Sublime

In one of the most haunting passages of his masterwork, Democracy in America, he says that democracies are at risk of a completely new form of oppression for which there is no precedent in the past. It will happen, he says, when people exist solely in and for themselves, leaving the pursuit of the common good to the government. This is what life wo

No one who had followed the Battle closely could believe any longer that Robert Moses was in public life solely to serve the public. It had been all too obvious that what he wanted was to be not the public’s servant, but its master, to be able to impose his will on

Community.

John Gunther was to write about Roosevelt’s “worst quality,” a “deviousness,” a “lack of candor” that “verged on deceit.” Men who had known Roosevelt longer—when he had been Governor of New York—used stronger words; in Albany it had been whispered that a commitment from the Governor could not be trusted; New York City’s ordinarily mild-mannered leg

“Only a crisis—actual or perceived—produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That, I believe, is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes politically inevitable.” After years o

From their seats in the spectator galleries high up over the Assembly Chamber, the reformers could see him roaming the narrow aisles between the legislators’ desks, pleading, cajoling, threatening, bargaining, dealing, trading votes—using every trick he had learned in his years of working for Tammany.

He began to make it his business, when Johnson came to call on the Governor to solicit his advice on an NYA program, to spend quite a bit of time with Johnson, to be friendly with him, to let Johnson know he could, whenever he might need help, call upon Clark for it. He did so, he recalls—and Ed Clark can always recall exactly why he did things—bec

Obama is a product of this elitist system. So are his degree-laden cabinet members. They come out of Harvard, Yale, Wellesley, and Princeton. Their friends and classmates made huge fortunes on Wall Street and in powerful law firms. They go to the same class reunions. They belong to the same clubs. They speak the same easy language of privilege, com

A key tactic used by the New Right is forcing the enemy to make difficult choices. Are they going to be held to the principles they espouse, or are they going to be loyal to their own people? When they are in complete control, they can get away with doing both.