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Black Americans are not to blame for Hillary Clintons defeat last November. However, it is true that many black progressive activists know they made a mistake by not voting for Clinton and/or encouraging others not to, and they regret it, but they wont admit it. Its also true that eight months later we still need to talk about what happened.

Throughout the last presidential election season, many black progressive activists, a group I am labeling as left-of-center, unapologetically black, and disillusioned with electoral politics, were telling Americans about the political system, informing our opinions about black electoral politics and what the black community needs from the next president. Black progressive activists encouraged fellow African Americans to vote for someone other than Hillary Clinton, and in some cases, to not vote at all. They were wrong.

Ive labeled this phenomenon: Post-Civil Rights Era Progressive Activist Privilege. It is the false belief, in electoral politics, that black Americans have the luxury of choosing individual beliefs over whats best for the group as a whole.

My argument to black progressive activists has been simple: we are not in a position as a black community to vote our individual preferences over our group interests. We are definitely not in a position to not vote and then claim to care about our people. If you claim to be about improving black lives over anything else, you cant possibly argue Trumps election helps the cause.

However, there is a movement in black communities on the left that espouses a different position. Many black progressive activists argue that the liberation of black people will only and should only come from the ground up in grassroots spaces devoid of participation in electoral politics, particularly in national elections. Alternatively, others may argue that participation in electoral politics should be strategic so not to become a pawn of the Democratic Party. I argue it is flawed to discourage black participation in electoral politics.

The argument from black progressive activists is persuasive. They proffer neoliberalism, liberal economic philosophy that allegedly views citizens as consumers, has taken over our political imagination. They argue the Democratic Party has adopted a neoliberal philosophy that undermines the marginalized and the have-nots. They cite the devastating statistics in crime, education, poverty, and so on, that in many cases got worse for blacks under Democratic leadership. They believe in a radical conception of democracy that extends beyond electoral politics. Many no longer believe electoral politics is the platform through which the liberation of black people and their universal freedom will be achieved.

As a result, some intellectuals and activists have sought to encourage blacks not to participate in the political process, or have argued for modified versions of a limited black political participation, masked as strategic engagement.

Each of these arguments is worthy, but not at the expense of achieving material-based, quality-of-life improvements for blacks in the short term.

WILLIAM EDWARDS via Getty Images

For example, just days before the election, the Ku Klux Klan endorsed Trump and, surprisingly, many black progressive activists still did not retreat from their ideologically pure ground.

This is why I turn my disdain toward black intellectuals and media pundits who chose to use their platforms to further their individual ideological preferences. When activists in media offer political commentary about topics on which they are not experts, the effort to achieve some progressive opportunities for black communities can be endangered.

The black progressive argument that Clinton would not have represented blacks any better than Trump often came from sources via social media and black activist networks (some of which I also belong to) that simply printed falsehoods or, at best, incomplete information. Consequently, many black American followers allowed selective media sources (and their pundits and contributors) to influence their politics. They allowed Facebook friends and Twitter and Instagram followers to influence them politically even though their life circumstances varied. Perhaps, Russian interference is partially to blame. Even still, Black people should be unconditional in their organizing against the KKK and any candidate they support.

Now, as nearly every day brings another Trump administration goal or action that threatens black lives, many continue to cling to their anti-Clinton posturing even as data is produced that proves the negative impact of their decision not to vote for the Democratic nominee or at all.

The false choice to not engage the system is a decision to not engage in the institutions that, like it or not, govern our lives as Americans. When blacks choose to disengage in electoral politics, they risk irrelevancy and even poorer representation from our elected officials. Engagement by blacks, rather, can impact the outcome of elections and produces better results for black communities.

The entire argument of black progressive activists rested on the assumption of a Clinton victory. The intellectuals assumed the tonality of their anti-Clinton, anti-two-party system, anti-capitalist op-eds and on-air rhetoric would not discourage blacks from voting for Clinton, even in battleground states; they were wrong. Their views, coupled with shared views from celebrities like Colin Kaepernick, Rosario Dawson, and Azealia Banks, I argue, played a huge role in the significantly decreased black male turnout vote in urban cities. With at least a seven percent reduction in black votes, (almost two million black votes cast for Obama in 2012 did not turn out for Clinton), that was arguably the nail in Clintons electoral coffin. While a wave of white working-class voters significantly contributed to Trumps win, the influence of black progressive activists on traditionally Democratic black voters cannot be ignored.

