The Ghost in the White House / Some suggestions as to how a hundred million people (who are supposed in a vague, helpless way to haunt the white house) can make themselves felt with a president, how they can back him up, express themselves to him, be expressed by him, and get what they want

by Gerald Stanley Lee

Suddenly across a nation we look in a hundred thousand faces.

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§ 2. Why the Look-Up Club Looks Up.

The Constitution does not provide for an Imagination Department for the United States Government.

It has judicial, executive and legislative departments, but a department made up of men of vision to create, conceive and reconceive, go deeper and see further than law and restraints can go, does not exist in our Government.

We have a Judicial Department to decide on whether what is born has a right to live—a Legislative Department to pass rules under on how it shall be obliged to live—and an Executive Department to make it mind—but the department to create and to conceive for the people is lacking.

Government at best is practically a dear uncle or dear maiden-aunt institution.

Government as a physical expression is without functions of reproduction.

Government—contrary to the theory of the Germans—from the point of view of sheer power in projecting and determining the nature and well-being of men—the fate of men and the world—is superficial, is a staid, standardized, unoriginal affair—devoted to ready-made ideas like the Red Cross during the war.

This is what is the matter with a Government's posing in this or any other nation as a live body for the people.