The Project Gutenberg eBook, A Preface to Politics, by Walter Lippmann

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Title: A Preface to Politics

Author: Walter Lippmann

Release Date: December 16, 2006 [eBook #20125]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)

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A PREFACE TO POLITICS

by

WALTER LIPPMANN

"A God wilt thou create for thyself
out of thy seven devils."

Mitchell Kennerley
New York and London
1914
Copyright, 1913, by
Mitchell Kennerley

_Contents_

CHAPTER PAGE

INTRODUCTION

I. Routineer and Inventor 1

II. The Taboo 34

III. The Changing Focus 53

IV. The Golden Rule and After 86

V. Well Meaning but Unmeaning: the Chicago Vice Report 122

VI. Some Necessary Iconoclasm 159

VII. The Making of Creeds 204

VIII. The Red Herring 247

IX. Revolution and Culture 273

INTRODUCTION

The most incisive comment on politics to-day is indifference. When men
and women begin to feel that elections and legislatures do not matter
very much, that politics is a rather distant and unimportant exercise,
the reformer might as well put to himself a few searching doubts.
Indifference is a criticism that cuts beneath oppositions and wranglings
by calling the political method itself into question. Leaders in public
affairs recognize this. They know that no attack is so disastrous as
silence, that no invective is so blasting as the wise and indulgent smile
of the people who do not care. Eager to believe that all the world is as
interested as they are, there comes a time when even the reformer is
compelled to face the fairly widespread suspicion of the average man that