"I Have a Theory, But You Have an Ideology!"
23rd Annual Prophetic Voices Lecture
Jason Blakely
Pepperdine University
Date: Thursday, October 23, 2025
Time: 5:30 - 7pm
Location: Stokes Hall S195
Americans across the political spectrum do not recognize their own country anymore. Instead, they often experience themselves as strangers or outsiders to their own land. At the same time there is wide recognition that the old certainties and institutions of liberal democracy are growing shaky. Perhaps even a change of regime is afoot. This lecture begins from the premise that much of the disorientation and disarray of our present moment is ideological in nature. Yet Americans fail to realize this fact because they have assigned ideology as something that only afflicts their opponents.
To escape this ideological vertigo, we need not only to understand the ways in which we all have ideologies, but also learn to view the world through the eyes of our political adversaries. This lecture offers a basic conception of ideology and explains how it might be used to help both experts and ordinary citizens begin to reorient in politics.
Jason Blakely is a political philosopher and professor of political science at Pepperdine University, California. His books are widely read and include: We Built Reality, Interpretive Social Science (with Mark Bevir), and most recently Lost in Ideology. His essays have also been featured in leading public venues like The Atlantic and Harper’s Magazine.
Joel Achenbach wrote an article for The Washington Post titled “Science Is Revealing Why American Politics Are So Intensely Polarized,” which discusses the rise of political polarization and tribalism in American politics. He mentions how a variety of data reveals that America is more politically polarized than ever, which he argues is largely caused by a rise in tribalism and inflammatory rhetoric. He describes this phenomenon as “affective polarization,” which is polarization based on one's feelings toward another, not based on extremely divergent policy preferences. Achenbach posits that technology and media fragmentation are major contributors to affective polarization because they allow people to “sort” their information, leading to selection bias. Additionally, American politics is viewed as a winner-take-all game, which reinforces the “us versus them” mentality that fuels polarization. Politicians know that by using in-group-out-group rhetoric, they will tap into a well of resentment and mobilize voters. However, this rhetoric fuels tribalism as people increasingly view the other political party as radically different and inferior, coming from a place of emotion rather than fundamental policy differences. He states that research shows that affective polarization is intensifying across the political spectrum, with more than half of republicans and democrats reporting that they view the other party as a threat. The same survey found that nearly half of republicans and democrats would describe the other political party as evil, and thirty percent of respondents agreed with the statements that members of the other party “lack the traits to be considered fully human—they behave like animals.” Thus, the article reveals that political polarization is an emotion-driven phenomenon, rather than merely a matter of policy disagreements. At his lecture, Jason Blakely will discuss how understanding political ideologies can help reorient people in politics, as well as the importance of viewing the world through the eyes of our political adversaries.