Sidney Hook
American philosopher, pragmatist, and prominent anti-Communist of the Cold War left. In "The Meaning of 'Western Defense'" (54.1) Mailer calls Hook a "liberal-with-muscles"; when challenged, he declines to recant in the follow-up letter "In Re: Sidney Hook" (54.2).
Sidney Hook appears in this register as the target of Mailer’s “facetious” jab in Dissent — a “liberal-with-muscles” — which Mailer refuses to withdraw in 54.2, concluding that if Hook is “an almost lone philosophical defender of democratic socialist and humanist values, it makes me Leo Tolstoy”.