With the passing of the old issues that divided parties new issues have
come upon the scene. The alignment of the future will turn upon these. But
underlying all issues of all time are fundamental ideas which live forever
and aye, and may not be forgotten or ignored.

It used to be claimed by the followers of Jefferson that Democracy was
a fixed quantity, rising out of the bedrock of the Constitution, while
Federalism, Whiggism and Republicanism were but the chimeras of some
prevailing fancy drawing their sustenance rather from temporizing
expediency and current sentiment than from basic principles and profound
conviction. To make haste slowly, to look before leaping, to take counsel
of experience--were Democratic axioms. Thus the fathers of Democracy, while
fully conceiving the imperfections of government and meeting as events
required the need alike of movement and reform, put the visionary and
experimental behind them to aim at things visible, attainable, tangible,
the written Constitution the one safe precedent, the morning star and the
evening star of their faith and hope.

What havoc the parties and the politicians have made of all these lofty
pretenses! Where must an old-line Democrat go to find himself? Two issues,
however, have come upon the scene which for the time being are paramount
and which seem organic. They are set for the determination of the twentieth
century: The sex question and the drink question.

I wonder if it be possible to consider them in a catholic spirit from a
philosophic standpoint. I can truly say that the enactment of prohibition
laws, state or national, is personally nothing to me. I long ago reached an
age when the convivialism of life ceased to cut any figure in the equation
of my desires and habits. It is the never-failing recourse of the
intolerant, however, to ascribe an individual, and, of course, an unworthy,