A Preface to Politics

A Preface to Politics, by Walter
Lippmann

The Project Gutenberg eBook, A Preface to Politics, by Walter
Lippmann
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org

Title: A Preface to Politics
Author: Walter Lippmann

Release Date: December 16, 2006 [eBook #20125]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A PREFACE
TO POLITICS***
E-text prepared by Matt Whittaker, Juliet Sutherland, and the Project
Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team
(http://www.pgdp.net/)

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 politics is an exhibition in which there is much ado
about nothing. But such moments of illumination are rare. They appear
in writers who realize how large is the public that doesn't read their
books, in reformers who venture to compare the membership list of
their league with the census of the United States. Whoever has been
granted such a moment of insight knows how exquisitely painful it is.
To conquer it men turn generally to their ancient comforter,
self-deception: they complain about the stolid, inert masses and the
apathy of the people. In a more confidential tone they will tell you that
the ordinary citizen is a "hopelessly private person."
The reformer is himself not lacking in stolidity if he can believe such a
fiction of a people that crowds about tickers and demands the news of
the day before it happens, that trembles on the verge of a panic over the
unguarded utterance of a financier, and founds a new religion every
month or so. But after a while self-deception ceases to be a comfort.
This is when the reformer notices how indifference to politics is
settling upon some of the most alert minds of our generation, entering
into the attitude of men as capable as any reformer of large and
imaginative interests. For among the keenest minds, among artists,
scientists and philosophers, there is a remarkable inclination to make a
virtue of political indifference. Too passionate an absorption in public
affairs is felt to be a somewhat shallow performance, and the reformer

is patronized as a well-meaning but rather dull fellow. This is the
criticism of men engaged in some genuinely creative labor. Often it is
unexpressed, often as not the artist or scientist will join in a political
movement. But in the depths of his soul there is, I suspect, some feeling
which says to the politician, "Why so hot, my little sir?"
Nothing, too, is more illuminating than the painful way in which many
people cultivate a knowledge of public affairs because they have a
conscience and wish to do a citizen's duty. Having read a number of
articles on the tariff and ploughed through the metaphysics of the
currency question, what do they do? They turn with all the more zest to
some spontaneous human interest. Perhaps they follow, follow, follow
Roosevelt everywhere, and live with him through the emotions of a
great battle. But for the affairs of statecraft, for the very policies that a
Roosevelt advocates, the interest is largely perfunctory, maintained out
of a sense of duty and dropped with a sigh of relief.
That reaction may not be as deplorable as it seems. Pick up your
newspaper, read the Congressional Record, run over in your mind the
"issues" of a campaign, and then ask yourself whether the