I’m noodling something. I was wondering if anybody knows whether paranoid delusions about the government pre-dated the welfare/national security state. In other words, did people in the 19th (or 14th) century believe the government was watching them? I would assume not, but I simply don’t know. I’m wondering if certain forms of paranoia — religious, superstitious, demonic etc — have been transferred to fear of the state. I know this isn’t an entirely new idea. After all the whole idea of the “anti-Communist witch hunt” — the quotation marks are necessary since there were real witches in our midst — is predicated on the notion that government-enabled hysteria is a real fear. But what I find interesting is that even real mental cases think the CIA bugs their brains, talks to them through receivers in their heads etc. I know that there are real physiological reasons for this, but what form did these physiological manifestations take before there was a CIA? Was it the devil? God? The Masons? (Before we imagined rectal-probing aliens were constantly visiting us, what malevolant forces were making us sing moon river?)

I ask, because maybe it’s possible that one of the major historical factors explaining the rise of secularism and liberal society — among other things — is that the State replaced other forces as the object of our fears and hopes. Anyway, it’s just something I’m noodling.