For all of Hofstadter’s partisan distortions, he was right to note that paranoia, anxious defensiveness, characterizes American politics. But this paranoia is more deeply rooted in American character and institutions that Hofstadter imagined.
America has regularly seen itself as the guarantor of human freedom. Not just American freedom, but the freedom of humanity. We were the first to enter the novus ordo saeclorum , and we are eager for others to follow. Our founding vision say that America is freedom, and if that is so, unfreedom is always a threat to our very existence.
Since unfreedom will, like the poor, be with us always, America is forever under siege. Even if American territory and interests are not, yet American ideals are. And we are our ideals, or we are nothing. Until we can guarantee freedom for everyone (which is never), we won’t be able to feel at home in the world.
Translate this into domestic political life, and we have some of the characteristic styles that Hofstadter noticed. Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty; and so we are always on the defensive against the latest domestic threat to freedom. This is utterly bi-partisan: For every tea partier today who thinks Obama a socialist, there was a liberal Democrat who five years ago thought Bush was a Nazi.
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