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A Preface to Politics
A Preface to Politics By Walter Lippmann
98 pages, Paperback
Published November 3, 2017
About the author
Walter Lippmann
164 books184 followersWalter Lippmann was an American intellectual, writer, reporter, and political commentator who gained notoriety for being among the first to introduce the concept of Cold War. Lippmann was twice awarded (1958 and 1962) a Pulitzer Prize for his syndicated newspaper column, "Today and Tomorrow."
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July 15, 2026
“A Preface to Politics:
The real danger to democracy lies not in the ignorance or want of patriotism of the people but in the corrupting influence of powerful business organizations upon the representatives of the people.” La Follette
The tendency of political discussion is to regard government as automatic: a device that is sure to fail or sure to succeed. It is sure of nothing. Effort moves it, intelligence directs it; it’s fate is in human hands.”
It is a democratic machinery with an educated citizenship behind it that embodies all the facts of the conservative and the hopes of the radical.”
If politics is merely a guerrilla war between the bribed and the unbribed, then statecraft is not a human service but a moral testing ground.”
Indifference is a criticism that cuts beneath oppositions and wranglings by calling the political method itself into question.
The distinction most worth emphasizing is between those who regard government as a routine to be administered and those who regard it as a problem to be solved.”
Men fall into routine when they are tired and slack; it has all the appearance of activity with few of its burdens.”
The price we pay for appearance of suppression: it drives the evil under cover where it festers and emits a slow poison.
Real statesmanship begins by accepting human nature.
The statesman acts in part as an intermediary between experts and his constituency.”
The politics of reconstruction require a a tajin vastly better educated, a nation freed from its slovenly ways of thinking, stimulated by wider interests, and jacked up constantly by the sharpest kind of criticism.
It is puerile to say that institutions must be changed from top to bottom and then assume that their victims are prepared to make the change.
No amount of charters, primaries or short ballots make a democracy out of an illiterate people.”
A person who reads one corrupt newspaper and then goes out to vote cannot claim to have registered his will.”
The Democratic experiment is the only one that requires this willful humanistic culture.”
Excellent soldiers make dismal citizens
Where there is no choice, of what importance is opinion?
All propaganda is a practical tribute to the value of culture.”
Revolution and Culture
Repression is an insignificant part of government work. Its use is a confession of ignorance.”
Men dread liberty because of the bewildering responsibility it imposes and the uncommon alertness it demands.” Bernard Shaw
We are not civilized enough to meet a issue before it becomes acute.”
Success of not due to the system; it does not flow from it automatically. The source of success is in the people who use the system: as an instrument it may help or hinder them but they must operate it.
Government is not a machine ruing on straight tracks to a desired goal. It is a human work whic may be facilitated by good tools.”
Present-day reform lays a great emphasis upon instruments and very little in terms skillful use of them.”
It takes a long perspective and no very vivid acquaintance with revolution to be melodramatic about it. So much is left out of history and biography which would spoil the effect.
It is hard to believe that daily life continues even while the enemy is bombarding a city.”
The reality that is worthy of attention is a change in the very texture and quality of millions of lives— a change that will be vividly perceptible only in the retrospect of history.”
When the downtrodden gather into a threat, when they show that they have no stake in civilization and consequently no respect for its institutions, when the object of pity becomes the avenger of its own miseries, then the middle-class public begins to look at the problem more intelligently.”
Does anyone seriously believe that the business leaders, the makers of opinion, and the politicians will, on their own initiative, bring social questions to a solution?
The trivial plans they are introducing today are on their own admission an attempt to quiet the unrest and ward off the menace of socialism.”
We are not all immediately interested in all problems; our attention wander unless the people who are interested compel us to listen.”
Class interests are the driving force which keep public life centered upon essentials.”
No class will abolish itself, materially alter its way of living, or drastically reconstruct itself, albeit no class is indisposed to cooperate in the unlimited socialization of any other class. In that capacity for aggression upon other classes lies the essential driving force of mesodermal affairs.”
I see no reason for exalting the unconscious failures of other revolutions into deliberate models for the next one.”
Wisest rulers see this: They know that the responsibility for insurrections rests upon the unimaginative greed and endless stupidity of the dominant classes. Fighting viciously every readjustment which a nation demands, they make their own overthrow inevitable.
There is something pathetic in the kindness of powerful people when they face a social crisis.
Catastrophes are disastrous to radicals and conservatives. They do not preserve what was worth maintaining; they allow a deformed and monstrous perversion of the original plan. Explosion followed by reconstruction is satisfactory to no body.”
