Sublime

The libertarians were different. They slipped more easily into the American stream. In their insistence on freedom they could claim to be descendants of Locke, Jefferson, and the classical liberal tradition. Some of them interpreted the Constitution as a libertarian document for individual and states rights under a limited federal government, not a

Liberals suffer incurably from naïveté, the stupidity of the good heart.

"Conservatism," argued the journal, "is as much due to mental laziness as it is to fear of change.

This vision is all very nice. All very noble. And all very crazy. Which brings us to the third great foreign policy school: realism. The realist looks at this great liberal project and sees a hopeless illusion.

Locke’s political philosophy was, on the whole, adequate and useful until the industrial revolution. Since then, it has been increasingly unable to tackle the important problems. The power of property, as embodied in vast corporations, grew beyond anything imagined by Locke.

The despotism of public opinion, the tyranny of majorities, the absence of intellectual freedom which seemed to him to degrade administration and bring statesmanship, learning, and literature to the level of the lowest, are no longer considered. The violence of party spirit has been mitigated, and the judgment of the wise is not subordinated to the

the Old Guard’s Warren G. Harding was elevated directly from his Senate desk to the White House, in his ears his colleagues’ admonition to “sign whatever bills the Senate sent him and not send bills for the Senate to pass.” Under Harding and Coolidge and Hoover, this “normalcy” was to last for almost a decade—a decade during which, slowly but stead