A Preface to Politics — CHAPTER VI

1. 1. The Vice Commission of Chicago pre-committed to moral, constitutional, and popular remedies before investigating prostitution, which undermines honest inquiry.
2. 2. Idols—fixed ideas like morality, constitutionality, practicality, and public conscience—dominate American thinking and block genuine reform.
3. 3. The American definition of 'moral' is narrowly sexual, ignoring industrial or social ethics, which limited the Commission's vision.
4. 4. 'Reasonable and practical' in America means proposals that are not new, do not disturb selfishness, and are tangible like raids or ordinances, not imaginative or patient.
5. 5. The Commission's worship of the Constitution treats men as existing for the document, not the reverse, but this idol is already being cast down by figures like Theodore Roosevelt.
6. 6. America is not immune to classicalism despite its pioneering tradition; the West may become conservative after achieving economic reforms, while the East faces revolutionary industrial problems.
7. 7. The public conscience is not eternal but grows with social life; the Commission bowed to a conscience bound up with the very evil it sought to eradicate.
8. 8. The real danger to democracy is not business corruption but the fear of the public's prejudices, which suppresses originality more than financial power.
9. 9. The ultimate goal of politics is aesthetic—a quality of feeling—not conformity to rules; abstractions like justice or liberty are instruments, not ends.