Free Republic

We chose the cover image, based on a well-known 1932 Hitler campaign poster, for a precise reason: that anyone transported back to 1932 Germany could very, very easily have explained away Herr Hitler’s excesses and been persuaded that his critics were going overboard. After all, he spent 1932 campaigning, negotiating, doing interviews—being a mostly normal politician. But he and his people vowed all along that they would use the tools of democracy to destroy it, and it was only after he was given power that Germany saw his movement’s full face. Today, we at The New Republic think we can...

It’s no exaggeration to say that American politics has operated in Herbert Croly’s and FDR’s shadow ever since the Great Depression—nearly a century. What’s striking about this election cycle’s Democratic presidential primary debates is how much they’ve been absolutely dominated by a man who’s been dead for 90 years. That man is Herbert Croly, the intellectual godfather of the progressive movement and the first editor of The New Republic. Croly’s most influential work, The Promise of American Life (which would have been even more wildly influential had Croly only had a halfway decent editor to cut down his meandering, ponderous...

They just don't use that language, because they believe their vision is better and not harmful. Problem is, in their writings they have gone too far in regards to spilling the beans. Around the time of the 2008 election, Michelle Obama was caught on video stating: "We're going to have to change our traditions, our history; we're going to have to move into a different place as a nation". This is nothing new; however, what she did not do was explain what she meant. Other progressives have explained what they meant using virtually identical language. In 1909, in the book...

It's long been known that Theodore Roosevelt was influenced by the book "The Promise of American Life", as well as Croly's other writings as he himself makes clear in the essay "Two Noteworthy Books on Democracy. What is questioned is to what degree, how it happened, and if the slogan "New Nationalism" itself is a direct lift. On page 169 is where Croly uses the phrase. In the New York Independent, the following is written: (Page 957, this was originally published in 1912) The New Democracy resembles in some points Croly's "Promise of American Life," from which Colonel Roosevelt got...