Time Suck Of The Day, Ctd

Ideology chart

Alexis collects some of the most amusing Ngrams into a slideshow. Seth Masket provides the above comparison:

This supports a claim Frances Lee makes in Beyond Ideology that the concept of ideology is a relatively recent one.  It was invented, she argues, in the mid-20th century by journalists and political scientists as a way to explain the behavior of southern and northern Democrats, who seemed to vote differently once in a while despite being of the same party.  Prior to that time, we really had no concept of ideology as something distinct from party.

2006-2011 archives for The Daily Dish, featuring Andrew Sullivan