Hoffer Spouts Off

 

 

Eric Hoffer was an atheist—he might have been Jewish—if he was Jewish, he was a cultural Jew as I am a cultural Catholic, a lapsed Roman Catholic.

 

His believed people were not basically good, That is how he was a conservative. A strong conservative does not believe people are basically good. He never talked of individualism and egoism, but these concepts are implicit in his love of all things American, capitalist, free democratic, run by the masses, not elites.

 

Hoffer the atheist had a brilliant, original mind: he thought for himself and possessed a wondrous knack for discovering the truth.

 

He wanted people to live in democracies and he wanted the common people to run the country as the mdddle classa nd business class ran America for its first 150 years or so. He believed that the people should run things, never elites, especially those that the clerisy wish to be a part of, the ruling class.

 

He believed that the only lasting reform comes from the bottom up, run by amateurs and ordinary people, not experts with too many college degrees. Nothing good or lasting comes from the top down.

 

On Page 10 of the Tom Shactman biography on Hoffer (American Iconoclast The Life and Times of Eric Hoffer), Hoffer is shown recounting how the bums from Skid Row went up to the San Bernadino Mountains and built a road. They organized it themselves.

 

This taught Hoffer that people were smart and did not require elites and overlords to rule them. This is the miracle of America and Hoffer admired the common people: he did not think he was better or worse than any of them.

 

And he was correct. Any person of any race, ethnic group, or gender orientation, anywhere, can achieve and should achieve great things. He gave Americans hope during the Viet Name War, and the people were lost and depressed. He was right that America was worth preserving. war and he was right.

 

On Page 11 of the same book, Hoffer scoffs at various groups in the 60s saying America was racist, colonialist, violent and corrupt. He knew it was all crap. It was not perfect here, but it was better here than anywhere else.

 

He instinctively knew the radicalized students, race hustlers and ideological professors were revolutionaries that would bring hell on earth to America. He wanted peaceful, gentle protest and reform, but because America was so fine, that anything else would tarnish and tear down this fine place, about the best this worldly arrangement the world has yet come up with.

 

I have often thought that his insights anticipated and may have been a pioneering influence on the current conservative counter-revolution at work in America, all that is are anti-statist, anti-postmodernism, anti-Progressive and anti-Marxist.