To develop this thesis the author reasons that the Left has thrived in western democracies, which are largely credited with winning the cold war. He then connects this fact to the ideology's political institutionalization and world conflict. For the purposes of this discussion, "ideology" is defined as "a system of social-political belief whose proponents do the following: express intolerance for anything less than fervent "true believers" who pursue some cause deemed more important than common civility that is itself employed as a reward for agreement and for achieving ideological ends; unabashedly ignore or suppress evidence counting against the belief; and in open societies, where there is limited power to suppress, silence disagreement and critical analysis with name-calling ad hominem attacks." Many now suppose, with the end of the cold war, that new global conflict is merely tribal. This thinking plays into the hands of an ideological politics with radical notions of human beings, ones that emphasize their conflicting differences rather than sameness. Becoming the foundation for ideologies that undermine morality and science in the name of Marxian science, the alleged differences beg for some points to be made about world views. Through them, it is claimed, tribal groups view the world differently. In Western Europe and the United States, thus far, ethnic and gender conflict has not gravitated to systematic murder, although increasing hate crimes are said to warrant special legislation. Although the war between the sexes is often viewed comically, there is concern over a battered-wife syndrome, its exploitation to justify murdering husbands, and a husband's much publicized sexual mutilation diagnosed as either an acute symptom of "male bashing" or a radical remedy for males bashing females. 26 notes