The American political tradition

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1. bikenagaFeb 2025
   I'm about 2/3 of the way through Richard Hofstadter's "Anti-intellectualism in American Life". It won a Pulitzer Prize in 1964, but it's striking how many of his observations are still pertinent - which is consistent with his identification of anti-intellectualism are as persistent theme in American history. Indeed, in his chapters on evangelicalism he discusses these ideas as they manifested among the Puritans. There are good accounts of the revivalists like Dwight Moody and Billy Sunday (late 1800s - early 1900s).

   Many prominent politicians were subjects of anti-intellectual attacks. If you're annoyed by modern political trash talk, consider this observation about Thomas Jefferson:

   "It was charged that he kept a slave wench and sired mullatoes; that he had been a coward during the American Revolution; that he had started the French Revolution; that he had slandered Washington; that he was ambitious to become a dictator, another Bonaparte; that he was a visionary and a dreamer, an impractical doctrinaire; and, to make matters worse, a French doctrinaire."

   Of Adlai Stevenson, he says:

   "The quality in Stevenson that excited most frequent attack was not his intellect as such, but his wit."

   " The association of intellectuality and style with effeminacy which I have remarked on in connection with the reformers of the Gilded Age reappeared in the 1952 campaign."

   Some of the attacks on Stevenson in this vein that he quotes from the media of the time are just incredible.

   He's a wonderful writer, too:

   "But in world full of dangers, the danger that American society as a whole will overesteem intellect or assign it such a transcendent value as to displace other legitimate values is one that need hardly trouble us."

   "... an unbridled passion for the total elimination of this or that evil can be as dangerous as any of the delusions of our time."

   I'm thinking of reading his "American Political Tradition" of "The Progressive Historians" when I finish this book. Highly recommended.

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2. ddemchukJul 2009
   Just finished "Anthem" by Ayn Rand (it's like 100 pages so it only took a few hours)

   Started "The American Political Tradition" by Richard Hofstadter, pretty engaging history of our major politicians and founding fathers...

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