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Liberalism and the Quest for Orderly Change

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2017

Clarence J. Karier
Clarence J. Karier*
Affiliation:
History of Education, University of Illinois
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Extract

As conflict in American culture increases and the idea of revolution is no longer dismissed as some absurd anarchist dream but increasingly entertained by men of more moderate persuasion, more and more voices can be heard echoing a common warning. The warning is this: The new left must either temper its attacks on the military, corporate, and educational establishment in this country, or we will all suffer the wrath of a fascist nightmare. Put in these terms, the new left is made responsible for the coming American fascism. The usual analysis proceeds with the notion that the attack on the liberal center from both the right and left weakens and eventually destroys democratic institutions. The process begins with the left questioning the mythologies that sustain bourgeois society thus threatening the security of those in power and ends with a repressive fascist order. In this sense, the more the left agitates, the more the fascist right can be expected to grow. There are few political and social analysts in this country who seriously doubt the possibility that given an open confrontation the fascist would win. Virtually every observer seems to predict that a socialism of the right not the left would emerge. It is interesting that in times of severe crisis, most liberals can be relied upon to move to the right rather than to the left of the political spectrum.

Type
Progressivism Revisited
Information
History of Education Quarterly , Volume 12 , Issue 1 , Spring 1972 , pp. 57 - 80
Copyright
Copyright © 1972 by New York University 

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References

Notes

1. See Wolff, Robert Paul, The Poverty of Liberalism (Boston, 1968), p. 31.Google Scholar

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18. In the Confidential Report to the Military Intelligence Bureau of the War Department, Dewey was highly critical of those Poles who maintained strong loyalties to the Papacy. This report grew out of his seminar that he held in the Polish ghetto of Philadelphia. As Dewey saw it, the object of the seminar was to “… ascertain forces and conditions which operate against the development of a free and democratic life among the members of this group, to discover the influences which kept them under external oppression and control,” and to further develop a workable plan based on practical knowledge “… to eliminate forces alien to democratic internationalism and to promote American ideals in accordance with the principles announced by President Wilson in his various public communications” (Confidential Report, p. 2). Brand Blanshard, a student in that seminar, has reported that during this time Dewey viewed the Poles as a “cyst” on the American community. For this documentation and for a further elaboration of Dewey's seminar, see Walter Feinberg, “Progressive Educators and Social Planning” (unpublished paper, Champaign, Ill., September 1971).Google Scholar

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40. Ibid., pp. 81–82.Google Scholar

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47. Ibid., p. 184.Google Scholar

48. Quoted in Nelson Blake, A History of American Life and Thought (New York, 1963), p. 408.Google Scholar

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51. This may account in part for the fact that the Nazi movement received stronger support from those who worked in the applied sciences and more resistance from those who worked in the theoretical sciences. The conservative characteristics of technologists may be as much a function of the role they play in serving the interests of the established institutions as it is their own social-class origins or personal idiosyncrasies.Google Scholar

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55. See Dewey, John, Theory of Valuation in (ed.), Otto Neurath, The International Encyclopaedia of Unified Sciences 1 and 2 (Chicago, 1939).Google Scholar

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57. See Lasch, Christopher, “The Cultural Cold War: A Short History of the Congress for Cultural Freedom,“ an essay in Bernstein, Barton J., Towards A New Past (New York, 1968), pp. 322–59.Google Scholar

58. Berlin, , Four Essays on Liberty, p. 154.Google Scholar

59. See Baritz, Loren, The Servants of Power (Now York, 1960).Google Scholar