Walter Lippmanns The Public Philosophy :: The Public Philosophy

Walter Lippmanns The Public ismWalter Lippmann begins his The Public Philosophy by expressing his concern for the state of the tungstenern Liberal Democracies. The West, he writes, suffers from a disorder from within. This disorder has its roots in the long peace amidst 1812 and 1914, and was further exascurbated by the vast population increase of that era and the co-occur industrial revolution. The latter changed the nature of armed struggle, which in turn escalate the democratic malady. The situation Lippmann describes is the paralysis of decreements, the inability of the state to make awk contendd and unpopular decisions.This paralysis is the product of both the long peace and the great war. The period extending from Waterloo to 1914 lulled the West into believing that the age of Mans aggression had passed. Because the hard decisions of taxation, prohibition, and war were not often faced in these years, the Jacobin concept of the desirability of pallid government was inst illed in the West. When the first world war did come about, the West was unable to deal effectively with its costs. The new technologies spawned by the industrial revolution, as well as the greater populations involved, had made war infinitely more(prenominal) costly than in the past. Consequently, the executive aspects of Western governments were squeeze to democratize the annexation of men and money by handing their power to the representative assemblies. The assemblies too were forced to cede their power to the People, who channeled them to media powers and party leaders. The result was Disastrous and revolutionary. The democracies became incapacitated to employ war for rational ends or to make a peace which would be enforced.Lippmann holds that the major malfunction of the West is this acquisition of executive and representative powers by the masses. This is a fundamental distortion of the rights of the governed. Lippmann contends that the People have but 2 natural rights to decide whether or not to by governed, and to choose who shall govern them. This breakdown of the constitutional order is the cause of the precipitate and the catastrophic exasperate of Western society. Why then, cannot a mass govern effectively?