ABSTRACT
The best method of approaching a critical reconstruction of American political ideas will be by means of an analysis of the meaning of democracy. The foregoing criticism of democracy, defined as popular government, may have much practical importance; but there are objections to it on the score of logic. It is not a criticism of a certain conception of democracy, so much as of democracy itself. The only way in which the thorough-going adherent of the principle of equal rights can treat the tendencies to discrimination, when they develop, is rigidly to repress them. This tendency to repression is now beginning to take possession of those Americans who represent the pure Democratic tradition. Americans have always been both patriotic and democratic, just as they have always been friendly both to liberty and equality, but in neither case have they brought the two ideas or aspirations into mutually helpful relations.