Politics includes electoral politics, grassroots politics, and community politics. I believe it will take all three working in concert to eliminate the centuries-long subjugation of blacks by our institutions of government. Most of the systemic and structural issues facing black communities in the United States will require electoral politics to solve, and black Americans cant afford to be persuaded not to vote.

This past presidential election was the first general election since 1968 to be held without the full protection of the Voting Rights Act. After the record-breaking turnout among black communities during both of Obamas presidential elections, a decline in black voter turnout for a non-Obama ballot was to be expected. The Supreme Courts 2013 Shelby v. Holder decision, coupled with GOP successful efforts to suppress minority voters, made it more difficult for blacks to vote in key electoral battleground states. Yet, black activists had three years to prepare for that expected decline. Black intellectual activists chose to spend much of that time fighting each other.

One such fight during the campaign season centered on whether or not Clinton was as bad as Trump. I reject the framing that Clinton was equally bad for black Americans.

She wasnt endorsed by the KKK!

Thats one clear difference and it really was enough for me. Its shocking to me, still, that the KKK endorsement was not enough for every other person of color in America.

Another difference? Clinton would not have appointed Gorsuch to the Supreme Court, effectively eliminating any chance of substantive black progress in the legal arena for generations. Coupled with Kennedys expected retirement, because Trump won in November, the Supreme Court and hundreds of other judicial lifetime positions could shift far-right.

By not listening to black political experts, many in the black American community failed to understand the difference between black cultural organizing and black political progress. The result? Many black progressive activists inadvertently set black opportunity back several generations.

These black intellectual progressives thought they could lean on the strategic political behavior of black voters at the polls without having done the educating work necessary to ensure that was possible. Too many black progressives thought we could afford abstract articulations of the holistic needs of the black community. The irony of some black people choosing normative ideals over material advancement is astounding. Those black progressive activists were complicit in the election of a Ku Klux Klan endorsed presidential candidate - Im sorry (not sorry), but you lose your black card.

When black Americans allow selective news viewership to dictate how their personal politics impacts their black community membership, we have allowed our activisms to be limited to the news cycle.

For the failure of helping to elect Trump, black progressive activists must re-assess the value of prioritizing ideals if their influence indirectly has a negative impact on black opportunity in electoral politics. Until that moment, for future elections, black Americans must stay committed to electoral politics as the black progressive position will gain even greater momentum in that arena.

By committing to reading thoroughly and checking sources, blacks can be their own political experts. By learning the system, the issues, and the candidates, the African American community can encourage more black left-of-center people to run for office and donate more to candidates that represent the group interests of African Americans. Some in the black American community tried a shortcut last November and erred. We can never make that mistake again.

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How A Group Of Black Progressives Derailed Black Progress - HuffPost

Pacific Standard

The Mass Panic Over Russian Political Interference Threatens Progressives Too Pacific Standard The Mass Panic Over Russian Political Interference Threatens Progressives Too. Armed with potent propaganda, House Republicans are targeting the environmental movement over alleged Kremlin ties. Avatar: Jimmy Tobias; Author: Jimmy Tobias; Publish ...

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The Mass Panic Over Russian Political Interference Threatens Progressives Too - Pacific Standard

Common Dreams

Liberals Strike Back... Against Single Payer Common Dreams In the name of political reality, some liberal pundits, politicians and policy wonks are scolding progressives to give up on Medicare for All. There are many ways to achieve "universal coverage," we're told. "Overhauling" the entire system is too hard ... and more »

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Liberals Strike Back... Against Single Payer - Common Dreams

Five and a half years ago, a mustachioed Justin Trudeau rose from his seat in the corner of the House of Commons opposition benches to challenge the Harper government on cuts to scientific research.

Mr. Speaker, I have a simple question on ozone monitoring, based entirely on what the minister of the environment himself has already said, Trudeau declared on Nov. 24, 2011.

