The Paranoid Style in American Politics

Richard Hofstader is a joy to read, and reading him is a both unnerving and soothing, a harmony of opposites.

What he describes in the Rush Limbaughs of the 1950's and in fact, the 1850's is so recognizable you have the sense, "Well, there have been people as bad, or worse, than Rush Limbaugh throughout American history and the country survived. Eventually, these people were found out or dismissed or simply became boring, and we moved on."

On the other hand, the damage done by Joseph McCarthy, Henry Clay, George Wallace, Father Coughlin while not fatal to the nation, did ruin many lives, damaged individuals who never recovered and diminished the idea of America in substantive ways.

Of course, George Will, the sissy pundit, dismissed Hofstader as "the iconic public intellectual of liberal condescension" who "dismissed conservatives as victims of character flaws and psychological disorders."

Looking, however, at Rush Limbaugh and Charles Krauthammer, you are hit in the face with their glaring psychopathology, the snarling, desperate, bitter paranoia which may be entertaining to those of similar affliction, or, like circus freaks of old, fascinating to people who are not so obviously afflicted.

At least Hofstader's analysis provides some explanation for the obvious question of why anyone would listen to the expostulations of these mutant brains: The fact is the American people have historically responded to the paranoid style. It is something of the fabric of the American soul. Maybe it has something to do with a nation of immigrants, and immigrants have good reason to be paranoid; as they say, just because you are paranoid doesn't mean there is nobody out there trying to get you.

In fact, you almost have to give in to psychological explanations, when you see the seething froth dripping from the lips of a Rush Limbaugh, or the Darth Vader aspect of a Krauthammer.

Some historians and social commentators will look beyond the bilious rhetoric for an underlying economic reason for positions taken, the public reasons always being a disguise for the real, unspoken financial reasons for "belief." But, in the case of Limbaugh lashing out against supporters of female contraception, the economic benefit to Limbaugh must be remote, compared to the obvious psychological pathology revealed by his desire to see videos of the Georgetown co-ed having sex.