Summary Of Political Vision And Illusions By David Koyzis

In his book, Political Visions and Illusions, David Koyzis highlights many key notions about the holistic ideologies that are present in today’s society. From Individualism to Socialism, Conservatism to Nationalism, Koyzis takes an in depth road, exploring and offering many different arguments as to what these ideologies mean, where they stand and how they affect society in general. As a part of this review of his text, the best approach is to focus more intently on some of his bigger points and dissect those instead of hitting on every topic. With that in mind, there are three ideologies that I believe are worth noting for their characteristics they bring to the table; Liberalism, Conservatism and Socialism. Also, I think examining one of
It is here in this section that Koyzis begins his claims on what ideologies mean and how they are supported. He claims that in the beginning life of an ideology, there is seemingly an invincible or certain illusion that the ideology portrays. Its comprehensive veracity that it gives off is based on real elements of truth, which millions of people come to be true. However, Koyzis exclaims like all things in life, ideologies eventually run their course and begin to lose support, partly due to its failure to deliver on its promises; an example being communism in the late 80’s. Contrary to popular belief, liberalism too, dealt with these types of crises that emerged out of its own tensions. For example, Koyzis says that when someone fashions a God out of something that one true God has created, there become serious repercussions for both the faith, and the believer in that faith. Yet in every ideology, regardless of where it lies on the political spectrum or where it falls on its course of life, every ideology has constants; although they may change over bits of time, these constants remain the same. For liberalism, these constants that Koyzis claims are that it stands and falls on the foundational belief in the sovereignty of the individual. Regardless of what end of the spectrum you fall in your liberalism beliefs, the idea of maximizing one’s individual freedoms will solve all our problems in
I agree with him, you get the sense that conservatism is not a ‘full-blown ideology’ mostly because it does not have the main constant factor that other ideologies have (the freedom of the individual, defying the economic class). However, just because it lacks some of these characteristics and does not maybe categorize as a full blown ideology, does not mean that I do not claim it as one of the big three ideologies, because it is equally as important. Conservativism may not be looked at as an official ideology per say because of its lack of this ‘consistent figure,’ that Koyzis talks about, however, the way it shapes peoples understanding and how it makes them think, makes it equally as important, in terms of its relationship towards the other two ideologies. I think a big reason why people like Koyzis and myself cannot categorize conservatism in the same pool with liberalism and socialism is because it does not play the same role that the other two do. You get the sense, and Koyzis hints on it as well, that conservatism is more of an adjective describing how some other ideologies or political affairs take place. While some say, “with my liberal stance, I think we should protect these people and their individual