ROOT MEANINGS OF WESTERN DEMOCRACY
KOCH, ADRIENNE
Root Meanings of Western Democracy THE WESTERN TRADITION. Von Mundi Limited, London. 110 pp. 7/6. AMERICAN DEMOCRACY AND NATURAL LAW. By Cornelia Geer Le Boutillier, Columbic University Press....
...Why don't we get more of the real thing...
...recently published by Knopf...
...In the struggle between democratic and Communist ideologies it would be beneficial if Western democrats understood that the threat to civilization and democracy is no longer class warfare but the war of state against state, of the "new leviathans which threaten our civilization...
...In an exceedingly able talk by R. H. S. Crossman, the relationship between class warfare and the Western democratic traditions explored...
...3,00...
...AN ANTHOLOGY of documents, court decisions and public statements is offered by Joseph Bleu, of Columbia University, in an interesting volume devoted to the subject of religious freedom in America...
...Crown Publishers...
...250 pp...
...Hearst in a Dirty Capsule CHICAGO CONFIDENTIAL...
...Beacon Press...
...Edited, with an introduction and interpretations by Joseph L. Blau...
...And without perspectives we have no standards of judgment...
...Although Mrs...
...The failure of nerve and vision today leaves us open to tho charlatanry of "journalism" — shadow boxing, obscurantism, frauds and lies...
...At the present time, the only strong official spearhead against democratic life and theory comes from the Communist adherents to a "higher democracy," and once again many unimaginative and uninformed democrats find themselves feeling uneasy, again not sure whether democracy is anything better than a polite ideal to ¦which many generations of Westerners, and particularly Americans, have appealed for self-justification and for apology for certain laggard traits in their own culture...
...In short, class warfare is not the dominant single factor of modern history...
...2) freedom from religion—the important right of the individual to disbelieve in the conventional patterns, in whole or in part...
...No single factor, indeed, need be sought, but the one factor which is most observable to investigators of recent history is state warfare...
...THE SECOND BOOK is the work of a professor of philosophy who has undertaken to analyze the meaning of natural law, particularly as it has entered into the philosophy of natural rights in the American democratic tradition...
...In a way, it is always part of a movement...
...But Chicago Confidential is a disgrace to the journalistic profession...
...It is particularly important to notice Mr...
...Crossman points out that class warfare is a Western European concept, stemming from the liberal political philosophy of the French Revolution, encrusted with the M'eltanschauung of Hegel, and borrowing some of its scientific analysis of society from the British empiricists...
...he sees no rafter, not even a cobweb, against the heavens...
...These are just a few of the countless examples of errors, distortions, and downright lies in the book...
...For real reporting arises from a consensus...
...Hearst was something of a muckraker in his early days, and some of his editors still pretend to be- -not to achieve important social improvement, but to "stir the animals up and sell newspapers...
...it is time, now, Mr...
...They call Jake Guzik "Greasy Thumb" when it was his brother, Harry, the brothel keeper, who bore that name...
...This is the plan to make possible individual, free, righteous development within a happy and prosperous commonwealth...
...religious freedom, as Mr...
...Because there are few journalists with the perspective and courage ¦ >f a Lincoln Steffens or an Upton Sinclair...
...These worthies refer to the criminal lawyer, William Scott Stewart, as John Scott Stewart...
...There is no cure for this chronic un preparedness in our political thinking, except the difficult road of investigation into the history of democracy, the nature of a functioning democratic society, and the study of the specialized techniques for implementing democratic measures in ever-changing new contexts...
...CORNERSTONES OF RELIGIOUS FREEDOM IN AMERICA...
...Doing so, we notice that the supposed primary "economic factors" determining political developments have become of secondary importance, superseded by the political factors that improvise one or another set of economic practices by which to live...
...And without a single exception, each contributor recognizes that there can be no democracy ("higher" or "better" included) when the right of opposition is denied, and that the general right of opposition, translated into political terms, implies a two-party system of representative government...
...Announced in the Marxian form of a sweeping "law," it was taken over as the religion of Soviet Russia "one of those freaks of history, those ironies which used to delight Hegel himself...
...Blau's three-fold conception of religious freedom...
...They front for those darlings of the Hearst paper in Chicago, "Courageous" Captains Connelly and Drury, who were fired from the police force for refusing to sign immunity waivers and appear before a grand jury—the duty of every law enforcing official—and insist that the two were fired through pressure from the Syndicate because they once arrested Jake Guzik...
...By Jack Lait and Lee Mortimer...
...The small volume called The Western Tradition is an unusually intelligent series of radio talks given in the B.B.C...
...The jobs that Lincoln Steffens did in the Shame of the Cities, and Upton Sinclair did in The Jungle still need doing today...
...You would think, reading the book, that every woman waiting for a bus is a pickup, and that the predominant business of Chicagoans is running clip joints, brothels and gambling houses, and that every man is a wolf and every woman is on the make...
...Blau suggests in an interesting introduction to the volume, has gone on in this country for the past century and three-quarters, is by no means ended yet, and will doubtless require more and more enlightened participants if the religious freedom of the individual is not to be trampled underfoot by a remorseless and selfaggrandizing hierarchy...
