Full Circle: The Paranoid Style in American Politics, by Richard Hofstadter
Written: Dec 02 '99
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Pros: His seminal essay, "The Paranoid Style in American Politics," will never go out of style.
Cons: He's an unabashed fan of FDR, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it can color his historical perspective occasionally.
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| kevincmurphy's Full Review: Richard Hofstadter - The Paranoid Style in America... |
Richard Hofstadter is arguably the best liberal historian of the Roosevelt-Eisenhower years. He was a prolific writer and commentator on the Gilded Age and Progressive Eras, and a scathing critic of the conservatism of his day.
Hofstadter penned numerous interesting works, including The Age of Reform:From Bryan to FDR and Social Darwinism in America. His
best book however, and the one for which he justifiably remembered, is The Paranoid Style in American Politics and Other Essays. In this slim volume, Hofstafter traces the roots of McCarthyism to our nation's inception, proving that political assassination by invoking nativist paranoia has been "a recessive gene in the American character" (a phrase, strangely enough, coined by Phil Gramm) since the days of the Mayflower. Besides his painfully accurate historical continuum of McCarthyists, Redbaiters, Klan members, Know-nothings, and religious zealots, Hofstadter offers several other insightful essays in this book, including writings on the eventual fate of the once monolithic Free Silver and antitrust movements (the latter of which, surprisingly, seems to have reemerged to a degree in the wake of Microsoft and the WTO.)
Perhaps most intriguing of the "other" essays in the book is "Cuba, the Phillipines, and Manifest Destiny," in which Hofstadter describes the atmosphere of anxious irrationality that propelled America to imperialism. His description of a "psychic crisis" afflicting the States in the 1890's, due to the close of the frontier, the rise of robber barons, and the panic of 1893, illuminates much about our own decade, where Perotistas and Buchananites have replaced populists, Bill Gates plays J.P. Morgan, and the rhetoric of Rev. Louis Farrakhan suggests a racial future as socially separatist as that outlined in Booker T. Washington's 1895 Atlanta Compromise. What goes around comes around...
Recommended:
Yes
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kevincmurphy
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Member: Kevin Murphy
Location: New York,NY
Reviews written: 45
Trusted by: 39 members
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