Word: consensus
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...more than a hundred years now, what might be called industrial humanism, the dream of total progress through production and distribution, has held general credence in Western civilization. Science, industry, and a morality of shared materialism were linked in a powerful secular religion of consensus...
Only lately has that consensus shown real signs of disintegrating. Modern society has established all sorts of machinery for regulating and improving man. But the regulatory machinery keeps breaking down, as it did in the two great World Wars. The 20th century, marked by an almost numbing thrust of knowledge and human ingenuity, is now infected with correspondingly profound pessimism...
Thus the man who sought to govern by consensus could not even hold together his own party. The politician who attempted-with much success-to complete the unfinished business of the New Deal ended by presiding over a nation beset by class and racial tension. The President elected in 1964 by the largest popular majority in history had to admit that the interests of peace and national unity would best be served by his renunciation of power...
Rather, Congress was cheering itself. The struggles of the world enter Congress muted, dimmed; agreement and consensus are pervasive there, while differences are always marginal. To its members, Congress itself is what is most important, and they struggle to preserve it and its internal balances and traditions with far more passion than they struggle to change the world outside the Capitol. Congress is a motherly institution, a deep, dark, beloved place which provides for the needs of its members, which offers them security, prestige, and some kind of purpose for their lives...
Last week, as Senate Republicans chose a moderate new leader by electing Pennsylvania's Hugh Scott as minority whip, the young Turks of the Democratic Party joined in open revolt against their hierarchical chieftains. Rejecting the Eisenhower-Johnson concept of consensus, they demanded younger, more aggressive leadership and distinctively Democratic programs to revivify the party's claim to national leadership in the years to come. At stake were many political fortunes, young and old, and the relationship that the predominantly Democratic 91st Congress will have with the Nixon Administration...