Statesmanship would go out to meet a crisis before it becomes acute.
For the insurgent become master is a frantic from the struggle and he is only too likely to redouble his effort after he has forgotten his aim.”
There will be great changes. Our choice is between blind push and a deliberate leadership, between thwarting movements until they master us and domesticating them until they are answered.”
Roosevelt formed the Progressive Part on a platform of social reform. By becoming part of the dynamics of unrest he gathered a power of effectiveness: by formulating a plan for insurgency he translated it into terms of public service.”
The direct actionists are a warning to the Party that its tactics and its program are not adequate to domesticating the deepest unrest of labor.”
To shut the door in the face of such current of feeling because it is occasionally exasperated into violence should be as futile as locking up children who get into mischief.”
What is both possible and desirable is that very group interest should be represented in public life— that it should have spokesmen and influence in public affairs.
The preoccupation with SYSTEMS lays altogether too little stress on the men who operate it and the men for whom it is run. A machine should be run by men for human uses.”
A man can manufacture a plough and operate it but no amount of ploughing will create a Ma and endow him with skill. Constitutions do not make people; people make constitutions.
The one thing that no democrat may assume is that the people are dear good souls, fully competent for their task. The most valuable leaders never assume that.”
What we do depends on what we are. We are what we do and we are creating ourselves continually.”
The Marxian socialists openly declaring that all authority is a temporary manifestation of social conditions, have waged war of culture against the powers of the world.”
The measure of our self-consciousness will more or less determine whether we are to be the victims or the masters of change.”
There must be a culture practiced in seeking inwardness of impulses, competent to ward off idols of its own thought, hospitable to novelty and sufficiently inventive to harness power.”
The Red Herring
There is no longer any reason for keeping social and moral questions out of politics. The method of the future is to compete with the devil rather than cursing him; the furnishing of civilized environments is the goal of statecraft.
Once a party can induce the country to see its issue as supreme, the greater part of its task is done. The victory in a campaign is far more likely to go to the most plausible diagnosis than to the most convincing method of cure.”
It is an old story— the red herring dragged across the path in order to destroy the scent.”
Whenever governments enter upon foreign invasions in order to avoid civil wars, the same trick is practiced.”
“…they are the most successful because they explode so easily and flood the mind with those unconscious prejudices which make critical thinking difficult.”
The deliberate choice of issues is one of the high selective arts of the statesman.
You cannot keep the citizenship of a nation like this bound in its allegiance to two large parties unless you make the grounds of allegiance very simple and very obvious.”
The two big parties have had to preserve a superficial homogeneity and a platitude is more potent than an issue.”
The Making of Creeds
Naïveté of the Intellect: the hope that some man living at one place on the globe in a particular epoch will, through the miracle of genius, be able to generalize his experience for all time and all space.”
I have always thought that Machiavelli derives his bad name from a too transparent honesty. Less direct minds would have found high-sounding ethical sanctions in which to conceal the real intent.”
The important social philosophers are consciously or otherwise the servants of mens purposes. We find reasons for what we want to do…use history, logic, science and philosophy to prop up and strengthen their deepest desires.”
Once you touch the biographies of human beings, the notion that political beliefs are logically determined collapses like a pricked balloon.
Men desire first, then they reason.
The theorist is incompetent when he assumes that men are determined by logic and that a false conclusion will stop a moving, creative force.”
Your doctrine depends on your purpose: a theory by itself is neither moral nor immoral, it’s value is conditioned by the purpose it serves. Theory is to be judged only as an effective or ineffective instrument of a desire. The discussion of doctrine is technical and not moral. A theory has no intrinsic value.”
It is more penetrating to ask of a creed whether it served than whether it was true.
What shall we call an idea, objectively untrue but practically of the highest importance?
Some Necessary Iconoclasm
Each man carries within himself the cause of his own mirages. Whenever we accept an idea as authority instead of as instrument, an idol is set up.
It is so much easier to follow a rule of thumb and obey the constitution than to find out what we really want and to do it.”
The whole speculation about morality is an effort to find a way of living which men who live it will instinctively feel is good.
No formula can express an ultimate experience.
Each man in his inward life is a last judgement on all his values.”
Words like Justice, harmony, power are simply empirical suggestions which may produce the good life.
No definition is true. Call ultimate values by any convenient name.
If we think in terms of men, find out what really bothers them, seek to supply what they really want, hold only their experience as sacred, we shall find our sanction obvious and unchallenged.”
