October 27, 2004

Mistaken use of Lippmann ideas

Jimmy Dillon
Diversions Editor

I was quite disappointed and occasionally amazed and amused with Chris Brown’s usage of Walter Lippmann in his letter about ideals and liberals. I found it childish, poorly researched, historically incorrect and (to use Mr. Brown’s adjective) “brazenly” mistaken.

Since Mr. Brown was unable to put Lippmann into any sort of historical context (or even the correct year since The Phantom Public was written in 1925, not 1927 as he says) and it is my major, I will do it for him.

In college, Lippmann was a staunch liberal, even a co-founder of Harvard’s Socialist Club. This might be quite surprising to Mr. Brown, who believes that “universal healthcare is socialism,” incongruent to America’s democracy. But people, even Walter Lippman, change their political views (“flip-flop” even), so I will give Mr. Brown the benefit of the doubt that he knew all of this information.

It wasn’t until the First World War that Lippmann became disillusioned with the liberal ideal. After seeing first-hand the successful use of mass propaganda and political advertisement to manipulate public opinion – not to mention, the ignition of the first Red Scare in 1917 – he became convinced that a technocracy, a government powered by leaders and experts only interested in the efficiency of its legislation – not the input of normal citizens – was the only suitable solution for American politics. His debates with John Dewey, American philosopher and pragmatist, characterized exactly what Lippmann was arguing in regards to ideals.

Dewey believed in a government that did not deliberate behind closed doors and that public policy should be given to the people to discuss and debate. Through a stronger participatory system, education of the citizens – arguably the first responsibility of the government – would allow for better government and a higher ideal of democracy and citizenry. This was the ideal that Lippmann opposed: a larger role of the common man in his own government. Its application to the current debate on healthcare, abortion, and the Patriot Act topics which Mr. Brown brings up, hardly has relevance in all but the latter.

But perhaps, Mr. Brown is right. Maybe we should secede our ideals, never strive for something better. Who cares that the World Health Organization (WHO) ranks us at 37 in the world in healthcare?

If Mr. Brown truly believes that politicians (liberals or conservatives) should not look for better alternatives to insufficient American institutions then I ask him, what are they supposed to be doing? To put his argument into a larger (probably more ridiculous) context, imagine what America would be like without ideals.

Imagine a government that does not believe it should or has to come clean to the public. Imagine if that same government could, not only be private, but make citizen’s rights public. This weird reality of the government being private and the citizen being public is not so hard to imagine. It is, in many ways, what the Patriot Act, not surprisingly supported by Mr. Brown, encompasses.

To return to the history lesson; in the end, Walter Lippmann returned to liberalism later in his life. He opposed the Korean War, McCarthyism (the second Red Scare) and the Vietnam War. It seems that, through further research, Lippmann was not “pre-endorsing” Mr. Brown’s view or his own.