"We _want_ to believe. Young students try to believe in older authors,
constituents try to believe in their Congressmen, countries try to
believe in their statesmen, but they _can't_. Too many voices, too much
scattered, illogical, ill-considered criticism. It's worse in the case
of newspapers. Any rich, unprogressive old party with that particularly
grasping, acquisitive form of mentality known as financial genius can own
a paper that is the intellectual meat and drink of thousands of tired,
hurried men, men too involved in the business of modern living to swallow
anything but predigested food. For two cents the voter buys his politics,
prejudices, and philosophy. A year later there is a new political ring
or a change in the paper's ownership, consequence: more confusion,
more contradiction, a sudden inrush of new ideas, their tempering,
their distillation, the reaction against them--"
He paused only to get his breath.
"And that is why I have sworn not to put pen to paper until my ideas
either clarify or depart entirely; I have quite enough sins on my soul
without putting dangerous, shallow epigrams into people's heads; I might
cause a poor, inoffensive capitalist to have a vulgar liaison with a bomb,
or get some innocent little Bolshevik tangled up with a machine-gun
bullet--"
Tom was growing restless under this lampooning of his connection with The
New Democracy.
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