Blog Credo

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

H.L. Mencken

Saturday, August 24, 2019

Offered Without Comment

From Richard Hofstadter's Anti-Intellectualism in American Life from 1964:

Religion, for many individuals and groups, may be an expression of serene belief, personal peace, and charity of mind. But for more militant spirits it may also be a source or an outlet for animosities. There is a militant type of mind to which the hostilities involved in any human situation seem to be its most interesting or valuable aspect; some individuals live by hatred as a kind of creed....There are both serene and militant fundamentalists; and it is hard to say which group is more numerous. My concern here is with the militants, who have thrown themselves headlong into the revolt against modernism in religion and against modernity in our culture in general.

And then

One can trace in (Billy) Sunday the emergence of what I would call the one-hundred percent mentality - a mind totally committed to the full range of the dominant popular fatuities and determined that no one shall have a right to challenge them....The one-hundred percenter. who will tolerate no ambiguities, no equivocations, no reservations, and no criticism, considers this kind of committedness an evidence of toughness and masculinity.

In case you were wondering why Evangelicals stick with Trump.

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