How can you tell if you are just an ideologue or if you really are advocating something based on reason?

It is very common for humans to think that the actions they are advocating are based on reason and evidence, ie, because they themselves are “intelligent” and “practical”. It is also common for humans to explain that other people argue for some other set of actions just because those people are ideologues. How can you tell if this is the case or are you fooling yourself? I submit a good question is:

 “What are the downsides of the policy I am advocating?” 

If you cannot name any downsides, you are an ideologue. If you name a skimpy list of downsides that you quickly dismiss, then you are mostly an ideologue. Real policies and actions involve trade-offs, and include risks and downsides to real people.

Evangelicals and Roman Catholics

I have written elsewhere that the Xian question is "How can I be saved?", but is it better to think of that as the Protestant Xian question, or even more as the Evangelical question? The reason I ask this is because someone has submitted that the Roman Catholic question would be "How do we love?".