Walker Percy Quotes
Whenever I feel bad, I go to the library and read controversial periodicals. Though I do not know whether I am a liberal or a conservative, I am nevertheless enlivened by the hatred which one bears the other. In fact, this hatred strikes me as one of the few signs of life remaining in the world.
Percy, Walker. The Moviegoer. Alfred A. Knopf, 1961, p. 98.
Actually, there have been “paranoid” fear of opposition political viewpoints in America very often. In the early days of the Republic, the Federalists main concern was not England or other foreign enemies, but Jefferson’s Democratic Republicans. And those Jeffersonians were absolutely convinced that the greatest danger to America was the Federalists who would bring back a monarchy if they could. The Jacksonians triggered a similar polarization. The Civil War stemmed from this extreme. Even America’s most popular President, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who was elected to 4 successive terms, was perceived as the major “enemy” of America along with his wife Eleanor and the other New Dealers.
In the Early 21st Century, the vast majority of the entertainment industry were supporters of the Democratic party. This has generally been true throughout history where entertainers have been on the left politically except in left leaning dictatorships like China and the Soviet Union where those governments tend to see entertainers as reactionaries. In general entertainers talk, sing, and dramatize about and criticize the status quo.
Walker Percy, Obl.S.B. was an American writer whose interests included philosophy and semiotics. Percy is noted for his philosophical novels set in and around New Orleans; his first novel, The Moviegoer, won the U.S. National Book Award for Fiction.
