Shorter David Brooks, "The Problem with Pragmatism", New York Times, October 3 2014:
Reading that old Lewis Mumford article in The New Republic makes me realize how those liberal pragmatists today are just the same as they were in 1940, when Mumford had to call them out for failing to join in the struggle against the Soviet Union.
He literally does that! As
Aaron Barlow has pointed out in Academe Blog, and as should be obvious anyway,
because it was 1940,
Mumford's essay (reprinted as part of a celebration of TNR's centenary this year) urged liberals, as you would expect, to stand in opposition to the Soviet Union
and Germany, then allies under the Molotov-Ribbentropp pact. Brooks amazingly turns this upside down by leaving the Germany part out:
