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During the semester, I shall post course material and students will comment on it. Students are also free to comment on any aspect of American politics, either current or historical. There are only two major limitations: no coarse language, and no derogatory comments about people at the Claremont Colleges. This blog is on the open Internet, so post nothing that you would not want a potential employer to see. Syllabus: http://gov20h.blogspot.com/2023/08/draft-introduction-to-american-politics.html

Thursday, October 12, 2017

The Paranoid Style in American Politics

I was doing some research for one of my essays and came across this piece from 1964:

https://harpers.org/archive/1964/11/the-paranoid-style-in-american-politics/5/

It was written in response to the fear-driven campaigning of the 1964 election and is incredibly relevant today. It almost reads as if it were published during the last election cycle. I've linked the most relevant page. It's a short read if you have 5 or 10 minutes while waiting in the airport this weekend or sometime.

Context from the first few pages:
It was actually written as a criticism of the right.

"But the modern right wing, as Daniel Bell has put it, feels dispossessed: America has been largely taken away from them and their kind, though they are determined to try to repossess it and to prevent the final destructive act of subversion. The old American virtues have already been eaten away by cosmopolitans and intellectuals; the old competitive capitalism has been gradually undermined by socialistic and communistic schemers; the old national security and independence have been destroyed by treasonous plots, having as their most powerful agents not merely outsiders and foreigners as of old but major statesmen who are at the very centers of American power."

Which is ironic since I am writing on the exaggerated claims of an extreme left magazine towards Goldwater during the election and the slander lawsuit that followed.


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