Then-environment minister Peter Kent was portraying cuts to Canadas crucial and world-renowned ozone monitoring networks as simply consolidating and streamlining, Trudeau began.

The Liberal MP for the Montreal riding of Papineau then flashed a document signed by Kent that contradicted the Conservative minister's position. Hopefully not an unreliable source, he quipped.

Justin Trudeau, then in opposition, challenges Peter Kent, then the environment minister, about the Harper government's cuts to ozone monitoring on Nov. 24, 2011. House of Commons video

It was a sly reference to the day before, when Kent had told then-Liberal environment critic Kirsty Duncan she should "use more reliable research" after she questioned the Tories over a briefing note titledfittingly enoughozone monitoring cuts.

Trudeau and Duncan would spar with Kent several times that week over the issue.

At one point, Trudeau even challenged Kent by asking whether he knew what ozone actually was.

"I just need to know that he understands the issues," Trudeau asked.

Fast forward to 2017.

The Liberals are in power, Trudeau is prime minister and Duncan is his science minister. Kent has swapped positions with them on the opposition benches, assuming the mantle of foreign affairs critic for the Conservatives.

With the science-defending duo now at the controls, Canada boasts about scientific breakthroughs in ozone research, and the government claims it is unmuzzling scientists, undergoing a fundamental science review, launching a search for a chief science advisor and creating a $2-billion investment fund for post-secondary institutions, among other initiatives.

Trudeau's cabinet launched these initiatives after campaigning in the 2015 election to restore evidence-based decision-making in government. This followed years of criticism that the Harper government was putting science on the back burner and making decisions that benefited the oil and gas industry in Western Canada, where the Conservatives have deep political roots.

The criticism culminated with scientists mourning the "death of evidence" in a mock funeral march on Parliament Hill to protest the Harper government in July 2012.

One might be tempted to think that after all this, the cuts to ozone monitoring would have been restored. The reality, however, is more complicated.

In responding to National Observers questions, raised in June, about whether the cuts had been restored under the Liberals, a spokesman for Environment and Climate Change Canada first denied that cuts had ever been made.

After further questioning, Environment Minister Catherine McKenna's office would later acknowledge in July that ozone monitoring stations had indeed been closed. But her spokeswoman would still argue that the efficiency of monitoring hadnt changed as a result.

Kirsty Duncan, then the Liberal environment critic, challenges Kent about the cuts to ozone monitoring on Nov. 23, 2011. House of Commons video

The reaction to this chain of events has been one of frustration or vindication, depending on who's reacting.

Thomas Duck, an associate professor in the department of physics and atmospheric science at Dalhousie University, said the government's claim in 2012 under former prime minister Stephen Harperthat Canada could sufficiently monitor ozone while still closing monitoring stationsreminded him of the position it was now taking under Trudeau.

"Does the Trudeau government really want to take ownership of what Harper did? said Duck.

The NDP said the Liberals weren't honouring their commitment to restore scientific integrity in government post-Harper. The Trudeau government thinks theyve kind of ticked the science box on their to-do list and now theyve moved onto other things, said science critic Kennedy Stewart.

Duncan and Trudeau question Kent about the cuts to ozone monitoring on Nov. 21, 2011, kicking off a week in which they would repeatedly question the then-environment minister. House of Commons video

The Conservatives, meanwhile, see it as an example of the Liberals saying one thing in opposition and another thing once in government.

"Environment Canadas scientists have apparently convinced the Liberals that the monitoring of atmospheric ozone, as amended by our Conservative government on the advice of the same scientists, is appropriate and effective," said Kent.

Duncan and Trudeau's offices declined comment. McKenna's spokeswoman, however, attempted to draw a distinction between the two governments' approaches.

Our government has been clear from the outset that were taking a different path from that of the Harper government, which set targets with no plan in place to meet them, and undertook no action on climate change, said Marie-Pascale Des Rosiers.

"Canada continues to operate one of the largest stratospheric ozone monitoring programs. This program meets our operational requirements."

Canada monitors ozone both up in the Earths atmosphere, where the ozone layer helps block harmful ultraviolet radiation, and closer to the surface, where the reactive gas has been linked to health problems and smog.

