By Fr. Jerry Pokorsky, Catholic Culture - An ideology is an idea or system, devised by man and imposed on society by elites, if and when those elites have the power to do so. Communism, socialism, capitalism, libertarianism, tribalism, nationalism, racism, and even multiculturalism are habits of the mind. Of course there are many more ideologies, often variations on the same themes... Ideologies may reflect some degree of reality, but always fall short of the whole.