One of the fi rst people Röpke contacted when he began developing his plans for a new journal was Walter Lippmann. After learning of Röpke’s proposal, Lippmann elected not to become involved. Hayek also developed “rather the impression that [Lippmann] deliberately avoided meeting me when I was in the States last Spring,” adding that “he has certainly kept very aloof from our other friends in America with whom he used to agree.” Together, he and Röpke concluded that Lippmann was “unpredictable,” subject to “ever more doubts,” and moving in the “wrong direction.” Despite Lippmann’s central role in the movement’s foundational period, he would never again engage directly and purposively with the members of their intellectual community. He extricated himself from the neoliberal movement at the very moment when it began to establish the durable structures that would lay the groundwork for its pop u lar success. This deliberate disengagement has led most histories of neoliberalism to ignore Lippmann, like Rougier.

Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion, loc. 216