It was cuts to atmospheric ozone monitoring that drove the controversy during the Harper government. The monitoring is done using two different technologies, brewers and ozonesondes, that measure different aspects of the ozone layer.

The statement signed by Kent during the Harper government confirmed that the two measures complement, but dont duplicate each other. As Duncan explained in 2011, that means they can't be optimized and streamlinedonly cut."

The Harper government ended up overseeing the closure of two ozone monitoring stations, at Bratts Lake, Sask. and Egbert, Ont.

It also moved the World Ozone and Ultraviolet Radiation Data Centre, one of six centres that form a global atmospheric monitoring program, out of the environment departments science and technology branch to the meteorological services data management system. The data centre is run by the department with the support of the World Meteorological Organization.

National Observer asked the department whether cuts to ozone monitoring had been restored. Spokesman Mark Johnson responded that the departments monitoring of ozone was not cut.

Rather, portions were transferred to another group that continued with the delivery, Johnson said. "Environment and Climate Change Canada continues to be committed to research and monitoring related to stratospheric ozone." He added stratospheric ozone observations "are made at eight sites across Canada."

The problem: There used to be 10 such sites.

Duncan pointed this out in 2012, when she complained at a House environment committee meeting that activity at the Bratts Lake and Egbert sites had "ceased."

The status of the monitoring sites also appear on the world ozone data centre's website, hosted by the Canadian government. The website shows that Bratts Lake and Egbert stations stopped producing data after 2011 and have remained dark.

Johnsons statement also confirmed that the ozone data centre was still in the meteorological service, but that scientific oversight is provided by science and technology branch scientists and others.

McKennas office eventually confirmed that the department did once have 10 stratospheric monitoring stations. But Des Rosiers said a departmental analysis showed Canada can deliver robust stratospheric ozone monitoring with eight stations.

This is why two stations were closed in 2012. The remaining eight are sufficient for robust monitoring of stratospheric ozone, said Des Rosiers.

Canadas commitment to monitor stratospheric and ground-level ozone has not changed and neither has the efficiency of the monitoring.

National Observer then asked the department for a copy of the analysis mentioned by McKenna's office.

It declined to respond, but Des Rosiers followed up with an email saying that the government was "committed to science" and that it didn't receive "negative feedback" on the Canadian ozone monitoring program at a recent international conference of ozone research managers hosted last March in Geneva, Switzerland.

Dalhousie's Duck questioned how the department could claim that it hadn't lost a valuable resource in the shuttered Bratt's Lake and Egbert stations.

He pointed to two scientific papers released last year that both reference data from the Bratt's Lake and Egbert stations. One paper was led by the environment department, while the second was from an international collaboration. "Clearly the data are of continuing scientific importance," he said.

Duck, who says he co-founded a university consortium that took on responsibility for an instrument that was jettisoned in the Harper-era restructuring, also argued there were other scientific reasons for wanting launches of ozonesondes, a type of weather balloon, at the two stations.

In addition to ozone, ozonesondes can also be used to examine atmospheric pollution like emissions from oilsands, or pollution around Toronto, he said. They help differentiate between ground-level and ozone-layer sources, argued Duck, but "the loss of these two stations impacts our ability to do that."

He said Bratts Lake was "the only ozonesonde station immediately downwind from the oilsands." Although there is an operating station in Edmonton, geographically closer to the oilpatch, winds tend to blow from west to east, putting Bratt's Lake more downwind in terms of weather patterns, he said.

A network of stations would be the best approach, he argued, but "given how few stations there were around the oilsands to begin with, the loss of Bratts Lake [is] really grievous."

At the same time, Egbert was the only ozonesonde station in the vicinity of Canadas most-populous city, Toronto, he said. Taken together, "This suggests to me that the stations were cut for non-scientific reasons," said Duck.

Finally, he questioned the assertion that the ozone date centre had true scientific oversight, arguing a drop in data demonstrated otherwise.

Usage of the centre has declined since the management changes in 2012, he said, pointing to the centres own data for Brewer Ozone Spectrophotometer, a Canadian invention used around the world to measure UV, that shows a drop-off since 2012.

Johanne Fillion, communications officer at the Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada, said the ozone monitoring cuts were an example of prioritization in Ottawa.