...The way to do this, he maintains, is to devote ourselves more fully to the application of scientific method and the cultivation of the scientific spirit when studying the inter-relation of social factors, including class warfare...
...Add to these some newspaper clippings in an overwritten, redundant rehash job, and you have living proof that much of modern journalism deals with that shoddy product, the half-truth...
...If they knew anything about the affair, they would know that u judge reputedly connected with the Syndicate was one of their staunchest defenders...
...Sluggish democrats felt uneasy before these onslaughts, but having inherited "democracy" like a family possession they were ignorant of the conditions of its creation, the grounds of its support, and the values it could still open up for millions in a new, a frightening new terrifying world...
...3.00...
...Most of these writers believe that the acceptance of a rule of law independent of the State, laws which provide the foundations and limit the State authority, is a necessary feature of the Western democratic tradition...
...We are ashamed to talk about socialism anymore, partly because we allowed the communists to take over the issues, and partly because we allowed the reactionaries to smear the concepts of rationality and planning and order in society...
...But that isn't as important as this example of the failure of the journalistic craft in our day...
...It is a composite of Jack Lait's recollections when he was a reporter in the Windy City 30 years ago and the fleeting impressions Mortimer got in some of the night clubs...
...The features of the Western democratic tradition stressed by most of these writers, aside from the official representatives of religious organizations, is the continuity of faith in the individual, hostility to totalitarianism of every kind, the humble and conscientious search for truth, and loss of freedom...
...Is one of the directors of the Headliners Club of Chicago and is author of a forthcoming book on news editing...
...The battle for...
...European Programme by men like Bertrand Russell, Arnold Toynbee, Sir Ernest Barker, G. D. H. Cole, R. H. S. Crossman and others...
...The first slashing attacks on democracy, in the era of the thirties, came from the quarters of fascism...
...Reviewed by ADRIENNl KOCH THESE THREE BOOKS, quite unintentionally, develop related aspects oi the important theme of modern democracy...
...Jacob Scher, assistant professor of Journalism at Northwestern University, has been a Chicago newspaperman for many years...
...3.00...
...Crossman concludes that the Western mind is still hypnotized by the Communist claim that class conflict is riddling Western society...
...A lonely but hard-to-forget Thoreau proposed that "The wisest man preaches no doctrine...
...Written by the editor of the New York Mirror and a saloon beat reporter, it is the epitome of William Randolph Hearst journalism—the "Gee Whiz" emotion, the pornography, the attiude that people are yokels or concupiscent adolescents...
...302 pp...
...There is little new material in this study, and it seems to the reviewer that too long a route is traversed, and too lengthily, to arrive at the already familiar conclusion that "natural law" as invoked by the founding fathers and later American democrats essentially meant nothing metaphysical or transcendental, but only a utilitarian principle of the conditions expedient to encourage and develop the varied human values latent in individuals and in group structures acommodated to the "greatest happiness of the greatest number...
...Le Boutillier does not seem to have done intensive research into the writings of the American founding fathers, she feels free to interpret what they must have meant...
...She is the author of "Jefferson and Madisoni The Great Colaboration...
...In this connection, it is well to remember that one of the important ingredients in the American tradition has been religious anti-clericalism...
...Reviewed by JACOB SCHER THIS BOOK is a fraud...
...Adrienn* Koch is Adjunct Associate Professor of Philisophy at the Division of General Education, New York Univessity...
...Whatever Americans may say or may have said about the law of nature, about a 'higher law,' they appear to mean or to have meant, not a transcendental essence, but a practical plan...
...The first thing a reporter learns is to get names and facts right...
...and (3) freedom for religion—the right of the individual to form organizations to give expression to his beliefs...
...Thinking Chicagoans ate tired of phony exposes...
...While one can not assent to her assertion that "the record of attainment, and the record of human "consecration to the cause of freedom are engraved on clear-cut tablets of stone," there is much to commend in her final recommendation...
...It includes (1) freedom of worship—the right of every individual to select the pattern of beliefs which will be central to his life, provided that neither his beliefs nor the practice that flows from them disturb public order or infringe civil rights...
...Here are two Hcarstlings doing the same thing, dishing upra spurious product which evades every important issue in the life of Chicago...
...Since their time, ground has been lost as well as gained...
...204 pp...
...It is only in recent years that this theme has begun to receive the searching analysis that will help in time to establish the full social and intellectual implicatons of the democratic faith...
...That explains such great reporters as Steffens and Sinclair...
...In a society without values, what is there to report, what are the standards of news judgment...
...There are such standards, and many newspapermen try to practice them...
...This is not Chicago at all...
...It is the third right which, when taken too far, threatens the status of freedom itself, and destroys that atmosphere of tolerance which is essential to democratic society...
...Crossman believes, for the Western democratic world to eradicate its own inferiority complex and to re-assert the supremacy of Western Europe in the development of political ideas...
...The cornerstone of religious freedom in this country were unambiguously laid by Jefferson and Madison, in their lifelong effort to separate Church and State, and particularly to keep religious education out of the American schools...
Vol. 33 • April 1950 • No. 15
