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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.

Richard Hofstadter

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Richard Hofstadter
Age: 54 †
Born: 1916
Born: August 6
Died: 1970
Died: October 24
Historian
University Teacher
Buffalo
New York
Many
Substitutes
Every
Interpretation
Error
Points
Substitution
Fascinating
Incompetence
Errors
Treason
Imagination
Paranoid
Open
Substitute

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To the reactionary ear every whispered criticism of the elite classes has always sounded like the opening shot of an uprising.
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The utopia of the Populists was in the past, not in the future. According to the agrarian myth, the health of the state was proportionate to the degree to which it was dominated by the agricultural class, and this assumption pointed to the superiority of an earlier age.
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