Our feeling is that with ozone, its not because they dont care, its because it wasnt the top priority when they arrived [in government], she said.

But Kent said "sarcastic questions and denunciations" from the Liberals in 2011 over atmospheric ozone monitoring were "uninformed and wrong."

"Their statements today are in line with any number of policy positions in opposition that Liberals now contradict," he said.

For his part, Stewart said the Liberal government isnt waging a war on science, but he said their policies have almost all the same effects of Harpers war on science.

He said federal scientists appeared to be ecstatic that Harper was gone, but he is now starting to field calls from some of them who are concerned that longstanding policies havent changed.

I dont think youll see death marches on Parliament Hill, but you will see more upset scientists.

With files from Mike De Souza

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Trudeau Liberals change their tune on ozone monitoring - National Observer

In the summer of 1917, Walter Lippmann strutted into Washington as it prepared for war. Both he and his young country were ready to prove their worth as superpowers. He was 27 and newly married, recruited to whisper into the ear of Newton Baker, the secretary of war. Lippmanns reputation already prefigured the heights to which it would ultimately ascend. None other than Teddy Roosevelt had anointed him the most brilliant young man of his age.

Following the timeless capital tradition of communal living, the Lippmanns moved into a group house just off Dupont Circle. Their residencewhich they shared with a coterie of other fast-talking, quick-thinking, precociously influential 20-somethingsinstantly became the stuff of legend, the wonkish frat house of American liberalism. Denizens included Felix Frankfurter, the Harvard Law professor who went on to make his mark with forceful crusades on behalf of unpopular causes, and then with Supreme Court opinions and a wide array of well-placed protgs.

Dinner conversations at the rowhouse extended late into the night. Older minds gravitated to these meals, eager to watch a new vision of government being hammered out. Among the eminent guests who welcomed a respite from stuffy, self-important Washington were Herbert Hoover, Louis Brandeis, and Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. It was Holmes, a regular and enthusiastic presence at the table, who gave the place a namethe House of Truth.

The legal historian Brad Snyder has reconstructed the glories of this group house in a bulging, careful study of its inhabitants. Though The House of Truth drowns in detail, Snyders account usefully maps a hinge moment in American political history. Progressivism, that amorphous explosion of reformism in the early years of the century, had come and gone. Thinkers like Lippmann and Frankfurter increasingly referred to themselves as liberals, by which they didnt mean advocates of laissez-faire governance. Their use of the label connoted something closer to its present-day meaning, and their faith in governments capacity to improve the world was boosted by the war. Liberals believed that Americas entry into the global conflagration would transform their country. The experience, they hoped, would rouse a new spirit of solidarity. It would corrode the ingrained Jeffersonian hostility to the state, and would permit America to exert a beneficent influence beyond its borders.

These messianic hopes were quickly shredded by brutal realities: the savage nature of martial nationalism, the suppression of dissenting opinions, the way their hero Woodrow Wilson permitted the imposition of vindictive terms on vanquished Germany. The pessimism acquired during those harsh years became foundational to liberalism, too, endowing it with a newfound passion for civil liberties and the rights of minorities. Liberalisms enthusiasm for the state was painfully tempered.

One of the essential qualities of liberalism is that it always disappoints. To its champions, this is among its greatest virtues. It embraces a realistic sense of human limits and an unillusioned view of political constraints. It shies away from utopian schemes and imprudent idealism. To its critics, this modesty and meliorism represent cowardice. Every generation of leftists angrily vents about liberalisms slim ambitions and its paucity of pugilism. Bernie Sanders and his followers join a long line of predecessors in wanting liberalism to be something that it most distinctly is not: radical.

Liberalisms enemies on the right cultivate precisely this confusion. They have always tried to smudge liberalisms identity, to insinuate that it exists on the same continuum as communism and other terrifying ideologies. And, in truth, liberalism wasnt always entirely clear about the gap that separated it from the left. Before the disappointments of World War I, many of the earliest liberals styled themselves as radicals. They shared the primary concerns of the activist left (womens suffrage, the labor movement) and championed the same assault on the repressive mores of Victorian culture. For a brief, Edenic moment, liberals and radicals carried an almost identical sense of possibility about the world.

