On Thu, 15 Jul 2010, SA wrote:
> I wanted to see what liberals were saying at a moment in the Depression
> somewhat analogous (not equivalent) to the current moment. The link is to a
> January 1931 essay by George Soule, the editor of the New Republic, who along
> with his magazine more or less embodied the left-liberal political
> intellectual of the time:
>
> http://www.logiciansinbedlam.com/soule 1931.pdf
I see what you mean. This certainly sums up briskly the distance between then and now. Soule speaks of Hoover [who was president in 1931 in the depths of the depression when Soule was writing this] exactly as an equivalently important progressive magazine today *could* speak about Obama. But it would be inconceivable that they would.
[BTW, part of the key to appreciating what Soule is saying is remembering something now long forgotten, namely just how much of a worldwide rep Hoover had as a leading progressive in the first 2 decades of the 20th century. He was famous, and in rightly so, for his large-scale organizational and campaigning genius in setting up things such as refugee aid during and after WWI and massive TVA-type infrastructure projects. In terms of his time, Hoover was much more justly famed as a progressive than Obama was ever was. He made real world large scale differences. But then, as Soule points out...]
<begin excerpt>
Many, while abandoning the historic meaning of the word [liberalism -- the historic meaning being 19th century laissez faire], have continued to use it in a loose sense to describe a position which mechanically remains halfway between the conservatism of those who want to preserve existing institutions untouched and the radicalism of those who want a revolutionary change. Croly was not a liberal in this sense either: he despised "middle-of-the-road" liberalism as he called it -- a passive, weaselish affair, the position of which is automatically determined by the movements of the extremes between which it lies. Herbert Hoover in the post-war days was this kind of liberal and what has happened to Hoover is just what is to be expected of the nervous compromiser who floats upon tides of thought created by those with more definite ideas and firmer wills.
<end excerpt>
Michael