Perspective

The perspective of the book is that of the narrator, American historian Richard Hofstadter. Richard Hofstadter is one of the most important historians of the twentieth century, and was known as the "historian of the post-war liberal consensus". Specifically, he endorsed the values of the post-war social democratic order. He defended an extensive welfare state, heavily criticized conservative moral attitudes as psychologically dysfunctional and articulated the historical perspective of what was then a consensus liberal position until the rise of the conservative movement in the late twentieth century. He has been criticized for writing with broad strokes, rarely reading manuscripts, and preferring to speak in general terms. Further, his well-known The Paranoid Style of American Politics, which ridiculed and psychoanalyzed American conservatives, earned him great ridicule on the right and exposed his bias against the major ideological strands of thought he opposed.

The purpose of this discussion is...