In Young Radicals, Jeremy McCarter (with whom I briefly worked at the New Republic, the magazine Lippmann helped establish in 1914) has written an extremely readable, theatrically narrated group biography of the men and women swept up in the optimistic prewar spirit. Its a romantic account of a romantic period. Among McCarters subjects is a young Lippmann, back before his Washington group-house days. Fresh from Harvard, he went to work for the socialist mayor of Schenectady, New York, and mingled with poets and revolutionaries in Greenwich Village. He became a favorite of the heiress Mabel Dodge, who presided over bohemias preeminent salon in her lowerFifth Avenue apartment.

Young Radicals isnt intended as an intellectual historyits a study of the politically engaged life. McCarter sets out to answer the urgent questions that preoccupy critics of liberal expediency: Where do idealists come by their galvanizing visions of a better world? Why do they give up health, safety, comfort, status to see those visions made real? In the process, his book helps chart the emergence of a sharp divide between staunch radicals and ambitious liberals, as Walter Lippmann and his old comrades go their separate ways. Over the course of McCarters narrative, Lippmann assumes his role as the archetypal liberal thinkeror, from the perspective of his leftist former friends, the epitome of the self-satisfied establishment.

The hero of McCarters cast of radicals (which also includes Alice Paul, John Reed, and Max Eastman) is the most formidable of Lippmanns critics, and in almost every way his antithesis. While Lippmann exuded the suavity of his Upper East Side breeding, Randolph Bourne was rough-hewn, emotive, and winningly vulnerable. He described himself as a puny, timid, lazy, hypochondriacal wretch. An obstetricians forceps deformed his face at birth; a childhood bout with tuberculosis twisted his spine and wrecked his gait. When Ellery Sedgwick, the editor of The Atlantic, invited Bourne to lunch at the Century Club, he canceled upon Bournes arrival, terrified at the prospect of being seen with him. (That didnt stop Sedgwick from assigning Bourne pieces.) A self-styled outsider, Bourne wrote beautifully about the comforts of friendship and the value of marginalized opinion.

Overcoming abandonment by his alcoholic father, Bourne studied at Columbia with John Dewey and imbibed his mentors ecstatic faith in democracy. His most lasting essay, Trans-national America, was published in this magazine in 1916. It poetically celebrated what we now call identity politics. Bourne shunned the idea of the melting pot. Instead, he imagined a cosmopolitan nation in which new arrivals would resist assimilation and inhabit their ancestral traditions. America is coming to be, not a nationality but a trans-nationality, a weaving back and forth, with the other lands, of many threads of all sizes and color. Freed of the pressure to fit into a monolithic American mold, immigrants would help create a new national culture. Bourne dreamed that it would be more creative, more tightly bound by mutual understanding. A beloved community was the phrase he borrowed (from the philosopher Josiah Royce) to describe his vision.

Bourne and Lippmann, nearly exact contemporaries, were never close friends. But Lippmann encouraged Bourne to write for the New Republic. And Bourne looked at Lippmanns intellectual ease and sweep with admiration bordering on envy, even if his own thinking propelled him in quite a different direction. He called Lippmanns Drift and Mastery, his 1914 case for imposing scientific order on society, a book one would have given ones soul to have written.

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War brought an end to Bournes idolization. Although he never publicly attacked Lippmann by name, he hurled spears at him, excoriating liberal intellectuals for dragging America into the conflict. It was a war made deliberately by intellectuals, Bourne fumed, arguing that they championed the war only so they could exploit the mobilization efforts in order to build the national government of their dreams. (War is the health of the state, Bourne aphoristically argued in a manuscript found after his death.) In the proximity of power, the intellectuals felt the thrill of being on the craft, in the stream, even though they didnt fully believe in the wars underlying justifications.

When Bourne denounced Lippmann and his ilk, he leveled a charge that has dogged liberal elites ever since. He skewered them as disingenuous and greedy for power. They supported immoral policies for their own purposeswhich they considered loftywhen they should have known better. Decades later, the broadsides against the liberal hawks who lent their imprimatur to the Iraq War echoed this sentiment. And Bournes indictment anticipated the accusation of callous cynicism directed at Bill Clintons criminal-justice policy, seen as a ploy to win back white working-class voters. Barack Obamas response to the financial crisis, which let bankers slip away unpunished for their misdeeds, roused similar ire.

