In recent years we have seen angry minds at work mainly among extreme right-wingers, who have now demonstrated in the Goldwater movement how much political leverage can be got out of the animosities and passions of a small minority. But behind this I believe there is a style of mind that is far from new and that is not necessarily right-wind.

Richard Hofstadter, professor of American history at Columbia University, a leading public intellectual in American politics, and conservative political analyst, wrote the quote above. He is often quoted by strands of neoconservative most popularized by Allan Bloom. He lost two appoints to major universities because “he was too Jewish.” I think he know receives lukewarm welcome in the academic community, even though he is now recognized as one of the most insightful political commentators of the twentieth century. He may be best known for his books, Anti-Intellectualism in America and The Age of Reform.

He wrote an essay that I highly recommend to everyone, The Paranoid Style in American Politics. He tracks what he sees is central to American political history–“the sense of heated exaggeration, suspiciousness, and conspiratorial fantasy”–to foundation of America. He takes liberal literary flourishes, and could be tamed more, but the historical resources of the essay should reveal that health care protesters are not the extreme fringes of our society but apart of a greater tradition, a tradition that we forget about.

One infamous personae is John McCarthy a man who, according to Richard Rovere,

held two presidents captive–or as nearly captive as any Presidents of the United States have ever been held; in their conduct of the nation’s affairs, Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower, from early 150 trhough late 1954, could never act without weighing the effect of their plans upon McCarthy and the forces he led, and in consequence there were times when the could not act at all.

McCarthy, having ushered in a new fear of radicals, is known for forging an alliance between traditional conservativism and radical agrarians. Michael Rogin shows in his book The Intellectuals and McCarthy that there is no empirical evidence to suggest radical agrarians supported McCarthy–the same radical agrarians that are supporting the current mob violence and agonistic hate wishes.

I’d ask could it be that their own radicalism in not necessarily in line with corporate interests and these radicals are using this an opportunity to build political capital for their own interests?

Regardless whether anyone has an answer for this question, I recommend Hofstadter’s essay as well as Thomas Frank’s books, What’s The Matter with Kansas? and One Market Under God.

P.S. I won’t be linking back to any Amazon Web sites in protest of their censorship. For more on their censorship practices, check out my previous posts here and here.