The magazine?s 75th anniversary issue celebrates the work of founder David Lawrence, though it?s likely few of the current writers would have nice things to say about him if he were working today.
At its height, his column appeared in more than 300 newspapers. Lawrence expressed his views on states’ rights, small government, and a fiercely anticommunist foreign policy. And while his columns were shaping public opinion, he founded publications that came to shape and define modern journalism.
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Lawrence deplored the expansion of the federal government that accompanied the election of Roosevelt ? “stumbling into socialism,” he called it. (“I’m the only Democrat left in this town,” he once told Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas.) He opposed the federal government’s forays into labor relations and the increased regulation that resulted from the interstate commerce clause, both of which he regarded as unconstitutional. The United Mine Workers dubbed him “Popgun Lawrence” for his relentless sniping at rules that strengthened the position of organized labor.
Today U.S. News gives us a different perspective, as evidenced here and here and here.
