>Well it's true that some of his stuff - especially on populism - looks
>pretty thinly researched today and has come in for a lot of criticism.
>No one talks about "status anxiety" any longer. Hofstadter rarely did a
>lot of archival work, using mostly published sources. These led him to
>really overstate the role of anti-semitism in the Populist movement, in
>particular. The overall approach of the 50s liberals to McCarthyism
>tended to blame the volk and the culture instead of looking at the role
>of power elites and institutions in fomenting the red scare and in
>shaping the culture of anticommunism (which is the point of that Rogin
>book, another good book).
>
>At the same time this kind of attack simplifies the thrust of a lot of
>Hof's work - the American Political Tradition's arguments that
>Americans have a political culture curiously impervious to a
>recognition of class differences, the paranoid style's examination of
>certain important patterns in American history, the writing about
>conservatism and Goldwater. Hofstadter's politics were more complicated
>than Michael P suggests here - he seems to have briefly been in the CP
>during the 30s and like a lot of the liberal writers of the 50s
>retained a deeply critical stance towards capitalism for some time
>afterwards. And then at the end of his life he began to write about
>violence in America.
>
>Anyway, I think he had a lot more insight into American life than a lot
>of historians who probably did better archival work. The theses are
>more interesting than the historical research that backs them up is
>deep, if that makes any sense. I've always wanted to write an essay
>about Hofstadter - Michael's response makes me want to even more!