Temporal Convection

The title of this entry means, essentially, "It is of the highest advantage to learn from the insanity of others." (Isn't it nice how Latin compresses all of that into four simple words while English requires fourteen, including eight articles, pronouns, and prepositions?)

In 1964, American historian Richard Hofstadter wrote an article entitled The Paranoid Style in American Politics, in which he laid out his case showing that American politics have been routinely influenced by fears and trepidations of unknown and unknowable forces tampering with freedoms and liberties. From the earliest days, Americans feared the Illuminati, then the monarchists, then the Papists (Catholics), then the European monarchies, then the Masons, then, variously, the Whigs, Republicans, Democrats, Populists, and international rings of commodity dealers. Conspiracies involving Jesuits (and, of course, Papists) were popular in the 19th century. By the 1880s, commodity dealers, wealthy industrialists, and party bosses topped the list of those charged with undue influence in legislative and executive dealings.

In the 20th century, it became popular to blame non-democratic governments for the world's troubles, beginning with fascists. By the 1950s, it was popular to blame the communists, and, once again, the Catholics. During the 1960s, political parties (but never your political party!) became a popular target. Democrats blamed Republicans, accused them of industrial conspiracy, corruption, and even, on occasion, stopped just short of accusing them of treason. Republicans, on the other hand, accused Democrats of the same vices, but also added an inherent desire to corrupt the sacred and the traditional American way of life.

Over the past decade, the feverish accusations have only increased with the onset of easy Internet access, 24-hour cable news networks, and nightly televangelism sermons. Everything happens, according to these modern fountains of infinite wisdom, for two reasons: somebody wants to either damage his enemy or increase his own power, or both.

American politicians now speak of a terrorist threat to our civilization unlike any hazard in American history. These people threaten to infiltrate our land and our culture, and, if we let them, destroy those great institutions which grant Americans their vital freedoms. Like the Masons, Jesuits, monarchists, and Illuminati before them, this powerful coalition of evil could attack us at any moment. They desire, according to those who report the threat, only to demolish the American way of life and replace it with a foreign ethic, one in which the freedom to speak freely, the freedom to publish, and the freedom to criticize sacred truths are largely eliminated.

On the other side, American politicians also speak of excesses by the United States government, led by, according to these critics, a cabal of international oil barons, who seek only to consolidate their own political power for personal gain. Words like "despot", "dictator" and "fascist" are thrown around with a level of inaccuracy not witnessed in this country since the 1940s. Some accuse this this powerful coalition of evil, this modern Illuminati, of manufacturing crises on a regular basis. They desire, according to those who report the threat, only to demolish the American way of life and replace it with a foreign ethic, one in which the freedom to speak freely, the freedom to publish, and the freedom to criticize sacred truths are largely eliminated.

According to the intelligentsia of the Internet generation, these fears are novel, an artifact of modern politics that did not exist prior to the election of President Bush.

In his 1964 article, Hofstadter eloquently described the enemy:

"The enemy is clearly delineated: he is a perfect model of malice, a kind of amoral superman—sinister, ubiquitous, powerful, cruel, sensual, luxury-loving. Unlike the rest of us, the enemy is not caught in the toils of the vast mechanism of history, himself a victim of his past, his desires, his limitations. He wills, indeed he manufactures, the mechanism of history, or tries to deflect the normal course of history in an evil way. He makes crises, starts runs on banks, causes depressions, manufactures disasters, and then enjoys and profits from the misery he has produced."

Is the modern period really any different than any period in the past, during which an enemy was "clearly delineated", distinguished by key features, suspected of modifying historic events, accused of profiting from the misery and misfortune of others? I believe it is not. Our modern crises are recycled hysterias from 20, 50, 100, 150, and 200 years of Western history.

