American Experiment

by James Macgregor Burns

277 [“An American Century”]: Luce, “The American Century,” in Jessup, pp. 105-20, quoted at p. 117.

  [“Egotistic corruption”]: quoted in ibid., p. 16.

  [Luce as Cecil Rhodes of journalism]: ibid., p. 15.

  [Century of the common man]: Wallace, “The Price of Free World Victory,” in John M. Blum, The Price of Vision: The Diary of Henry A. Wallace, 1942-1946 (Houghton Mifflin, 1973), pp. 635-40, esp. p. 638.

  [1949 Conference for World Peace]: Pells, pp. 123-24; Irving Howe, “The Culture Conference,” Partisan Review, vol. 16, no. 5 (May 1949), pp. 505-11; Joseph P. Lash, “Weekend at the Waldorf,” New Republic, vol. 120, no. 16 (April 18, 1949), pp. 10-14.

  [Congress for Cultural Freedom]: Sidney Hook, “The Berlin Congress for Cultural Freedom,” Partisan Review, vol. 17, no. 7 (September-October 1950), pp. 715-22; Alexander Bloom, Prodigal Sons: The New York Intellectuals & Their World (Oxford University Press, 1986), pp. 259-73; Christopher Lasch, “The Cultural Cold War: A Short History of the Congress for Cultural Freedom,” in Barton J. Bernstein, ed., Towards a New Past: Dissenting Essays in American History (Pantheon, 1968), pp. 322-59; Mary S. McAullife, Crisis on the Left: Cold War Politics and American Liberals, 1947-1954 (University of Massachusetts Press, 1978), pp. 115-29; New York Times, April 27, 1966, p. 28; Pells, pp. 128-30.

  [“Opium of the intellectuals”]: Raymond Aron, The Opium of the Intellectuals, Terence Kilmartin, trans. (Norton, 1962).

  [“End of ideology”]: Bell, The End of Ideology: On the Exhaustion of Political Ideas in the Fifties, rev. ed. (Free Press, 1962); see also Edward Shils, “Ideology and Civility: On the Politics of the Individual,” Sewanee Review, vol. 66, no. 3 (July-September 1958), pp. 450-80; Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., “Liberalism in America: A Note for Europeans,” in Schlesinger, The Politics of Hope (Houghton Mifflin, 1963), ch. 6; James Nuechterlein, “Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., and the Discontents of Postwar Liberalism,” Review of Politics, vol. 39, no. 1 (January 1977), pp. 3-40; Stephen J. Whitfield, “The 1950’s: The Era of No Hard Feelings,” South Atlantic Quarterly, vol. 74, no. 3 (Summer 1975), pp. 289-307, esp. pp. 297-98; Bernard Sternsher, “Liberalism in the Fifties: The Travail of Redefinition,” Antioch Review, vol. 2a, no. 3 (Fall 1962), pp. 315-31; McAuliffe; Pells, esp. ch. 3; John P. Diggins, The Proud Decades: America in War and in Peace, 1941-1960 (Norton, 1988), ch. 7 passim. 277-8 [Shils on intellectuals]: Shils, p. 456.

  278 [Pells on intellectuals]: Pells, p. 181.

  [Shils on social critics and Enlightenment ideals]: Shils, p. 455.

  279 [Lerner on the new middle classes]: Lerner, p. 490.

  [Fromm] Fromm, Escape from Freedom (Rinehart, 1941); Fromm, Sane Society; Fromm, The Revolution of Hope: Toward a Humanized Technology (Harper, 1968); Fromm, May Man Prevail?: An Enquiry into the Facts and Fictions of Foreign Policy (Anchor, 1961); see also John H. Schaar, Escape from Authority: The Perspectives of Erich Fromm (Basic Books, 1961), esp. chs. 3-4.

  279-80 [Riesman]: Riesman, with Reuel Denney and Nathan Glazer, The Lonely Crowd: A Study of the Changing American Character (Yale University Press, 1950); Riesman, Individualism Reconsidered and Other Essays (Free Press, 1954); see also Seymour Martin Lipset and Leo Lowenthal, eds., Culture and Social Character: The Work of David Riesman Reviewed (Free Press, 1954).

  [Whyte]: Whyte, Organization Man; see also Robert Lekachman, “Organization Men: The Erosion of Individuality,” Commentary, vol. 23, no. 3 (March 1957), pp. 270-76.

