As I was researching Goliath I kept running into 20th century Americans who discussed myth of Saxons as if it were common discourse. Phillips's frame of "Anglo-America" and the English Civil War-Revolution-U.S. Civil War fits it together.https://twitter.com/matthewstoller/status/1311296226550255618 …
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Also reading a bunch of books on 18th and 19th century conceptions of American views of economic equality. This led me back to "The World Turned Upside Down." How did I not know about the Levelers and the Diggers?!? In the 1770s Loyalists slurred patriots as Levelers!
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I blame Richard Hofstadter for erasing popular American recognition of the English Civil War as the origin of American republicanism. Just chalked it all up to paranoia. He (and Galbraith) helped erase the anti-monopoly tradition, but he did so much more.
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Replying to @matthewstoller
american political tradition is pretty damn good
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Replying to @JStein_WaPo
It's incredibly well-written but horrific and inaccurate. He called Hoover and FDR ideologically identical. Hofstadter's agenda was to frame Protestant Anglo-American visions of liberty and politics as a myth.
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Replying to @matthewstoller @JStein_WaPo
"When Hoover bumbled it was necessary only to restore confidence, the nation laughed bitterly. When FDR said: ‘The only thing we have to fear is fear itself,’ essentially the same threadbare half-true idea, the nation was thrilled.Hoover lacked motion;Roosevelt lacked direction.”
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Replying to @matthewstoller @JStein_WaPo
As
@rauchway has pointed out in lovely detail, Hoover and FDR were very much not ideologically identical. And for Hofstadter to make that argument was deeply disingenuous and related to his own hatred of FDR and populism.1 reply 0 retweets 4 likes -
Replying to @matthewstoller @rauchway
Again it's been years but my recollection of Hofstadter was less his hatred of populism but more his attempt to describe accurately what America is like
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I have a forthcoming piece that goes into all this but short answer: American Political Tradition came from Hofstadter's youthful radicalism (although it foreshadowed his anti-populism) but his real anti-populism came from 1950s Cold War liberalism.
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