If Walter Lippmann Were Alive Today

The prestige, which once adhered to those who spoke by revelation, has passed to scientists. But science, though it is the most reliable method of knowledge we now possess, does not provide an account of the world in which human destiny is a central theme. Therefore, science, though it has displaced revelation, is not a substitute for it. It yields a radically different kind of knowledge. It explains the facts. But it does not pretend to justify the ways of God to man. It enables us to realize some of our hopes. But it offers no guarantees that they can be fulfilled.

--Walter Lippmann, A Preface to Morals (1929), 125.

Lippmann's observations clarified the problems faced by educated Americans on the eve of the Great Depression. Much has changed since then. If Lippmann were alive today, he would have to modify his remarks to something along the following lines:

The mythology embraced, for the most part, by white Americans, places the destiny of the human race in American hands. This mythology is contradicted by the daily news: the world is filled with rogues who are unwilling to submit to the Divinely arranged order. Science is unhelpful in this regard: it offers no unqualified explanation for why things happen in the world as they do. Science, therefore, must be ignored in favor of reassuring religious rhetorics that support the reigning American mythos. Yet, science does retain certain attractions: medications to prolong human life, remarkable consumer gadgetry, military technology. Each of these attractions serve to affirm (for the believer) the superiority of American ways-of-being in the world. So science is not without its charms: but these must not be permitted to interfere with America's Ptolemaic self-understanding. Our country is, without a doubt, the center of the cosmos; God loves every single (white) American, and has a plan for his or her life.