The American Political Tradition Essay, Research Paper
The American Political Tradition, written by Richard Hofstadter, is an highly influential book foregrounding America s political yesteryear. Hofstadter wrote the book at the age of 27 and did non waver to include his instead strong ideals and beliefs. He rejected the progressive historiographers like Charles A. Beard and Carl Becker. He managed to indicate out defects in virtually every august political figure he came across ; in his eyes it was hard to be genuinely great.
As the political scientist Ira Katznelson has said, Hofstadter wrote The American Political Tradition during & # 8220 ; dark times & # 8221 ; for Enlightenment liberalism. Frightened by subjects such as the possible resurgence of fascism and Soviet communism, Hofstadter joined the conflict for liberalism s psyche. In this book he warns of the dangers of turning the yesteryear into an ideological tool. He was responding non merely to the left and rightist thoughts of his ain twenty-four hours but besides to Charles Beard and other precursors who had sought a & # 8220 ; useable yesteryear & # 8221 ; & # 8212 ; history that could be put in the service of societal justness. Hofstadter preferred non to & # 8220 ; usage & # 8221 ; the yesteryear but, as Christopher Lasch pointed out, to & # 8220 ; absorb & # 8221 ; it & # 8212 ; to understand how history shaped his ain political and rational clime without boiling it down to practical lessons. In opposing the Progressive positions, Hofstadter assumed a extremist place in which he viewed each individual as holding their ain scruples and sentiments.
In assailing Lincoln, Hofstadter proclaims he is a ego made myth. He doesn t purchase any of the ballyhoo about Lincoln being the honest, guiltless adult male. He argues,
In a universe that works through aspiration and self-help, while instilling an ethic that looks upon their consequences with contempt, how can an sincere adult male, a public figure life in a clip of crisis, satisfy his aspirations and yet remain morally whole?
Hofstadter believed Lincoln was exhaustively and wholly the politician. He describes his political inclinations and wonts, even from childhood. He goes on to indicate out that for a young person with such wonts as listening to attorneies statements, the greatest chances were in the ministry, jurisprudence, or political relations. As a politician, Lincoln was no rebel.
The general intension of Wendell Phillips among historiographers is negative, with his head rol
vitamin E to play foil to Abe Lincoln. Hofstadter comes right out and calls Phillips an fomenter ; an fomenter by profession, in fact. He goes on to state,
Both historiographers and fomenters are shapers of myths, a fact of which Phillips was intensely witting, but while few historiographers of the bondage contention have had a reasoned doctrine of history, Phillips had a reasoned doctrine of agitation.
Phillips believed that the adult male who launches a sound statement for a merely cause is certain to win in the long tally. He said the people should take their ain broad base and disregard the influences that continue to force them about. The fomenter, Hofstadter notes, is likely to be the crisis mind. Hofstadter states that Philips was by far the most impressive of the emancipationists.
The spoilsmen arose during the Gilded Age, a clip period in America in which political relations was dwarfed by economic alterations and in which the life of the state rests so wholly in the custodies of the industrial enterpriser. Hofstadter calls these industrials audacious, exploitatory, and said they behaved with going coarseness. He infers that these captains of industry seized the chances of the state, managed its corruptness and because of these people, the epoch took its tone and colour. Yet he besides goes on to state it would be a error to presume that scruples had died among the concern barons. They were able to make certain unethical things they did for grounds such that they were constructing a great industrial imperium. Besides, they represented the ability to switch societal categories ; most great industrial leaders had started life in a lower category. These were trained in the sternest but most efficient of all schools poorness, says Andrew Carnegie at the stopping point of the period. There were others, nevertheless, who had begun in comfy fortunes, but these work forces could non state themselves and the universe that their wealths and power were the consequences of difficult work and particular endowments.
Hofstadter says that from the concern of industry comes the concern of political relations. These industrialists, who accumulated wealth and lived so luxuriously, set the criterion of life for others. This inclination to get and bask flowed into political relations where it multiplied among the politicians and therefore, the criterions of success in political relations changed. Now the object was money ; that was success.
