Pariahs' Progress: On Isolationism | The Nation   Pariahs'
Progress: On Isolationism    • Share   • Decrease text size
Increase text size  Bourne’s transnationalist plea “had much in
common with religious dialogue,” Nichols observes. He is
thinking particularly of the jeremiad, the Puritan sermon form
that lamented the moral corruption of the community and recalled
it to righteousness. Bourne was no Puritan, but he was a stern
moralist, especially about the impact of war on the
“intellectual class.” Intellectuals who craved proximity to
power were falling all over themselves in their (mostly
rhetorical) enthusiasm for the cleansing powers of battle, and
when the war came they were little disturbed by the jailing of
its opponents. As Bourne observed, such prowar intellectuals as
Walter Lippmann and Herbert Croly of The New Republic were more
concerned with maintaining a largely fantastical faith in their
own “immediate influence” than addressing any such pedestrian
matters as the protection of free speech. Her