The Shame of U.S. Liberalism

. . . Never before had the fact of being an American brought one so close to humiliation. The sight of Washington in August was enough to make one cringe, so enormous was the upsurge of elemental stupidity and reasonless passion; the spectacle of Congress venting an impotent legislative fury upon the Enemy seemed a nightmare, an insanity of force. Never before had he felt that the remaining decencies and verities, which had trickled down from an almost legendary American past, seemed so perilously close to extinction.

He had seldom been an admirer of the American political species. He had seldom felt anything but a slight shudder, trained into invisibility, before the average Congressman—and, as he sometimes asked himself with a...