The fundamentalist mind...is essentially Manichean; it looks upon the world as an arena for conflict between absolute good and absolute evil, and acc… - Richard Hofstadter

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The fundamentalist mind...is essentially Manichean; it looks upon the world as an arena for conflict between absolute good and absolute evil, and accordingly it scorns compromises (who would compromise with Satan?) and can tolerate no ambiguities.

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About Richard Hofstadter

Richard Hofstadter (August 6, 1916 – August 24, 1970) was an American historian, Professor of American History at Columbia University and public intellectual of the mid-20th century. He became the "iconic historian of postwar liberal consensus", largely due to his emphasis on ideas and political culture rather than the day-to-day actions of politicians.

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Additional quotes by Richard Hofstadter

The paranoid spokesman sees the fate of conspiracy in apocalyptic terms — he traffics in the birth and death of whole worlds, whole political orders, whole systems of human values. He is always manning the barricades of civilization. He constantly lives at a turning point. Like religious millennialists he expresses the anxiety of those who are living through the last days and he is sometimes disposed to set a date for the apocalypse.

Tocqueville saw that the life of constant action and decision which was entailed by the democratic and businesslike character of American life put a premium upon rough and ready habits of mind, quick decision, and the prompt seizure of opportunities - and that all this activity was not propitious for deliberation, elaboration, or precision in thought.

Insofar as he does not usually see himself singled out as the individual victim of a personal conspiracy,1 he is somewhat more rational and much more disinterested. His sense that his political passions are unselfish and patriotic, in fact, goes far to intensify his feeling of righteousness and his moral indignation.

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