Our conscience is not a vessel of eternal verities. It grows with our social life, and a new social condition means a radical change in conscience. In order to do away with vice America must live and think and feel differently.”
All innovators have been at war with the public conscience of their time.”
An original creative impulse of the mind expresses itself in a certain formula; posterity mistakes the formula for impulse. A genius will use his medium in a particular way because it serves his need; this way becomes a fixed rule which the classicalist serves.
You might say that genius works inductively and finds a method; the conservative works deductively from the method and defeats whatever genius he may have.”
Unless he had subsumed the article under certain categories he had come to accept, appreciation was impossible for him. His well-ordered mind as prepares to throw out any work for which he had no carefully prepared pocket.”
“…history begins to look almost like the struggle of man to emancipate himself from phrase-worship.”
For there is nothing so bad but it can masquerade as moral.”
You will never find an Englishman in the wrong. He does everything on principle. He fights you on patriotic principles; he robs you on business principles…” Bernard Shaw
Liberty, equality , fraternity— what a grotesque career those words have had.
To put new wine in old bottles is one of the aims of legal casuistry.”
Casuistry is nothing but the injection of your own meaning into an old name.”
Debate is never a search for understanding from the angles of two different insights.
The trick in debating is to argue from the opponents language, never from his insight. You take him literally, you pick his sentences and you show what nonsense they are. You do not weigh what you see against what he sees.
Our prevailing habit is to think about phrases, ideals, theories not about the realities they express.
We do not try to find our opponents meaning: we examine his vocabulary.
In our own efforts to shape policies we do not seek out what is worth doing: we seek out what will pass for moral, practical, popular, or constitutional.”
The honest thing to do is look for answers without preconceived notions.”
They come from failure or unwillingness to project the mind beyond the daily routine of things, to play over the whole horizon of possibilities, and to recognize that all is not said when we have spoken.
American preoccupation with immediate, definite, tangible interests.”
The whole drift towards industrial training in schools has the germs of disaster within it— a preoccupation with the technique of a career.”
The worship of the constitution amounts to saying that men exist for the sake of the constitution.”
There are signs that the West after achieving the reforms which it needs today— reforms which will free its economic life from the credit monopolies of the east, and give it greater fluidity in the marketing of its products— will follow the way of all agricultural communities to a rural and placid conservatism.”
Immigration more than anything else is drawing up into world problems. No man can be sure of its conclusions. It may swamp us, it may if we seize the opportunity, mean the impregnating of our national life with new brilliancy.”
America does not play with new ideas; generous speculation is regarded as insincere and shunned if it might endanger the optimism which underlies success.”
Demagogue: to flatter the people by telling them that their failures are somebody else’s fault.”
Capitalists did not violate the conscience of America; they expressed it. That conscience is inadequate and unintelligent.”
In reality we are witnessing a change of conscience, initiated by cranks and fanatics, sustained for a long time by minorities, which has at last infected the mass of the people.”
My sincere conviction that no financial power is one-tenth so corrupting, so insidious, so hostile to originality and frank statement as the fear of the public which reads the magazine.”
The real danger to democracy lies not in the ignorance or want of patriotism of the people but in the corrupting influence of powerful business organizations upon the representatives of the people.” La Follette
The tendency of political discussion is to regard government as automatic: a device that is sure to fail or sure to succeed. It is sure of nothing. Effort moves it, intelligence directs it; it’s fate is in human hands.”
It is a democratic machinery with an educated citizenship behind it that embodies all the facts of the conservative and the hopes of the radical.”
If politics is merely a guerrilla war between the bribed and the unbribed, then statecraft is not a human service but a moral testing ground.”
Indifference is a criticism that cuts beneath oppositions and wranglings by calling the political method itself into question.
The distinction most worth emphasizing is between those who regard government as a routine to be administered and those who regard it as a problem to be solved.”
Men fall into routine when they are tired and slack; it has all the appearance of activity with few of its burdens.”
The price we pay for appearance of suppression: it drives the evil under cover where it festers and emits a slow poison.
Real statesmanship begins by accepting human nature.
The statesman acts in part as an intermediary between experts and his constituency.”
The politics of reconstruction require a a tajin vastly better educated, a nation freed from its slovenly ways of thinking, stimulated by wider interests, and jacked up constantly by the sharpest kind of criticism.
It is puerile to say that institutions must be changed from top to bottom and then assume that their victims are prepared to make the change.
No amount of charters, primaries or short ballots make a democracy out of an illiterate people.”
A person who reads one corrupt newspaper and then goes out to vote cannot claim to have registered his will.”
