The Utopia Of The Populists Was In

To The Reactionary Ear Every Whispered Criticism Of The Elite Classes Has Always Sounded Like The Opening Shot Of An Uprising.

The Idea Of The Paranoid Style As A Force In Politics Would Have Little Contemporary Relevance Or Historical Value If It Were Applied Only To Men With Profoundly Disturbed Minds. It Is The Use Of Paranoid Modes Of Expression By More Or Less Normal People That Makes The Phenomenon Significant.

There Has Always Been In Our National Experience A Type Of Mind Which Elevates Hatred To A Kind Of Creed; For This Mind, Group Hatreds Take A Place In Politics Similar To The Class Struggle In Some Other Modern Societies.

The American Farmer, Whose Holdings Were Not So Extensive As Those Of The Grandee Nor So Tiny As Those Of The Peasant, Whose Psychology Was Protestant And Bourgeois, And Whose Politics Were Petty-capitalist Rather Than Traditionalist, Had No Reason To Share The Social Outlook Of The Rural Classes Of Europe. In Europe Land Was Limited And Dear, While Labor Was Abundant And Relatively Cheap; In America The Ratio Between Land And Labor Was Inverted.

The Nation Seems To Slouch Onward Into Its Uncertain Future Like Some Huge Inarticulate Beast, Too Much Attainted By Wounds And Ailments To Be Robust, But Too Strong And Resourceful To Succumb.