Inside D.C.’s ‘House of Truth’
In The House of Truth: A Washington Political Salon and the Foundations of American Liberalism, Brad Snyder tells how a group house in the nation’s capital where young intellectuals gathered changed the course of political thought and action.
The lawyers and journalists who met, ate and argued there — Felix Frankfurter, Walter Lippmann, Herbert Croly, Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., and Louis Brandeis, among others — transformed turn-of-the-20th-century progressivism into the liberalism we recognize today.
“The House of Truth,” at 1727 19th Street N.W., can be considered the birthplace of The New Republic. For many decades, the magazine functioned as a house organ of American liberalism, under Croly and Lippmann’s leadership. Brandeis, Frankfurter and Holmes, of course, became Supreme Court justices. A resident of Washington, D.C., Snyder teaches constitutional law at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.
What is the importance of these men?
They came together when the key players in the group worked for William Howard Taft’s administration but supported the return of Teddy Roosevelt running on the Bull Moose ticket. In very broad terms, they began by addressing the problems that came with industrialization — dangerous working conditions, sweatshops, inadequate protection for workers, etc. These were the issues that fired up self-described progressives. They believed the government was the instrument that would improve conditions through strong regulation and tougher laws. But during World War I came prosecutions under the Espionage Act and greater censorship. This alerted these intellectuals to the excesses of government, which required focusing energies on protecting the rights of individuals against the government.
We’ve seen a revival of the word “progressive” in recent years. Politicians who used to call themselves liberals began calling themselves progressives. Why is that?
When George H.W. Bush ran against Michael Dukakis, “liberal” became a dirty word. So people who otherwise would call themselves liberals adopted the word progressive. I don’t think there was anything substantive going on there, except a kind of rebranding.
Democrats once took pride in representing “the forgotten man,” the blue-collar worker. But in this past presidential election, the forgotten man voted for the Republican populist. To its critics, the Democratic Party looked like a party of educated people working in the “knowledge industry.”
There’s some truth to that, certainly. It does look more like a party of educated “elites” than of FDR’s constituency. Maybe the leadership needs to wake up. People like Elizabeth Warren, Cory Booker and Bernie Sanders (if you still consider Sanders a Democrat) seem to be looking out for the blue-collar worker, but that’s probably not so much the case with others in the party. Maybe they should consider the fact that populism can work for both parties.
If there’s one message you want readers to take from the book, what would it be?
I want liberals today to realize that liberalism has been at its best when it was an opposition force, as it was at the time the House of Truth intellectuals worked together, which was when the politicians they supported were out of power, from 1920 to 1933. That’s when their thought solidified, and working through the courts, they achieved some of their greatest victories for free speech and fair criminal trials. I think liberalism can thrive when its advocates are out of power.
Reach Snyder at 202.230.4637 or [email protected].
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