The Role Of Third Parties Is To

Anti-intellectualism ... Has Been Present In Some Form And Degree In Most Societies; In One It Takes The Form Of The Administering Of Hemlock, In Another Of Town-and-gown Riots, In Another Of Censorship And Regimentation, In Still Another Of Congressional Investigations.

The Intellectual's ... Playfulness, In Its Various Manifestations, Is Likely To Seem To Most Men A Perverse Luxury; In The United States The Play Of The Mind Is Perhaps The Only Form Of Play That Is Not Looked Upon With The Most Tender Indulgence. His Piety Is Likely To Seem Nettlesome, If Not Actually Dangerous. And Neither Quality Is Considered To Contribute Very Much To The Practical Business Of Life.

We Are All Sufferers From History, But The Paranoid Is A Double Sufferer, Since He Is Afflicted Not Only By The Real World, With The Rest Of Us, But By His Fantasies As Well.

Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., In A Mordant Protest Written Soon After The [1952] Election, Found The Intellectual "in A Situation He Has Not Known For A Generation." After Twenty Years Of Democratic Rule, During Which The Intellectual Had Been In The Main Understood And Respected, Business Had Come Back Into Power, Bringing With It "the Vulgarization Which Has Been The Almost Invariable Consequence Of Business Supremacy.

The Idea Of The Paranoid Style As A Force In Politics Would Have Little Contemporary Relevance Or Historical Value If It Were Applied Only To Men With Profoundly Disturbed Minds. It Is The Use Of Paranoid Modes Of Expression By More Or Less Normal People That Makes The Phenomenon Significant.