Shall Not Perish From the Earth

THREE of the five chapters of this pocket philosophy of government take democracy and totalitarianism apart, to the end that we may be fortified with a more searching comprehension of what we in America have to defend and what to resist. The other two chapters are principally concerned with the always burning, now white-hot question of tolerance. How much democratic liberty are we to allow to the dissenters whose arguments, it hearkened to, will be the end ot all democratic liberty? Here the professional philosopher reasons himself into precisely the same fellowship of pragmatic compromise that includes the man in the street, the man in the legislative chamber, and the man on the bench: to wit, that ‘in order to . . . preserve an ideal state of affairs, it is commonly necessary to act in precisely that manner which the ideal state of affairs is designed to eliminate.’