Hoffer 5

What follows are excerpts from a diary written nearly a half century ago. Nothing has changed and Hoffer remains as a prophet from the past. You may think him a conservative, but what he said deserves your consideration.

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Nowadays, anyone who dwells on the difficult problems which confront a society is considered reactionary. Many liberals are hostile toward any evidence that there are problems that cannot be solved or that the results of reforms are often the opposite of what the reformers intended.

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The present inability of parents to pass on their values to their children may be partially due to the fact that most teachers, particularly in the big cities, do not share the values of run-of-the-mill parents. Indeed, many teachers see it as their duty to imbue students with values diametrically opposed to those of their parents – to prepare students for the “new reality.”

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What will the flood of money do to the Arabs? A flood of gold hastened the decline of Spain and Portugal while the inflow of riches during the first half of the nineteenth century propelled Britain to economic and political supremacy. Money works wonders where there is an enterprising middle class continually replenished by new recruits. [Meanwhile princes and tyrants benefit.]

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The blindness of the German Jews strikes me as a mark of decadence. It will fare ill with Jews everywhere if they allow the memory of Hitler's holocaust to be blurred during the remainder of this terrible century. [Or beyond.]

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Why should ordinary people be better organizers than people who feel theselves above the average? Ordinary people have more trust in their fellow men, and trust is a precondition for effective organizing. It is also true that ordinary people are never certain they know best, hence their willingness to listen and compromise. Finally, ordinary people are not likely to demand perfection and will settle for the possible. [Some people still think they know what's best for everyone, and those who disagree are evil.]

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Civilized countries fell over each other to court Hitler even as he turned Germany's Jews into pariahs. The same countries are falling over each other to court the Arabs, who are determined to destroy Israel. The world feels no shame when it betrays Jews. It is as if fate has placed Jews outside the comity of mankind. [1975]

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After all we have seen with our own eyes [Hoffer refers to the “cold war” with communism] there ought not to be a grownup person who is not contemptuous of the gibberish about an ideal society and does not look for lineaments of a commissar in the features of an idealist loudmouth.

The trouble is that the young who nowadays want to make history are not interested in history. They are unbelievably ignorant of so much that has happened in this [the twentieth] terrible century. They will follow anyone who wants to clear the ground for a new world by sweeping away all that exists.

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The danger in reform is that the cure may be worse than the disease. Reform is an operation of the social body; but unlike medical surgeons reformers are not on guard against unpredictable side effects which may divert the course of reform toward unwanted results. Moreover, quite often the social doctors become part of the disease. [Or they become politicians.]

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It is a tragic fact that the wound inflicted on Arab manhood by the emergence of a defiant Israel cannot be cured by reasonable solutions. There is the widespread conviction that the Arabs will become whole again only by wiping Israel off the face of the earth. [And the “liberals” of the world are trying to help them.]

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The silent majority has no hopes. It has fears: fear of inflation, fear of violence in the streets, fear of having houses and cars ransacked, fear of losing its children to the drug and drift culture. A party that aspires to become a party of the majority must address itself to those fears.

The Democratic party is increasingly becoming a party of the minorities. The question is whether the Republicans can develop the sweep and drive necessary to stir the majority and convince it that there are practical ways to cure its fears. [Protest of everything you dislike is not one of them, but that's today's tool.]

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As I said, nothing changes. There's lots more, but I'll get around to it later.