When they obtained power either they should have been
faithful to their convictions and tried to modify the Federal machinery
in accordance therewith, or they should have modified their ideas in
order to make them square with their behavior. But instead of seriously
and candidly considering the meaning of their own actions, they opened
their mouths wide enough to swallow their own past and then deliberately
shut their eyes. They accepted the national organization as a fact and
as a condition of national safety; but they rejected it as a lesson in
political wisdom, and as an implicit principle of political action. By
so doing they began that career of intellectual lethargy,
superficiality, and insincerity which ever since has been characteristic
of official American political thought.
This lack of intellectual integrity on the part of the American
democracy both falsified the spirit in which our institutions had
originated, and seriously compromised their future success. The Union
had been wrought by virtue of vigorous, responsible, and enterprising
leadership, and of sound and consistent political thinking.
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