Once liberals might have favored working-class realism over the middle‐ class conception of the body as a machine requiring "perpetual treatment." The authors, however, drew the opposite conclusion. A stoic acceptance of bodily decline, they argued, reflected a "damaged self-image."

Generalizations about the "role of personality in the formation of social beliefs," in the words of Herbert McClosky, served to put objectionable beliefs beyond the pale of political debate and to justify the contention that educated elites were the best guardians of democracy. Drawing on Eric Hoffer's study of the "true believer" as well as on The Authoritarian Personality, McClosky traced political conservatism to "psychological rigidity." A belief in man's wickedness, in the need for strong social controls, and in the stabilizing influence of the family and the church derived from unhealthy "psychological impulses," "projections of aggressive personality tendencies." As "doctrinal expressions of a personality pattern," such ideas did not have to be discussed on their merits. They appealed to the wrong sort of people, suspect on socioeconomic as well as on psychological grounds: "the uninformed, the poorly educated, ... the less intelligent, ... the more backward and frightened elements of the population." The "articulate and informed classes," on the other hand, were "preponderantly liberal in their outlook" and accordingly constituted the "major repositories of the public conscience." They alone, it appeared, were capable of "reasoning out and forming attitudes on complex social questions" in a "purely disinterested way" and of rising above the "ideological babble of poorly informed and discordant opinions."

Once the symptoms of working-class authoritarianism had been identified and traced to their familial roots, political sociologists had no trouble in explaining their influence on illiberal, "undemocratic" ideologies. "Working-class authoritarianism goes far to explain the rigid and intolerant approach many blue-collarites take to American political affairs," wrote Arthur B. Shostak in one of the standard works on working-class culture. "Unable to understand how politics works, and contemptuous of conciliation and compromise, working-class authoritarians seek to impose on society some sort of 'fundamental truth' that will liberate America from its soft-headed illusions." Students of "political alienation" discovered that contempt for politicians, resentment of big business, and a general sense of powerlessness appeared more often among workers than among upper-middle-class populations. According to William Simon and

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