Over his career, Lippmann provided plenty of examples that validated the core of Bournes critique. As Snyder tells the story, Felix Frankfurter turned on his roommate from the House of Truth for similar reasons. Frankfurter worked tirelessly to save the anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti from the accusations that sent them to death row. He eloquently transformed their fate into the quintessential liberal crusade of the 20sand was apoplectic that when he tried to enlist Lippmann in his effort, he struggled to rouse him from his icy evenhandedness.

Yet however valid Bournes reasons for scything Lippmann and the liberal intellectuals were, there was also something juvenile about his attack. Indeed, Bourne himself might have described his defiance that way. His earliest essays advocated youthful rebellionand denounced the oppressive hold that the middle-aged exerted over society. Youth is the incarnation of reason pitted against the rigidity of tradition, he wrote. His beef with his seniors had some of the glibness of a teenage tantrum, and so did his attack on the liberal intellectuals. He simply couldnt countenance the notion that Lippmann might want to lead American policy in a more humane, internationalist direction out of motives that were public-minded as well as vainglorious. Its true that Lippmann took smug satisfaction in his audiences with the president and in the attentions of Wilsons most trusted adviser, Colonel Edward House. Yet he didnt hesitate to brutallyand influentiallyturn against Wilson for botching the aftermath of the war.

Bourne will always make a readier hero than Lippmann. In the last days of 1918, as the war drew to a close, he died of the Spanish flua tragic end that had nothing to do with the intellectual exile he endured during the war, but that added to his aura of martyrdom. Bourne spent the last year of his life pushed out of magazines that had once welcomed him, with hardly any outlets for his thunderous denunciations. His death froze him in the fresh-faced state of youthful rebelliousness that he celebrated.

The radicals of the prewar years are good grist for inspiring yarns. But to what end? Many of the protests of these years were aesthetic gestures, statements of nonconformity rather than expressions of a political program. John Reed, Lippmanns Harvard classmate and another of McCarters protagonists, was a burly adventurer who went off to chronicle the Russian Revolution. The thrilling firsthand account he produced, Ten Days That Shook the World, was romantic and admiring. Lenin, who blurbed the book, rewarded Reed for his powerful propaganda by burying him in the wall of the Kremlin. Though you would hardly guess it from McCarters tender treatment, Reeds career is a cautionary tale of the reasons to fear idealism and high-profile protest merely for the sake of rebellion.

What makes Lippmann unappealing is his detachment, the cool logic that prevented him from shaking his fist at the status quo with Reed-esque fury. (Lippmann mocked Reed in a witty hatchet job in the New Republic, Legendary John Reed.) At the same time, that detachment produced enduring results. His hastily written books might not always thrill like a Bourne essay, but to watch him wrestle with the deepest questions about mass psychology, the behavior of corporations, and the value of tradition is to discover punditry as a philosophical discipline capable of lasting value.

Take the essays that Lippmann published in The Atlantic just after the war, collected in the slim book Liberty and the News. Lippmann wrote anxiously about the rise of what we have come to call fake news. He drew attention to the way the media spread rumors and deliberate lies, and he sounded the alarm about a public ill-equipped to sort through conflicting facts. He was concerned about filter bubbles and the power of gatekeepers. He tried to rally journalists to rise to the challenge, exhorting them toward greater professionalism and a higher sense of purpose. Preserving liberty, he argued, required redefining the concept. Liberty is the name we give to measures by which we protect and increase the veracity of the information upon which we act.

In the midst of our current convulsions, Lippmann has returned as an object of disdain. Not Lippmann the man, of course, but the technocratic spirit he once championed and embodied. To counter the rising authoritarian tide, the temptation is to run far away from that spirit. Indeed, protest and anger are essential bulwarks of democracy. And theres no doubting the moral blind spots of the reigning elite. But a truly radical solution to our crisis is actually the old liberal one, to reestablish the legitimacy of disinterested experts, to restore the institutions that provide a basis for common conversation. The path to Bournes beloved community now runs through Lippmann.

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Why Liberalism Disappoints - The Atlantic