Robert D. Novak tells us about the republication of a book from 1965 by Richard Hofstadter entitled The Paranoid Style in American Politics (Vintage).

He described the paranoid politician viewing his adversary as “sinister, ubiquitous, powerful, cruel, sensual, and luxury-loving.” As a liberal, Hofstadter was writing about Barry Goldwater’s 1964 takeover of the Republican Party, but he acknowledged that the syndrome “is not necessarily right-wing.”

As Novak shows in his column, this style of projecting your opponents as evil, all-controlling conspirators is being increasingly adopted today by the Left.

Now just because a person is paranoid doesn’t mean everybody is NOT out to get him, but the demonizing of people we disagree with is surely a problem in today’s discourse and not just in politics. Isn’t this a serious moral problem today, preventing us from loving and serving our neighbors, including the neighbor who is our enemy but whom we are still enjoined to love?

UPDATE: Let me add some more thoughts: Of course we Christians believe that evil is real and pervasive in sinful human beings. Also that demons are real and that behind earthly woes lie spiritual powers and principalities. But human beings, however depraved, are not demons, are they? They are enslaved to the great demon, but God so loved the denizens of this fallen world that He died for them to give them liberty. Doesn’t this imply that we should look at sinners with pity and not just with hostility, lamenting their doom and hoping for their salvation?

Have any of your read the latest product from Christopher Tolkien editing his father’s papers? It’s The Children of Húrin, and it’s well worth reading. It’s not a Silmarilion-like collection of fictional non-fiction, like much of what Christopher has been publishing. Rather, it’s a true novel, though written in the high saga style, rather than in the variety of styles from the homely to the epic that characterizes “The Hobbit” and “Lord of the Rings.”

“The Children of Hurin” has a much scarier dragon and a much more powerful and insidious dark lord than those masterpieces. And it’s dark. Its hero Turin is a cross between Byron and Job. It’s tragic, heart-breaking, not for children, and utterly beautiful.

During our recent road-trip, we listened to the audiobook, which is read by the great Christopher Lee (who played Saruman in the LOTR movies). Hearing it was to feast on language. (If you’d like to buy these, click the links to go to Amazon.)

I don’t know what to think about Brett Favre now trying to come out of retirement and how if he does, it probably won’t be for the Packers. I just can’t imagine his playing for, say, Minnesota!

In idly browsing the internet, I came across this description of Booker’s, a bourbon, as observed by a group called the Wine Enthusiasts:

A first-rate, multilayered bouquet that includes notes of cocoa, cigar tobacco and paraffin with aromas of caramel corn, cotton candy, oak and tapioca. The palate entry features tastes of spice, buttered corn, bacon fat and cream; the midpalate displays traces of butterscotch, nougat, sap, maple and vanilla. Finishes spirity and biscuity. Add water to reduce the alcohol.

I’ve never tasted such a thing, and my imagination fails me: A combination of cocoa, tobacco, caramel corn, cotton candy, and BACON FAT? And cream, buttered corn, and butterscotch? And it’s all BISCUITY? And such combinations are experienced as tasting GOOD?

This description reads like a parody of wine connoisseurs, but it is in total ernest. Can a person have such a sensitive palate that can actually register all of that? It sounds like one of those confections from “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.”