The Democratic experiment is the only one that requires this willful humanistic culture.”
Excellent soldiers make dismal citizens
Where there is no choice, of what importance is opinion?
All propaganda is a practical tribute to the value of culture.”
Revolution and Culture
Repression is an insignificant part of government work. Its use is a confession of ignorance.”
Men dread liberty because of the bewildering responsibility it imposes and the uncommon alertness it demands.” Bernard Shaw
We are not civilized enough to meet a issue before it becomes acute.”
Success of not due to the system; it does not flow from it automatically. The source of success is in the people who use the system: as an instrument it may help or hinder them but they must operate it.
Government is not a machine ruing on straight tracks to a desired goal. It is a human work whic may be facilitated by good tools.”
Present-day reform lays a great emphasis upon instruments and very little in terms skillful use of them.”
It takes a long perspective and no very vivid acquaintance with revolution to be melodramatic about it. So much is left out of history and biography which would spoil the effect.
It is hard to believe that daily life continues even while the enemy is bombarding a city.”
The reality that is worthy of attention is a change in the very texture and quality of millions of lives— a change that will be vividly perceptible only in the retrospect of history.”
When the downtrodden gather into a threat, when they show that they have no stake in civilization and consequently no respect for its institutions, when the object of pity becomes the avenger of its own miseries, then the middle-class public begins to look at the problem more intelligently.”
Does anyone seriously believe that the business leaders, the makers of opinion, and the politicians will, on their own initiative, bring social questions to a solution?
The trivial plans they are introducing today are on their own admission an attempt to quiet the unrest and ward off the menace of socialism.”
We are not all immediately interested in all problems; our attention wander unless the people who are interested compel us to listen.”
Class interests are the driving force which keep public life centered upon essentials.”
No class will abolish itself, materially alter its way of living, or drastically reconstruct itself, albeit no class is indisposed to cooperate in the unlimited socialization of any other class. In that capacity for aggression upon other classes lies the essential driving force of mesodermal affairs.”
I see no reason for exalting the unconscious failures of other revolutions into deliberate models for the next one.”
Wisest rulers see this: They know that the responsibility for insurrections rests upon the unimaginative greed and endless stupidity of the dominant classes. Fighting viciously every readjustment which a nation demands, they make their own overthrow inevitable.
There is something pathetic in the kindness of powerful people when they face a social crisis.
Catastrophes are disastrous to radicals and conservatives. They do not preserve what was worth maintaining; they allow a deformed and monstrous perversion of the original plan. Explosion followed by reconstruction is satisfactory to no body.”
Statesmanship would go out to meet a crisis before it becomes acute.
For the insurgent become master is a frantic from the struggle and he is only too likely to redouble his effort after he has forgotten his aim.”
There will be great changes. Our choice is between blind push and a deliberate leadership, between thwarting movements until they master us and domesticating them until they are answered.”
Roosevelt formed the Progressive Part on a platform of social reform. By becoming part of the dynamics of unrest he gathered a power of effectiveness: by formulating a plan for insurgency he translated it into terms of public service.”
The direct actionists are a warning to the Party that its tactics and its program are not adequate to domesticating the deepest unrest of labor.”
To shut the door in the face of such current of feeling because it is occasionally exasperated into violence should be as futile as locking up children who get into mischief.”
What is both possible and desirable is that very group interest should be represented in public life— that it should have spokesmen and influence in public affairs.
The preoccupation with SYSTEMS lays altogether too little stress on the men who operate it and the men for whom it is run. A machine should be run by men for human uses.”
A man can manufacture a plough and operate it but no amount of ploughing will create a Ma and endow him with skill. Constitutions do not make people; people make constitutions.
The one thing that no democrat may assume is that the people are dear good souls, fully competent for their task. The most valuable leaders never assume that.”
What we do depends on what we are. We are what we do and we are creating ourselves continually.”
The Marxian socialists openly declaring that all authority is a temporary manifestation of social conditions, have waged war of culture against the powers of the world.”
The measure of our self-consciousness will more or less determine whether we are to be the victims or the masters of change.”
There must be a culture practiced in seeking inwardness of impulses, competent to ward off idols of its own thought, hospitable to novelty and sufficiently inventive to harness power.”
The Red Herring
There is no longer any reason for keeping social and moral questions out of politics. The method of the future is to compete with the devil rather than cursing him; the furnishing of civilized environments is the goal of statecraft.
Once a party can induce the country to see its issue as supreme, the greater part of its task is done. The victory in a campaign is far more likely to go to the most plausible diagnosis than to the most convincing method of cure.”
