ABSTRACT
Liberals play limitless expensive variations on their single federal theme. But as government has emerged as the only agency which seems able to cope with modern public problems, the liberal program is always a government program. The belief in federal action has thus become the central commandment of today's liberal creed, and hence of the dominant political leadership. Liberalism, as expressed in a generation of federal programs, is now failing. Worst of all, perhaps, the liberals have left themselves open to the cruel joke that says they love humanity but hate people. Government still seems the only agency willing and able to tackle modern public problems. So the veteran liberal finds himself imprisoned. The liberal community—the teachers, the journalists, the civil servants, the trade unionists, the leaders of minority groups—envisages the welfare state as the one institution through which it can exercise power and authority over the nation's affairs.