  281 [Marcuse]: Marcuse, One Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society (Beacon Press, 1964); Marcuse, Eros and Civilization; Marcuse, “Aggressiveness”; Marcuse, Soviet Marxism: A Critical Analysis (Columbia University Press, 1958); see also Kellner; Jerzy J. Wiatr, “Herbert Marcuse: Philosopher of a Lost Radicalism,” Science & Society, vol. 34 (1970), pp. 319-30.

  [Technological advances in newspaper production]: Frank Luther Mott, American Journalism: A History, 1690-1960 (Macmillan, 1962), pp. 807-9, Editor & Publisher quoted at pp. 807-8.

  282 [Press consolidation]: ibid., pp. 813-17.

  [“Outside the pale”]: I.erner, p. 762.

  [Press and cold war]: James Aronson, The Press and the Cold War (Beacon Press, 1970); Bernard C. Cohen, The Press and Foreign Policy (Princeton University Press, 1963), pp. 36-39 and passim; Douglass Cater, The Fourth Branch of Government (Houghton Mifflin, 1959); see also Michael Schudson, Discovering the News: A Social History of American Newspapers (Basic Books, 1978), ch. 5; Potter, esp. ch. 8.

  282-3 [Protestant on press]: quoted in Aronson, p. 36.

  283 [MacDougall on press]: ibid., p. 37.

  [Polls on inevitability of war, 1945, 1948]: ibid.

  [Lippmann and Marshall Plan]: see Joseph M. Jones, The Fifteen Weeks (February 21-June 5, 1917) (Viking, 1955), pp. 226-32.

  [Cater on press as fourth branch]: see Cater, pp. 2-3, 7-8, 67-74, and passim.

  [PM]: Roy Hoopes, Ralph Ingersoll (Atheneum, 1985), chs. 9-14; Stephen Becker, Marshall Field III (Simon and Schuster, 1964), ch. 6 and pp. 398-402; Mott, pp. 771-75; Carey McWilliams, “The Continuing Tradition of Reform Journalism,” in John M. Harrison and Harry H. Stein, eds., Muckraking: Past, Present and Future (Pennsylvania State University Press, 1973), p. 124; Louis Kronenberger, No Whippings, No Gold Watches: TheSaga of a Writer and His Jobs (Atlantic Monthly/Little, Brown, 1970), ch. 5.

  [FDR on PM]: quoted in Becker, p. 209.

  284 [Time circulation growth, 1950s]: Dan Golenpaul Associates, Information Please Almanac 1952 (Macmillan, 1951), p. 143; Dan Golenpaul Associates, Information Please Almanac 1962 (Simon and Schuster, 1961), p. 310.

  [Mass-circulation magazines’ circulations]: Dan Golenpaul Associates, Information Please Almanac 1957 (Macmillan, 1956), p. 318.

  [Life advertising revenues]: Robert T. Elson, The World of Time Inc.: The Intimate History of a Publishing Enterprise, 1941-1960 (Atheneum, 1973), p. 404.

  [Assets of Time Inc.]: ibid., p. 459,.

  [Luce’s management of his enterprises]: Elson, Time Inc.: 1941-1960; Elson, Time Inc.; The Intimate History of a Publishing Enterprise, 1923-1941 (Atheneum, 1968); T. S. Matthews, Name and Address (Simon and Schuster, 1960), pp. 215-74; Hoopes, chs. 5-8 passim; Kronenberger, ch. 4; Joan Simpson Burns, The Awkward Embrace: The Creative Artist and the Institution in America (Knopf, 1975), pp. 142-50; David Cort, “Once Upon a Time Inc.: Mr. Luce’s Fact Machine,” Nation, vol. 182, no. 7 (February 18, 1956), pp. 134-37; John Kobler, Luce: His Time, Life, and Fortune (Doubleday, 1968).

  [Luce on editorial convictions]: Elson, Time Inc.: 1941-1960, pp. 74-75.

  [Luce in politics]: see ibid., chs. 7, 20, 23, and passim; Mallan, pp. 12-15; W. A. Swanberg, Luce and His Empire (Scribner, 1972), pp. 176-79, 219-22, 268-73,and passim.

  [Kobler on Luce and “top performers”]: quoted in Joan Burns, Awkward Embrace, p. 142. [Luce and White]: see Theodore H. White, In Search of History: A Personal Adventure (Harper, 1978), pp. 126-30, 205-13, 246-49.

