of westward expansion american indians
were given the choice to be displaced
from their land or assimilate to
american culture which in those days
meant to speak english dress like
americans and embrace christianity etc
etc and those debates are still
happening today liberals tend to
champion multiculturalism while
conservatives push for assimilation and
the crux of this debate is whether or
not there are a set of universal
normative american values by which every
american should be measured
conservatives tend to say yes liberals
tend to say no okay those are two
examples of ideological debates that
have so far not resulted in concrete
policy but now let's consider two
examples of policies that illustrate how
ideology makes its way into law first on
the conservative side we can consider
the personal responsibility and work
opportunity act of 1996. this was a law
addressing welfare policies which
provided government funds to the poor
ever since the policies of lyndon
johnson's great society the welfare
state in america was significantly
expanded and this was a triumph for
liberalism but starting in the 1980s
conservatives got all kinds of twitchy
about this legislation because as they
argued the system of welfare trapped the
poor in a cycle of poverty the
conservatives argued like this if the
poor were receiving welfare benefits
they had no incentive to go to work and
that just means that they would sit at
home while big daddy government paid all
their bills and so a
republican-dominated congress passed the
personal responsibility and work
opportunity act which limited welfare
payments to five years and the result
was that the numbers of those on welfare
dropped precipitously and conservatives
considered this a win because to them it
reasserted the american work ethic and
now let's consider how liberal ideology
resulted in legislation and for this
we'll consider the dream act which
addressed immigration and more
specifically the situation of immigrants
who entered the country illegally but
were minors that means their parents
immigrated illegally but obviously the
children had no choice in the matter the
dream act aimed to create a set of
criteria through which those minors
would not be deported but could become
american citizens and initially this
legislation was somewhat bipartisan but
not surprisingly it was more favored by
liberal democrats the bill was
introduced several times but it never
passed republicans wanted stricter
immigration limits in return for their
cooperation but democrats weren't
willing to bend on that one but despite
the failure of the bill president obama
a democrat took matters into his own
hands and issued an executive order to
address the situation basically the
executive order made the deportation of
these immigrant minors impossible and
that essentially accomplished the same
thing but the problem with executive
orders is that when there is a new
executive new orders can be made case in
point president trump who styled himself
tough on immigration rescinded this
order and removed many of the
protections offered in the dreamers
program so all in all you can see how
ideology shapes the kind of policy that
we end up with and that policy is always
going to reflect the ideology of the
people who actually vote okay thanks for
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