It is an old story— the red herring dragged across the path in order to destroy the scent.”
Whenever governments enter upon foreign invasions in order to avoid civil wars, the same trick is practiced.”
“…they are the most successful because they explode so easily and flood the mind with those unconscious prejudices which make critical thinking difficult.”
The deliberate choice of issues is one of the high selective arts of the statesman.
You cannot keep the citizenship of a nation like this bound in its allegiance to two large parties unless you make the grounds of allegiance very simple and very obvious.”
The two big parties have had to preserve a superficial homogeneity and a platitude is more potent than an issue.”
The Making of Creeds
Naïveté of the Intellect: the hope that some man living at one place on the globe in a particular epoch will, through the miracle of genius, be able to generalize his experience for all time and all space.”
I have always thought that Machiavelli derives his bad name from a too transparent honesty. Less direct minds would have found high-sounding ethical sanctions in which to conceal the real intent.”
The important social philosophers are consciously or otherwise the servants of mens purposes. We find reasons for what we want to do…use history, logic, science and philosophy to prop up and strengthen their deepest desires.”
Once you touch the biographies of human beings, the notion that political beliefs are logically determined collapses like a pricked balloon.
Men desire first, then they reason.
The theorist is incompetent when he assumes that men are determined by logic and that a false conclusion will stop a moving, creative force.”
Your doctrine depends on your purpose: a theory by itself is neither moral nor immoral, it’s value is conditioned by the purpose it serves. Theory is to be judged only as an effective or ineffective instrument of a desire. The discussion of doctrine is technical and not moral. A theory has no intrinsic value.”
It is more penetrating to ask of a creed whether it served than whether it was true.
What shall we call an idea, objectively untrue but practically of the highest importance?
Some Necessary Iconoclasm
Each man carries within himself the cause of his own mirages. Whenever we accept an idea as authority instead of as instrument, an idol is set up.
It is so much easier to follow a rule of thumb and obey the constitution than to find out what we really want and to do it.”
The whole speculation about morality is an effort to find a way of living which men who live it will instinctively feel is good.
No formula can express an ultimate experience.
Each man in his inward life is a last judgement on all his values.”
Words like Justice, harmony, power are simply empirical suggestions which may produce the good life.
No definition is true. Call ultimate values by any convenient name.
If we think in terms of men, find out what really bothers them, seek to supply what they really want, hold only their experience as sacred, we shall find our sanction obvious and unchallenged.”
Our conscience is not a vessel of eternal verities. It grows with our social life, and a new social condition means a radical change in conscience. In order to do away with vice America must live and think and feel differently.”
All innovators have been at war with the public conscience of their time.”
An original creative impulse of the mind expresses itself in a certain formula; posterity mistakes the formula for impulse. A genius will use his medium in a particular way because it serves his need; this way becomes a fixed rule which the classicalist serves.
You might say that genius works inductively and finds a method; the conservative works deductively from the method and defeats whatever genius he may have.”
Unless he had subsumed the article under certain categories he had come to accept, appreciation was impossible for him. His well-ordered mind as prepares to throw out any work for which he had no carefully prepared pocket.”
“…history begins to look almost like the struggle of man to emancipate himself from phrase-worship.”
For there is nothing so bad but it can masquerade as moral.”
You will never find an Englishman in the wrong. He does everything on principle. He fights you on patriotic principles; he robs you on business principles…” Bernard Shaw
Liberty, equality , fraternity— what a grotesque career those words have had.
To put new wine in old bottles is one of the aims of legal casuistry.”
Casuistry is nothing but the injection of your own meaning into an old name.”
Debate is never a search for understanding from the angles of two different insights.
The trick in debating is to argue from the opponents language, never from his insight. You take him literally, you pick his sentences and you show what nonsense they are. You do not weigh what you see against what he sees.
Our prevailing habit is to think about phrases, ideals, theories not about the realities they express.
We do not try to find our opponents meaning: we examine his vocabulary.
In our own efforts to shape policies we do not seek out what is worth doing: we seek out what will pass for moral, practical, popular, or constitutional.”
The honest thing to do is look for answers without preconceived notions.”
They come from failure or unwillingness to project the mind beyond the daily routine of things, to play over the whole horizon of possibilities, and to recognize that all is not said when we have spoken.
American preoccupation with immediate, definite, tangible interests.”
The whole drift towards industrial training in schools has the germs of disaster within it— a preoccupation with the technique of a career.”
The worship of the constitution amounts to saying that men exist for the sake of the constitution.”
