Philip Dru: Administrator: A Story of Tomorrow, 1920 – 1935

Description

Col. Edward Mandell House tried to remain anonymous, but eventually his vision of America, as represented in his novel “Philip Dru: Administrator” became known.  Why anonymous?  Perhaps because it conveyed precisely what one of his critics said, “Suffice it to know Philip Dru is an autobiography of the colonel himself and solves the conundrum how to get rid of the Constitution.”  Given House’s close working relationship with President Woodrow Wilson and Wilson’s own strained relationship with the foundational document of the country, bravely testifying to one’s actual views is manifestly politically unwise.  Especially when that vision cheers on a progressive-led civil war in America to root out and destroy completely the rugged ‘reactionary’ revolutionists preventing the arrival of The Administrative State: Utopia.  In view of continued progressive disdain for ordinary Americans and the Constutition–which stands in their way today, as it stood in Wilson’s way–“Philip Dru: Administrator” provides an important glimpse into the Bureaucratic mind, free from constraints, and allowed to dream big.  May it never be free from constraints.