This paper discusses ideologues, both of the far Left and the far Right, and their influences on the American political structure and our "traditional pluralistic politics," which is defined as the concept traditionally held in this country that politics function within a clash of interests, sectional and group, and that political decisions are best understood as compromises between these clashing interests. Our democratic society has difficulty coping with ideologues because they endanger pluralistic politics in three ways: by closing the political process to their opposition, by transferring essentially political conflicts into nonpolitical areas, and by impairing democratic discussion. Further, the overriding reason for the anti-pluralism of ideologues is that they are more attached to their ideology than to the democratic process, an attachment demanded by the intertwining of the epistemology and personality. (RN)