HOOVER has done equally well in speaking of prohibition as “noble in purpose.” To the Puritan American, the motive of an act is the measure of its morality; it is a moral act if it has a moral purpose. Prohibition may be as fiendish as you please in its effects, but as long as it is noble in its purpose it appeals to a sanctified emotio... continued here
To the men in this campaign, two potent emotional appeals are being made by the Hoover managers, and the key-words in the incantation are “prosperity” and “efficiency.” Since the days of the first Puritans, “prosperity” has been a sacred word in the American tradition. With the Puritans, their prosperity was ... continued here
CERTAINLY not among the women. And especially not among the women of the typical American community. To them, such a picture of Smith is a picture of the bad boy, grown up, who used to live “across the tracks.” They would as soon think of voting to put such a figure in the White House as of bringing the bad boy into their homes to corru... continued here
THE doctors answer that in the sub-conscious mind of the average American, the government is Dad. A man’s instinctive attitude to authority is formed in his childhood by his relations with his father. That attitude, set before intelligence fully develops, does not become much more intelligent in later years. By voting dry, the drinker gets ... continued here
IN the typical American community, the Jew, the Irish-Catholic and the foreigner are very much in the minority. They are not received on terms of social equality by the governing majority. They are mildly ostracized and looked down upon. They respond with that mixed emotion of resentment and admiration for the ruling caste which any submerged minor... continued here
FOR this reason, the Ku Klux Klan has been a perfect picnic for them. The Klan originated in a race hatred of the negro; it quickly expanded to include the anti-foreigners and the hundred-percent Americans in general. In communities where there are no negroes, no Jews, no Catholics, and no foreigners in sufficient numbers to authorize a mass moveme... continued here
ALL emotional appeals, whether in wars or elections, are appeals to instinctive impulses. There is no such thing as an emotion arising in the conscious intellect. All emotions are instinctive emotions, welling up from the subconscious mind; and in their origin they are “purposeful to instinct,” as the doctors say. In wartime, of course,... continued here
WHEN the late world war was first threatening Europe, the socialists predicted confidently that it would be stopped, before it began, by the refusal of the workingmen of France and Germany to kill one another in a quarrel between their employers. And when the French and German workingmen rushed to arms without a moment’s consideration of thei... continued here
“A MAN is not elected by his friends but by his opponent’s enemies.” That is an axiom of American politics. And in any election campaign, the professionals on the campaign committees do not worry too much about winning favor for their own candidate; they busy themselves mostly with plans for stirring up animosity against his ri... continued here
DIVIDING THE BLAME FOR PALESTINE BLOODSHED THE ARROGANCE of the so-called Zionist Revolutionists is doubtless a causative factor behind the Moslem outbreaks against the Jews, says The American Hebrew (New York), in apportioning the blame among all those immediately concerned in the blood-letting in Palestine. Primary responsibility is placed on the... continued here