During the 1950s, a prominent Senator named Joseph McCarthy had this to say about conspiracy to demolish the American way of life:

"How can we account for our present situation unless we believe that men high in this government are concerting to deliver us to disaster? This must be the product of a great conspiracy on a scale so immense as to dwarf any previous such venture in the history of man. A conspiracy of infamy so black that, which it is finally exposed, its principals shall be forever deserving of the maledictions of all honest men. ... What can be made of this unbroken series of decisions and acts contributing to the strategy of defeat? They cannot be attributed to incompetence. ... The laws of probability would dictate that part of ... [the] decisions would serve the country’s interest."
(Senator McCarthy, 1951)

Moving back 50 years, to the Populist era, we find a whole slew of accusations thrown from party to party, from platform to platform, from speechmaker to speechmaker:

"We have witnessed for more than a quarter of a century the struggles of the two great political parties for power and plunder ... We charge that the controlling influences dominating both these parties have permitted the existing dreadful conditions to develop without serious effort to prevent or restrain them. ... They have agreed together to ignore, in the coming campaign, every issue but one. They propose to drown the uproar of a plundered people with the uproar of a sham battle ..."
(Republican Campaign Text-book, 1896)

"For nearly thirty years these conspirators have kept the people quarreling over less important matters while they have pursued with unrelenting zeal their one central purpose. ... Every device of treachery, every resource of statecraft, and every artifice known to the secret cabals of the international gold ring are being used to deal a blow to the prosperity of the people and the financial and commercial independence of the country."
(Populist manifesto, 1895)

During the 1870s and 1880s, America was undergoing the convulsions of rapid industrialization and also healing the wounds torn open by the Civil War. Mark Twain famously called this era the "Gilded Age", referring to how attractive and shiny it appeared on the surface, while it was rusty and deficient under a thin layer of gold.

During this era, politics and politicians were equally dirty:

"Many of these [quotations] were credited to persons, publications and organizations that were created by the Republicans out of their own imaginations for the mere purpose of giving to the forgeries an appearance of being genuine, some were given no particular parentage, and others were alleged to be the utterances of well-known men and newspapers. The true character of these extracts was exposed over and over again, but the only perceptible effect of the exposure was the strengthening of the Republican determination to give the forgeries greater currency."
(Democratic Campaign Text-book, 1888)

"Democratic hatred of Union soldiers"
(Section of a Republican Campaign Text-book of the same year, which detailed the ways in which Union veterans were denied jobs in federal Democrat-led bureaucracies)

Some even denied it was possible to cleanse the corruption that had seized the legislature:

"The purification of politics is an iridescent dream. Government is force. Politics is a battle for supremacy. Parties are the armies. The [Ten Commandments] and the golden rule have no place in a political campaign. The object is success. To defeat the antagonist and expel the party in power is the purpose. ... This modern [talk] about the corruption in politics is fatiguing in the extreme."
(Senator John James Ingalls, 1887)

Election fraud, particularly in the South, was apparently quite rampant:

"At Robinson's Crossroads, Montgomery County, a record of the Republican votes was kept by M. Dillard, one of the oldest and best citizens of that precinct, and it showed 580 Republican votes were polled. The Democratic votes at the outside limit did not exceed 50. [A skirmish with firearms between two men allegedly invalidated the poll. The election inspectors] then closed up the polling place, carried off the box containing the ballots, and from that time to this, no information has been received in any official quarter as to the votes in that box."
(Republican Campaign Text-book, 1880, paraphrased in [ ]; the book cites a dozen other examples)

During the late 1860s, the first President to suffer impeachment was accused of violence against his own countrymen:

"It has been the misfortune of the Republican party that the events of the past few years have given it so much power that it has been able to shackle the Executive, to trammel the judiciary, and carry out the views of the most unwise and violent of its members."
(Democratic Speakers' Hand-book, 1868)

A few years earlier, during the latter portion of the Civil War, Democrats in the North, named everything from "copperheads" to traitors, suffered enormously under the hand of an increasingly hostile government and public. Lincoln had suspended the writ of habeus corpus, leading a great variety of commentators to paint him as a dictator or despot. The 1868 Democratic Speakers' Hand-book lists no fewer than thirty-five instances in which a Northern newspaper was demolished or destroyed ("suppressed") by soldiers or angry mobs of citizens in 1864 alone. One author was particularly vocal on the subject:

"Senator T.O. Howe in his celebrated Ripon (Wis.) speech said:

'I reply that if free speech be stifled upon any one subject, the Union is already absolutely and inevitably lost.'

