vative is a slave to
the most incidental and trivial part of his forefathers' glory--to the
archaic formula which happened to express their genius or the eighteenth
century contrivance by which for a time it was served. To reverence
Washington they wear a powdered wig; they do honor to Lincoln by
cultivating awkward hands and ungainly feet.

It is fascinating to watch this kind of conservative in action. From
Senator Lodge, for example, we do not expect any new perception of
popular need. We know that probably his deepest sincerity is an attempt
to reproduce the atmosphere of the Senate a hundred years ago. The
manners of Mr. Lodge have that immobility which comes from too much
gazing at bad statues of dead statesmen.

Yet just because a man is in opposition to Senator Lodge there is no
guarantee that he has freed himself from the routineer's habit of mind. A
prejudice against some mannerism or a dislike of pretensions may merely
cloak some other kind of routine. Take the "good government" attitude. No
fresh insight is behind that. It does not promise anything; it does not
offer to contribute new values to human life. The machine which exists is
accepted in all its essentials: the "goo-goo" yearns for a somewhat
smoother rotation.

Often as not the very effort to make the existing machine run more
perfectly merely makes matters worse. For the tinkering reformer is
frequently one of the worst of the routineers. Even machines are not
altogether inflexible, and sometimes what the reformer regards as a sad
deviation from the original plans is a poor rickety attempt to adapt the
machine to changing conditions. Think what would have happened had we
actually remained stolidly faithful to every intention of the Fathers.
Think what would happen if every statute were enforced. By the sheer
force of circumstances we have twisted constitutions and laws to some
approximation of our needs. A changing country has managed to live in
spite of a static government machine. Perhaps Bernard Shaw was right when
he said that "the famous Constitution survives only because whenever any
corner of it gets into the way of the accumulating dollar it is pettishly
knocked off and thrown away. Every social development, however beneficial
and inevitable from the public point of view, is met, not by an
intelligent adaptation of the social structure to its novelties but by a
panic and a cry of Go Back."

I am tempted to go further and put into the sa