There are signs that the West after achieving the reforms which it needs today— reforms which will free its economic life from the credit monopolies of the east, and give it greater fluidity in the marketing of its products— will follow the way of all agricultural communities to a rural and placid conservatism.”
Immigration more than anything else is drawing up into world problems. No man can be sure of its conclusions. It may swamp us, it may if we seize the opportunity, mean the impregnating of our national life with new brilliancy.”
America does not play with new ideas; generous speculation is regarded as insincere and shunned if it might endanger the optimism which underlies success.”
Demagogue: to flatter the people by telling them that their failures are somebody else’s fault.”
Capitalists did not violate the conscience of America; they expressed it. That conscience is inadequate and unintelligent.”
In reality we are witnessing a change of conscience, initiated by cranks and fanatics, sustained for a long time by minorities, which has at last infected the mass of the people.”
My sincere conviction that no financial power is one-tenth so corrupting, so insidious, so hostile to originality and frank statement as the fear of the public which reads the magazine.”
January 13, 2019
Walter Lippmann shortly after finishing college, brimming with the Progressive ideals which would be tempered by so many by the suffering in World War I. He manages to convey his idealism in a way, however, that is neither irritatingly didactic nor bound to his particular time. To pull off punditry in one's early 20s without being offputting is a small accomplishment. To do it in a way that still seems fresh after more than 100 years and layers of cultural cynicism is testament indeed to his gifts.
The really short version? 20th century, reconsider your assumptions. They may have been valid when developed, but we may need to re-examine why we do what we habitually do.
The really short version? 20th century, reconsider your assumptions. They may have been valid when developed, but we may need to re-examine why we do what we habitually do.
September 19, 2018
Already displaying the sharp intellect that would make him the most eminent political analyst of his time, 23-year-old Lippmann expounds sensibly about what’s wrong with politics: basically, that our system is organized around a notion of how people should be, rather than how they really are. An argument that holds as true today as it did in 1913. (I listened to the Audible audiobook of this book as part of my My Year in 1918 project (myyearin1918.com)).
July 3, 2025
ผู้เขียนเสนอการแบ่งแยกที่สำคัญกว่าในปัจจุบัน: ผู้ที่มองว่ารัฐบาลเป็น "กิจวัตรที่ต้องบริหารจัดการ" (routine to be administered) กับ ผู้ที่มองว่ารัฐบาลเป็น "ปัญหาที่ต้องแก้ไข" (problem to be solved)
.
รวม กลุ่มหัวรุนแรง (radicals) บางกลุ่มเข้าอยู่ในประเภทนี้ด้วย พวกเขาเหล่านี้เป็น "นักสร้างยูโทเปียในทางปฏิบัติ" พวกเขามองเห็นว่ามนุษยชาติถูกบีบคั้นอยู่ในกรอบปัจจุบันและมีจินตนาการที่จะสร้างกรอบใหม่ แต่พวกเขากลับมีความเชื่ออย่างไม่สิ้นสุดใน "กรอบ" หรือ "ระบบ" โดยเชื่อว่าหากสามารถสร้างระบบใหม่ได้ กิจการของมนุษย์ก็จะดำเนินไปโดยอัตโนมัติเพื่อประโยชน์ของทุกคน ลิปป์มันน์เตือนว่านี่เป็นเพียงการสร้าง "อนุรักษ์นิยมใหม่" ไม่ใช่การปลดปล่อยอย่างต่อเนื่อง
.