  284-5 [Development of commercial television]: Erik Barnouw, A History of Broadcasting in the United States (Oxford University Press, 1966-70), vol. 2, pp. 293-95 and passim, and vol. 3, chs. 1-2; James L. Baughman, “Television in the ‘Golden Age’: An Entrepreneurial Experiment,” Historian, vol. 47, no. 2 (February, 1985), pp. 175-95; Leo Bogart, The Age of Television: A Study of Viewing Habits and the Impact of Television on American Life (Frederick Ungar, 1956); James L. Baughman, “The National Purpose and the Newest Medium: Liberal Critics of Television, 1958-1960,” Mid-America, vol. 64, no. 2 (April-July 1982), pp. 41-55; William Y. Elliott, ed., Television’s Impact on American Culture (Michigan State University Press, 1956).

  285 [Radio in the 1950s]: J. Fred MacDonald, Don’t Touch That Dial (Nelson-Hall, 1979), pp. 85-90; Arnold Passman, The Deejays (Macmillan, 1971).

  285-6 [Democratic and Republican parties, 1950s]: Gary W. Reichard, “Divisions and Dissent: Democrats and Foreign Policy, 1952-1956,” Political Science Quarterly, vol. 93, no. 1 (Spring 1978), p
p. 51-72; Reichard, The Reaffirmation of Republicanism: Eisenhower and the Eighty-third Congress (University of Tennessee Press, 1975); Herbert S. Parmet, The Democrats: The Years After FDR (Macmillan, 1976), part 2; Samuel Lubell, Revolt of the Moderates (Harper, 1956); Norman A. Graebner, The New Isolationism: A Study in Politics and Foreign Policy Since 1950 (Ronald Press, 1956); Ralph M. Goldman, Search for Consensus: The Story of the Democratic Party (Temple University Press, 1979), pp. 196-207; James MacGregor Burns, The Deadlock of Democracy: Four-Party Politics in America (Prentice-Hall, 1963), part 3; James L. Sundquist, Politics and Policy: The Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson Years (Brookings Institution, 1968), part 2, esp. ch. 9.

  286 [Divine on containment in 1948 campaign]: Divine, “The Cold War and the Election of 1948,” Journal of American History, vol. 59, no. 1 (June 1972), pp. 90-110, quoted at p. 110.

  [Newspaper support of Wallace, 1948]: see Aronson, p. 47.

  [Election results, 1956]: Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., ed., History of American Presidential Elections, 1789-1968 (Chelsea House, 1971), vol. 4, p. 3445.

  287 [Democratic Advisory Committee]: Parmet, pp. 151-61; John Bartlow Martin, Adlai Stevenson and the World (Doubleday, 1977), pp. 395-402; Sundquist, pp. 405-15; Goldman, pp. 202-4; Burns, Deadlock, pp. 254-55.

  [“Strong, searching”]: quoted in Martin, p. 395.

  [1956 campaign]: Malcolm Moos, “Election of 1956,” in Schlesinger, Elections, vol. 4, pp. 3341-54; Martin, ch. 2; Reichard, “Divisions,” pp. 65-69; Walter Johnson, ed., The Papers of Adlai E. Stevenson: Toward a New America, 1955-1957 (Little, Brown, 1976); Dwight D. Eisenhower, The White House Years: Waging Peace, 1956-1961 (Doubleday, 1965), ch. 1; Kenneth S. Davis, A Prophet in His Own Country: The Triumph and Defeats of Adlai E. Stevenson (Doubleday, 1957), chs. 28-29; Robert A. Divine, Foreign Policy and U.S. Presidential Elections, 1952-1960 (New Viewpoints, 1974), chs. 3-4.

  287-8 [Eleanor Roosevelt, mid-1950s]: Eleanor Roosevelt, On My Own (Harper, 1958), chs. 10-22; Joseph P. Lash, Eleanor: The Years Alone (Norton, 1972), chs. 11-13; Tamara K. Hareven, Eleanor Roosevelt: An American Conscience (Quadrangle, 1968), pp. 210-14.

  Dilemmas of Freedom

  288 [Hofstadter on the intellectual]: quoted in James MacGregor Burns, Leadership (Harper, 1978), p. 141.

  289 [“Physicists have known sin”]: quoted in Whitfield, p. 292.

  [Lippmann in the postwar world]: Lippmann, The Cold War: A Study in U.S. Foreign Policy (Harper, 1947); Lippmann, Essays in the Public Philosophy (Atlantic Monthly/Little, Brown, 1955); Ronald Steel, Walter Lippmann and the American Century (Atlantic Monthly/Little, Brown, 1980), chs. 32-41 passim: Anwar Hussain Syed, Walter Lippmann’s Philosophy of International Politics (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1963), pp. 340-44 and passim; Barton J. Bernstein, “Walter Lippmann and the Early Cold War,” in Thomas G. Paterson, ed., Cold War Critics: Alternatives to American Foreign Policy in the Truman Years (Quadrangle, 1971), pp. 18-53; Kenneth W. Thompson, Political Realism and the Crisis of World Politics: An American Approach to Foreign Policy (Princeton University Press, 1960), pp. 38-50.

