It has been almost 45 years since historian Richard Hofstadter published his seminal article, “The Paranoid Style in American Politics.” The article stated that, “The paranoid spokesman sees the fate of conspiracy in apocalyptic terms — he traffics in the birth and death of whole worlds, whole political orders, whole systems of human values. He is always manning the barricades of civilization. He constantly lives at a turning point. Like religious millenialists he expresses the anxiety of those who are living through the last days and he is sometimes disposed to set a date for the apocalypse.”
This paranoid style doesn’t necessarily mean that their views aren’t based on legitimate concerns. The problem is that so many issues are taken to the extreme that it becomes impossible to separate the issues that really matter and those that don’t.
The media is a willing participant. They would rather hear about death panels or thousands of children dying from a lack of health care than a restrained explanation of the subtle effects of regulation and third-party payments on health care prices. Worse is that the effects of the proposed bill on health care prices are ignored, while death panels and dying children distract people.
The paranoid style is seen on both the Left and the Right. The battlefield is always apocalyptic and time is always running out. If drastic action isn’t taken on global warming, then the world as we know it will end. If the national debt isn’t cut now, America will go into an irreversible decline.
The Left sees capitalism as dangerous and American society as wasteful. The Right sees cultural values disappearing and out-of-control entitlement spending. Both sides portray themselves as underdogs fighting a massive entrenched conspiracy aided by a complacent or biased media.
This isn’t to say that issues like health care or taxes aren’t important. What policies are implemented have significant consequences. Yet, perspective must be kept.
I think that the current health care proposals are terrible and will lead to higher prices and lower quality care. On the other hand I don’t think that America’s health care system will collapse or capitalism as we know it will end. A situation like long waits and rationed care may eventually happen, but if it gets that bad then reform movements will eventually rise up to remedy the situation.
Hofstadter’s article illustrated the larger point that the paranoid style has a long history and isn’t going away. Paranoia is no higher today than it was forty or four hundred years ago.
Media outlets that claim American politics is less civil or respectful than the past are imagining a golden age that never existed. Name-calling, paranoia and propaganda occupy a proud place in American politics. The American political system has survived wars, recessions and some pretty terrible Presidents. I guarantee that we will survive the Obama administration, even if he does succeed in passing health care reform.