This is none the less true because Senator Howe now upholds a dynasty that has stricken down free speech - mobbed and destroyed a free press, and claims the right to annihilate both at pleasure."
(Logic of History: Five Hundred Political Texts, 1864)

"If it be true that any opposition to the measures of the Administration is 'aid and comfort to the enemy', then it is treason as defined by the Constitution, and no matter what the President may do or propose, the least opposition is treason. Such a doctrine would land us in the lower depths of despotism."
(Same book, 1864, referring to the article below)

"In times of war, every blow struck at the measures of the Government, though designed only to affect a change of Administration, really affords aid and comfort to the enemy."
(New York Tribune, 1863)

Perhaps not remarkably, one could publish these quotes in a major newspaper today and they would coincide almost perfectly with material produced by conservative and liberal political commentators. One would only have to change the names.

Prior to the latter half of the 1850s, extending backward almost thirty years, there was no clear crisis, or enemy of the state. Therefore, the people invented several, for the sake of having something to vote against:

"It is a notorious fact that the Monarchs of Europe and the Pope of Rome are at this very moment plotting our destruction and threatening the extinction of our political, civil, and religious institutions. We have the best reasons for believing that corruption has found its way into our Executive Chamber, and that our Executive head is tainted with the infectious venom of Catholicism."
(Texas newspaper, 1855, cited in Hofstadter's article)

"Every government in the civilized world is at present tottering; and society, like a ship in a dark tempest is torn and tossed by contending elements."
(A Political Register: Setting Forth the Principles of the Whig and Locofoco Parties in the United States, 1844)

"If any doubt the truth of this position, let the melancholy history of Gen. Jackson's most diasterous dynasty, and that of his successor whom his Despotism installed, array the evidence."
(Same book, 1844)

Samuel Morse was an avid conspiracy theorist. He railed in an 1835 publication against the spread of European despotic ideas into America. He wrote that skirmishes between European nations should not concern Americans, but that no ocean could protect us from the influence their ideas. Since his book is cited by at least three modern histories and commentaries on American politics, it is safe to say that others shared (and even today share) his beliefs:

"Is not the evidence I have exhibited in my previous numbers sufficiently strong to prove to my countrymen the existence of a ... conspiracy against the liberties of the country? Does the nature of the case admit of stronger evidence? or must we wait for some positive, undisguised acts of oppression, before we will believe that we are attacked and in danger? ... The serpent has already commenced his coil about our limbs, and the lethargy of his poison is creeping over us. ... The house is on fire; can we not believe it, till the flames have touched our flesh? ... Have not the wily [maneuverings] of despotism already commenced? ... It is Liberty itself that is in danger, not the liberty of a single state, no, nor of the United States, but the liberty of the world."
(Foreign Conspiracy Against the Liberties of the United States, 1835)

Should we wait or should we act? Is the threat not clear enough to alarm any number of American voters? Will we wait until it is too late? Could we not find a dozen similar quotations in modern publications, usually citing Nazi Germany?

Americans, of course, were not alone in suspecting conspiracy or engaging in paranoid politics:

"Of all the privileges enjoyed under the British Constitution, the most valuable is ... a fair and impartial trial. This privilege is even more valuable than the protection which the constitution affords to all who live under it, against every act of despotism on the part of government. For the instances in which individuals are likely to be injured by a despotic use of the powers of government are few, and of rare occurance; and they are scarcely ever to be found in the private walks of life. But every individual, at all times, wants the protection which can only be afforded by a fair and an impartial administration of justice."
(Review of the Proceedings of the Legislature of Lower Canada in the Session of 1831, 1832)