  [Lippmann on popular rule]: The Public Philosophy, pp. 14, 61.

  289-90 [MacLeish on Lippmann and Lippmann’s reply]: MacLeish, “The Alternative,” Yale Review, vol. 44, no. 4 (June 1955), pp. 481-96, esp. p. 487; Lippmann, “A Rejoinder,” ibid., pp. 497-500.

  290 [Kennan’s continued opposition to “legalistic-moralistic” approach]: see Kennan, “Morality and Foreign Policy,” Foreign Affairs, vol. 64, no. 2 (Winter 1985-86), pp. 205-18; Kennan, Memoirs, 2 vols. (Atlantic Monthly/Little, Brown, 1967-72); Kennan, American Diplomacy, 1900-1950 (University of Chicago Press, 1951); Kennan, Realities of American Foreign Policy (Norton, 1966); Kennan, Soviet-American Relations, 1917-1920, 8 vols. (Princeton University Press, 1956-58); Kennan, Russia and the West Under Lenin and Stalin (Little, Brown, 1961).

  290 [Pitfall of “realism”]: see Christopher Lasch, “‘Realism’ as a Critique of American Diplomacy,” in Lasch, The World of Nations: Reflections on American History, Politics & Culture (Knopf, 1973), pp. 205-15; Robert C. Good, “The National Interest and Political Realism: Niebuhr’s ‘Debate’ with Morgenthau and Kennan,” Journal of Politics, vol. 22, no. 4 (November 1960), pp. 597-619; Thompson, Political Realism, pp. 50-61; Dean Acheson, “The Illusion of Disengagement,” Foreign Affairs, vol. 36, no. 3 (April 1958), pp. 371-82; John W. Coffey, “George Kennan and the Ambiguities of Realism,” South Atlantic Quarterly, vol. 73, no. 2 (Spring 1974), pp. 184-98.

  291 [Morgenthau]: Morgenthau, Scientific Man vs. Power Politics (University of Chicago Press, 1946); Morgenthau, Politics Among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace (Knopf, 1948); Morgenthau, In Defense of the National Interest: A Critical Examination of American Foreign Policy (Knopf, 1951); Morgenthau, The Impasse of American Foreign Policy (University of Chicago Press, 1962); George Eckstein, “Hans Morgenthau: A Personal Memoir,” Social Research, vol. 48, no. 4 (Winter 1981), pp. 641-52; ibid., vol. 48, no. 4 (Winter 1981), passim; Robert W. Tucker, “Professor Morgenthau’s Theory of Political ‘Realism,’ “American Political Science Review, vol. 46, no. 1 (March 1952), pp. 214-24; Stanley Hoffmann, “Realism and Its Discontents,” Atlantic, vol. 256, no. 5 (November 1985), pp. 131-36; Kenneth W. Thompson, “Moral Reasoning in American Thought on War and Peace,” Review of Politics, vol. 39, no. 3 (July 1977), pp. 386-99, esp. pp. 391-94; see also Thompson, Morality and Foreign Policy (Louisiana State University Press, 1980).

  [“Lust for power”]: Morgenthau, Scientific Man, p. 9.

  [“We must sin”]: ibid., p. 201; see also Kenneth W. Thompson, Moralism and Morality in Politics and Diplomacy (University Press of America, 1985), pp. 93-107.

  [Morgenthau on public opinion]: Morgenthau, “What Is Wrong with Our Foreign Policy,” in Impasse, pp. 68-94, quoted at p. 74.

  292 [Niebuhr]: Niebuhr, Moral Man and Immoral Society: A Study in Ethics and Politics (Scribner, 1932); Niebuhr, The Irony of American History (Scribner, 1952); Niebuhr, Christian Realism and Political Problems (Scribner, 1953); Niebuhr, The Structure of Nations and Empires (Scribner, 1959); Richard W. Fox, Reinhold Niebuhr (Pantheon, 1985); Fox, “Reinhold Niebuhr and the Emergence of the Liberal Realist Faith, 1930-1945,” Review of Politics, vol. 38, no. 2 (April 1976), pp. 244-65; Donald B. Meyer, The Protestant Search for Political Realism, 1919-1941 (University of California Press, 1960), esp. chs. 13-14; Charles Frankel, The Case for Modern Man (Harper, 1955), ch. 6; Good; Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., “Reinhold Niebuhr’s Role in American Political Thought and Life,” in Schlesinger, Politics of Hope, pp. 97-125; Morton White, “Of Moral Predicaments” (review of Niebuhr, Irony), New Republic, vol. 126, no. 18 (May 5, l952), pp. 8-9.

