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To: jbe who wrote (10558)	10/21/1998 5:37:00 PM
From: Johannes Pilch	Respond to of 67261

>Hofstadter died long ago, Johannes, long before this particular "culture war" broke out.< Yes. The idea of the paranoid style can, and I think has been, applied to conservative Christians, and when it is used outside a reasoned critique of the substance of the claims of one's philosophical opponents, the statement amounts to a veiled ad hominem. That was my point, though I erroneously referred to Hofstadter's "ad hominem". >I will get back to the substance of your post later, after I have had time to digest it. Just wanted to defend a dead man against the charge that he was using ad hominem arguments to discredit people he may never even have heard of.< I look forward to your post, and again, I did not intend to criticize Hofstadter, but rather the use of the his term "paranoid style" without a reasoned explanation as to why the style is paranoid. >BTW, I used the quotation from Hofstadter (the one you cite) in the context of a discussion of the Nazi phenomenon. I then asked whether that "paranoid style" was prevalent today. The only person I specifically cited as an exemplar was Louis Farrakhan, hardly a representative of the conservative Christian viewpoint.< I agree, but when asking the questions after discussing Nazism, you very nearly by implication relegate those who criticize the aims of mainstream liberalism (or religious conservatism for that matter) to the lunatic fringe. There are quite legitimate reasons for the "Us against Them" dialogue, reasons not based in blind paranoia. >I added that I thought that the true "paranoid style" was a fringe phenomenon, at the moment. However, I still believe that some of the rhetoric , if not the substance of the paranoid style, has seeped into mainstream discourse.< Perhaps. I am interested in reading how you have come to this conclusion.