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Rather than focusing on political conflict, Hofstadter proposes that a common ideology of "self-help, free enterprise, competition, and beneficent cupidity" has guided the United States since its inception. Through analyses of the ruling class in the U.S., Hofstadter argues that this consensus is the hallmark of political life in the U.S.
After withdrawing from the party in August 1939 following the Hitler–Stalin Pact, he retained a critical left-wing perspective that was still obvious in American Political Tradition in 1948. [16] Hofstadter earned his PhD in 1942. In 1944, he published his dissertation Social Darwinism in American Thought, 1860–1915.
Hofstadter adapted the essay from a Herbert Spencer lecture he delivered at Oxford University on November 21, 1963. An abridged version was first published in the November 1964 issue of Harper's Magazine, and was published as the titular essay in the book The Paranoid Style in American Politics, and Other Essays (1965). [9]
In this book, Hofstadter set out to trace the social movements that altered the role of intellect in American society. [3] In so doing, he explored questions regarding the purpose of education and whether the democratization of education altered that purpose and reshaped its form. [4]
The study of the radical right began in the 1950s as social scientists attempted to explain McCarthyism, which was seen as a lapse from the American political tradition. A framework for description was developed primarily in Richard Hofstadter 's "The pseudo-conservative revolt" and Seymour Martin Lipset 's "The sources of the radical right".
He contributed a Foreword to later editions of Hofstadter's The American Political Tradition and an article on Hofstadter in the New York Review of Books in 1973. He taught at the University of Iowa and then was a professor of history at the University of Rochester from 1970 until his death from cancer in 1994. Lasch also took a conspicuous ...
Some of Hofstadter's arguments have since been attacked by defenders of Populism. Historians, including Norman Pollack, C. Vann Woodward, and Lawrence Goodwyn.They argue that Hofstadter's misunderstandings include the fact that the Populists were not simply incipient capitalists trying to reform but instead forward-looking radicals, who sought a democratized industrial system and a ...
Hofstadter in 1948, thus rejected the extremely simplified black-and-white polarization between pro- and anti-business politicians as early as his American Political Tradition (1948). [6] But he was still viewing politics from a critical left-wing perspective. [7]