  293 [“Companionship in a common purpose”]: quoted in Fox, “Niebuhr and Emergence,” p. 260.

  [“Play hardball”]: quoted in William E. Leuchtenburg, “Preacher of Paradox” (review of Fox, Niebuhr), Atlantic, vol. 257, no. 1 (January 1986), p. 94.

  [“Father of us all”]: quoted in Fox, “Niebuhr and Emergence,” p. 245.

  [“Spiritual father”]: ibid.

  [“Atheists for Niebuhr”]: Thompson, “Moral Reasoning,” p. 387.

  [“Dizziness of freedom”]: quoted in Frankel, p. 88.

  [“Narcosis of the soul”]: ibid., p. 89.

  [“Instant Niebuhrian”]: Harvey Cox, “In the Pulpit and on the Barricades” (review of Fox, Niebuhr), New York Times Book Review, January 5, 1986, pp. 1, 24-25, quoted at p. 24.

  294 [“Russia, the Atom and the West”]: Kennan, Russia, the Atom and the West (Harper, 1958); see also Kennan, Memoirs, vol. 2, ch. 10.

  [De Gaulle on Lippmann]: quoted in Steel, p. 495.

  [American products in Europe]: see Edward A. McCreary, The Americanization of Europe: The Impact of Americans and American Business on the Uncommon Market (Doubleday, 1964), pp. 13-15, 89-90.

  295 [American corporations in Europe]: see ibid., ch. 4; Mayne, pp. 112-17. [“49th State”]: British shipowner, quoted in V
isson, p. 68.

  [“Americans are not served”]: ibid.

  [American product failures in Europe]: McCreary, p. 91; see also ibid., pp. 128-35; Mayne, pp. 114-15.

  [European view of America’s “imperialism, ” “dollarnoose, ” and “shabby money-lending”]: Visson, pp. 13, 75, 115, and passim; Bruce Hutchinson, Canada’s Lonely Neighbor (Longmans, Green, 1954), p. 11 and passim; “Why Is US Prestige Declining?,” New Republic, vol. 131, no. 8 (August 23, 1954), p. 8; Jean Rikhoff Hills, “The British Press on ‘The Yanks,’ ” ibid., pp. 9-12; Franz M. Joseph, ed., As Others See Us: The United States through Foreign Eyes (Princeton University Press, 1959).

  [“Spiritual standardization”]: quoted in Visson, p. 161.

  [“Coco-colonization”]: Mayne, p. 115.

  [Koestler on American ubiquity]: quoted in Wilson P. Dizard, The Strategy of Truth: The Story of the U.S. Information Service (Public Affairs Press, 1961), p. 10.

  296 [USIA]: Dizard; Thomas C. Sorenson, The Word War: The Story of American Propaganda (Harper, 1968); Thomas C. Reeves, The Life and Times of Joe McCarthy (Stein & Day, 1982), pp. 476-91 passim; Robert E. Elder, The Information Machine: The United States Information Agency and American Foreign Policy (Syracuse University Press, 1968).

  [“McCarthyism … is a tragedy”]: Hutchinson, p. 26,

  [“France was a land”]: quoted in Dizard, p. 20.

  [Ford Foundation international programs]: Dwight Macdonald, The Ford Foundation: The Men and the Millions (Reynal & Co., 1956), p. 60 and passim; Edward H. Berman, The Influence of the Carnegie, Ford, and Rockefeller Foundations on American Foreign Policy: The Ideology of Philanthropy (State University of New York Press, 1983).

  [Ford support of Congress for Cultural Freedom]: Berman, pp. 143-45, “combat tyranny” quoted at p. 144.

  297 [Lewis in France]: Thelma M. Smith and Ward L. Miner, Transatlantic Migrations: The Contemporary American Novel in France (Duke University Press, 1955), p. 17.

  [“Greatest lileary development”]: quoted in ibid., pp. 20-21; see also Henri Peyre, “American Literature Through French Eyes,” Virginia Quarterly Review, vol. 23, no. 3 (Summer 1947), pp. 421-38.