Our Divided Political Heart Quotes

“President Calvin Coolidge captured the spirit of the decade when he declared: “After all, the chief business of the American people is business.” Coolidge’s defenders note that in the same speech, the president also insisted: “The chief ideal of the American people is idealism. I cannot repeat too often that America is a nation of idealists. That is the only motive to which they ever give any strong and lasting reaction.” Coolidge’s idealism, however, seemed inspired primarily by an almost mystical (and perhaps idolatrous) devotion to the American business system. “The man who builds a factory builds a temple,” Coolidge wrote. “The man who works there worships there.” Yet the “normalcy” of the Harding-Coolidge years”
― E.J. Dionne, Our Divided Political Heart: The Battle for the American Idea in an Age of Discontent