It seems, even in the early 19th century, that the (British) government sought to conceal vital facts from the public, for the sake of reputation:

"The number of idle tales spread about by the industry of faction, and by the zeal of foolish good-intention, and greedily devoured by the malignant credulity of mankind, tends infinitely to aggrevate prejudices, which, in themselves, are more than sufficiently strong. In that state of affairs ... the first thing the goverment owes to us, the people, is information."
(Maxims and opinions, moral, political and economical, with characters, from the works of the Right Hon. Edmund Burke, 1804)

Moving back several more years, we encounter the notorious tale of the Alien and Sedition Acts, famously passed (and expired) during the administration of John Adams, which restricted the rights of immigrants while simultaneously extinguishing the free speech of American citizens. To criticize the government in any significant way was considered a punishable offense during the tenure of this legislation.

Fewer people are aware of other scandals during the Adams administration, including his allegedly fraudulent election:

"In Pennsylvania, Mr. Adams gained a vote by a trick of the postmaster, who stopped the mail in Greene county until the poll was closed at Philadelphia. In Maryland, he gained a second, by the folly of one Plater, who balloted for both him and Mr. Jefferson, from an anxiety that Mr. Adams should be Vice President. In Maryland, he gained a third suffrage in the western district of that state, owing to negligence on one side and knavery on the other. ... Putting these facts together, it will appear that Mr. Jefferson, and not Mr. Adams, was the choice of America."
(The Suppressed History of the Administration of John Adams, allegedly published and suppressed in 1801)

Let us not restrict the course of this discussion to mysterious threats and elections, though! Let's venture into other areas which many claim are modern developments in American politics. First, we'll tackle the claim that the wealthy have an air of superiority, feeling that they, when elected or promoted to some high office, suddenly become better than their new inferiors:

"Men who have arisen to high elevation of rank or fortune seem to think that their nature has undergone a real metamorphosis; that they are refined by a kind of chemical process, sublimed by the sunshine of royal favour, and separated from the feces, the dross, and the dregs of ordinary humanity."
(The Spirit of Despotism, 1821)

During the 1840s, many religious groups joined the abolitionist movement. The ethic of church-state separation was stronger than today, and this advocacy brought criticism from commentators and other preachers, who felt that the church should not get involved in such a battle. From today's perspective, it seems ludicrous that a religious group should not oppose slavery, but the debate at the time was similar to the abortion question today. In addition to being a moral issue, it was also a partisan issue. Some people felt slavery was moral or natural, while others felt it was a great injustice, and others felt it was downright evil.

One pastor, arguing for a separation between church affairs and state affairs, said:

"Let our church courts [ever] throw themselves into the vortex of party politics, then farewell to peace and harmony - farewell to respectability and public confidence. If individual ministers feel themselves called to soil their cloth in this strife - let them bear the responsibility, and sink alone under the ban of public reprobation."

He was a pro-slavery pastor trying to keep his church from taking an anti-slavery stance.

I don't wonder why modern Americans feel that they are uniquely persecuted.

People throughout history have felt as though their contemporary oppressions, persecutions, and insecurities were the first, or, if not the first, at least the worst. The present monsters are always more salient than the imaginary demons of the distant past. In 50 years, though, our modern insecurities may appear to be just as ridiculous as the worry over Papists, Illuminati, and Whigs. Our modern political strife may feel just as strange to our great-grandchildren as the idea that church should not oppose slavery.

Viewing the present as tomorrow's history, from the perspective of history's tomorrow, can be very comforting. Partisan politics become less important than individual issues, and present crises become less important than general trends.

I leave you with Hofstadter's observations on war:

"Any historian of warfare knows it is in good part a comedy of errors and a museum of incompetence; but if for every error and every act of incompetence one can substitute an act of treason, many points of fascinating interpretation are open to the paranoid imagination. In the end, the real mystery, for one who reads the primary works of paranoid scholarship, is not how the United States has been brought to its present dangerous position but how it has managed to survive at all."

Your world will survive.

Good luck.