แทมมานี่ ฮอลล์ (Tammany Hall) ในนครนิวยอร์ก ซึ่งเป็นองค์กรการเมืองที่มีอิทธิพล ลิปป์มันน์มองว่าแทมมานี่ ฮอลล์ไม่ใช่ "ความผิดปกติ" แต่เป็น "อำนาจอธิปไตยที่แท้จริง" ที่เกิดขึ้นโดยธรรมชาติ โครงสร้างและกฎเกณฑ์ของมันพบได้ทุกที่ที่มีกลุ่มสังคมที่ต้องปกครอง ไม่ว่าจะเป็น สหภาพการค้า สโมสร หรือแม้แต่แก๊งเด็กผู้ชาย มันคือการสะสมอำนาจรอบศูนย์กลางอิทธิพล ซึ่งถูกยึดโยงด้วยการอุปถัมภ์ การติดสินบน การให้ความช่วยเหลือ มิตรภาพ ความภักดี และนิสัย มันคือ "กลุ่มมนุษย์" หรือ "ปิรามิดทางธรรมชาติ"
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บริษัทประกันชีวิต ธนาคาร หรือรถไฟขนาดใหญ่ ก็ถูกควบคุมด้วยวิธีการคล้ายกับแทมมานี่ ฮอลล์ อำนาจที่แท้จริงไม่ได้อยู่ในมือของประธานบริษัท หรือผู้ถือหุ้น แต่เป็นของบุคคลที่ไม่ได้อยู่ในตำแหน่งบริหารอย่างเป็นทางการด้วยซ้ำ อำนาจเหล่านี้ข้ามผ่านขอบเขตและข้อกำหนดทางกฎหมายทั้งหมด
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"อำนาจทางการเมือง" จะไม่เปลี่ยนแปลงไป หากนั่นคือวิธีที่สังคมมนุษย์จัดระเบียบอำนาจอธิปไตย ยิ่งเราเผชิญหน้ากับความจริงนี้เร็วเท่าไรก็ยิ่งดี — เพราะเป้าหมายของประชาธิปไตยไม่ใช่การเลียนแบบการโคจรของดวงดาว แต่เป็นการ "ควบคุมอำนาจทางการเมืองเพื่อตอบสนองความต้องการของประเทศชาติ" — หากการทุจริตที่เราได้ยินมากมายไม่ใช่เพียงแค่การฉ้อโกง แต่เป็น "กลิ่นอายของระบบการเมืองที่กำลังเสื่อมสลาย" ซึ่งถูกทำให้ตายโดยการเติบโตทางเศรษฐกิจ นี่อาจเป็นสัญญาณว่ากฎหมายของเรานั้น "โง่เขลาขัดขวาง" และธุรกิจจึงต้องเข้าควบคุมการเมือง
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การปิดร้านเหล้าเพื่อหยุดการเมา: กลับพบว่าผู้คนไปดื่มในสโมสรหรือหันไปใช้ยาเสพติดแทน
การห้ามการพนันในสนามแข่ง: ทำให้การพนันย้ายเข้าไปในบ้าน และสอนให้เด็กเล่นไพ่
การพนันหรือการดื่ม แม้จะนำมาซึ่งความทุกข์มากมาย แต่ผู้คนไม่ได้ทำสิ่งเหล่านี้เพื่อละเมิดกฎหมายเพียงอย่างเดียว พวกเขาทำเพราะมีบางอย่างในตัวพวกเขาที่ได้รับความพึงพอใจจากการพนันหรือการดื่ม การตั้งข้อห้ามไม่ได้หยุดความต้องการ แต่มันเพียง "ขัดขวางการตอบสนอง" และเนื่องจากความปรารถนาเหล่านี้ฝังรากลึกในธรรมชาติของมนุษย์มากกว่าความภักดีต่อกฎหมาย ผู้คนก็จะหาวิธีดื่มและพนันได้อยู่ดี
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รวม กลุ่มหัวรุนแรง (radicals) บางกลุ่มเข้าอยู่ในประเภทนี้ด้วย พวกเขาเหล่านี้เป็น "นักสร้างยูโทเปียในทางปฏิบัติ" พวกเขามองเห็นว่ามนุษยชาติถูกบีบคั้นอยู่ในกรอบปัจจุบันและมีจินตนาการที่จะสร้างกรอบใหม่ แต่พวกเขากลับมีความเชื่ออย่างไม่สิ้นสุดใน "กรอบ" หรือ "ระบบ" โดยเชื่อว่าหากสามารถสร้างระบบใหม่ได้ กิจการของมนุษย์ก็จะดำเนินไปโดยอัตโนมัติเพื่อประโยชน์ของทุกคน ลิปป์มันน์เตือนว่านี่เป็นเพียงการสร้าง "อนุรักษ์นิยมใหม่" ไม่ใช่การปลดปล่อยอย่างต่อเนื่อง
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แทมมานี่ ฮอลล์ (Tammany Hall) ในนครนิวยอร์ก ซึ่งเป็นองค์กรการเมืองที่มีอิทธิพล ลิปป์มันน์มองว่าแทมมานี่ ฮอลล์ไม่ใช่ "ความผิดปกติ" แต่เป็น "อำนาจอธิปไตยที่แท้จริง" ที่เกิดขึ้นโดยธรรมชาติ โครงสร้างและกฎเกณฑ์ของมันพบได้ทุกที่ที่มีกลุ่มสังคมที่ต้องปกครอง ไม่ว่าจะเป็น สหภาพการค้า สโมสร หรือแม้แต่แก๊งเด็กผู้ชาย มันคือการสะสมอำนาจรอบศูนย์กลางอิทธิพล ซึ่งถูกยึดโยงด้วยการอุปถัมภ์ การติดสินบน การให้ความช่วยเหลือ มิตรภาพ ความภักดี และนิสัย มันคือ "กลุ่มมนุษย์" หรือ "ปิรามิดทางธรรมชาติ"
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บริษัทประกันชีวิต ธนาคาร หรือรถไฟขนาดใหญ่ ก็ถูกควบคุมด้วยวิธีการคล้ายกับแทมมานี่ ฮอลล์ อำนาจที่แท้จริงไม่ได้อยู่ในมือของประธานบริษัท หรือผู้ถือหุ้น แต่เป็นของบุคคลที่ไม่ได้อยู่ในตำแหน่งบริหารอย่างเป็นทางการด้วยซ้ำ อำนาจเหล่านี้ข้ามผ่านขอบเขตและข้อกำหนดทางกฎหมายทั้งหมด
.
