Behind the Mirrors: The Psychology of Disintegration at Washington — John Shaqi
Behind the Mirrors: The Psychology of Disintegration at WashingtonGilbert, Clinton W. (Clinton Wallace)
History
Behind the Mirrors: The Psychology of Disintegration at Washington
Gilbert, Clinton W. (Clinton Wallace)
Harding, Warren G. (Warren Gamaliel), 1865-1923; United States -- Politics and government -- 1921-1923
It was an autumn flowering, rich and golden like the Indian summer of
New England culture, a sign that a cycle was run. Adams sniffing from
the transcendental heights of Boston wrote: "a race of mere
money-getters and traders." Remember the sneers in our cocksure press of
those days at the "culture" of Boston? Boston has had its revenge. The
words "mere money-getters" bit in. There were other objects in life
beside pioneering the industrial opportunities of a whole continent just
brought together into commercial unity. Mr. Morgan began to buy art. Mr.
Carnegie began to buy libraries and started authorship himself. The men
"'big' financially" began to look over their shoulders and see the
shadows--as we all do now--where they a little before kept their eyes
straight forward and saw the one clear vision, the truth, such as it
was, that made them free.
I have traced that element in the American political consciousness,
government by business, to its highest moment.
"Divine right" is only safe when it is implicit. When you begin to avow
it, as Mr. Baer did, it is already in question. The national passion
for equality began to work. Had not Mr. Carnegie confessed the weakness
in his soul's fortress by writing a book? Had not Mr. Morgan by buying
art suggested the one aim of pioneering on a grand scale might not be
life's sole end?
Mr. Baer with his avowal, Mr. Carnegie and Mr. Morgan with their seeking
of the broader satisfactions, Mr. Schwab behaving like a king in exile
at the gaming tables of Monte Carlo, may have invited what followed. But
they were only expressing in their own way the sense becoming general
that pioneering was over and that its ideals were too narrow and too
few--even if no clear sense was coming of what state and what ideals
were to take their place. Men turn from leaders whose day of greatest
usefulness is past and set up new leaders against them. Against the
government by business the first great national unity that entered the
American consciousness they began to erect the state, the national
government at Washington.
No one meant to end government by business and substitute for it
government by the people. Not for a moment. We devised a new set of
checks and balances, like that between the various branches provided for
in our Constitution, a new political organism which should equal and
coexist with the one we already had. The government personified by Mr.
Roosevelt was the check and balance to the government personified by
Mr. Harriman and Mr. Morgan. Governments never die but merely recede in
the national consciousness, like the old clothes which we keep in the
attic. Thus revolutions never effect a revolution; democracy is only a
Troy built upon nine other prehistoric Troys: beneath, you find
aristocracy, rule by divine right, despotism, theocracy, and every other
governance on which men in their invincible optimism have pinned their
faith.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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