"อำนาจทางการเมือง" จะไม่เปลี่ยนแปลงไป หากนั่นคือวิธีที่สังคมมนุษย์จัดระเบียบอำนาจอธิปไตย ยิ่งเราเผชิญหน้ากับความจริงนี้เร็วเท่าไรก็ยิ่งดี — เพราะเป้าหมายของประชาธิปไตยไม่ใช่การเลียนแบบการโคจรของดวงดาว แต่เป็นการ "ควบคุมอำนาจทางการเมืองเพื่อตอบสนองความต้องการของประเทศชาติ" — หากการทุจริตที่เราได้ยินมากมายไม่ใช่เพียงแค่การฉ้อโกง แต่เป็น "กลิ่นอายของระบบการเมืองที่กำลังเสื่อมสลาย" ซึ่งถูกทำให้ตายโดยการเติบโตทางเศรษฐกิจ นี่อาจเป็นสัญญาณว่ากฎหมายของเรานั้น "โง่เขลาขัดขวาง" และธุรกิจจึงต้องเข้าควบคุมการเมือง
.
การปิดร้านเหล้าเพื่อหยุดการเมา: กลับพบว่าผู้คนไปดื่มในสโมสรหรือหันไปใช้ยาเสพติดแทน
การห้ามการพนันในสนามแข่ง: ทำให้การพนันย้ายเข้าไปในบ้าน และสอนให้เด็กเล่นไพ่
การพนันหรือการดื่ม แม้จะนำมาซึ่งความทุกข์มากมาย แต่ผู้คนไม่ได้ทำสิ่งเหล่านี้เพื่อละเมิดกฎหมายเพียงอย่างเดียว พวกเขาทำเพราะมีบางอย่างในตัวพวกเขาที่ได้รับความพึงพอใจจากการพนันหรือการดื่ม การตั้งข้อห้ามไม่ได้หยุดความต้องการ แต่มันเพียง "ขัดขวางการตอบสนอง" และเนื่องจากความปรารถนาเหล่านี้ฝังรากลึกในธรรมชาติของมนุษย์มากกว่าความภักดีต่อกฎหมาย ผู้คนก็จะหาวิธีดื่มและพนันได้อยู่ดี
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May 27, 2022
Don't let the 1913 publication date fool you into believing the contents of this book is outdated. There are many references to political figures of that period that might be foreign to some readers and might require further information but there is a lot of wisdom to found as well. On this Kindle edition it has Kennedy on its cover, which led me to believe that it was written a lot later than I initially believed. But once you start to read the book you see that we are still dealing with some of the same issues as back then, both politically and culturally. Not much has changed in that span of time. As newfound political junkie I found it to be a fascinating read. I've previously read Walter Lippmann's Public Opinion, with interest but nothing on the level I enjoyed this book. Don't be too hasty about dismissing the book for its historical dustiness, your patience will be rewarded.
January 25, 2024
Great book, I listened to the audiobook version on Rumble. I will leave the link below so that everyone can enjoy it! https://rumble.com/v48o5ji-a-preface-...
June 12, 2017
The Dean of American Journalism completely and utterly explains what's going on in 2017 America... by writing about and in 1913 America.
January 20, 2026
Concise.
March 22, 2024
A very interesting and insightful old book about politics - fills in many of the blanks about today's problems. Lippmann breaks down seemingly tedious and large issues into easy-to-deal-with fragments, creating the impression that it is not that we are dealing with the problems wrong, but that we are simply not paying attention to the true influence behind them. Excellent food for thought can be found throughout this book - it is also extremely accessible with simple language.
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