It has been said you can prove anything by quoting the Bible. The book contains many inconsistencies.
And so with Dewey. In one book he will say brazenly, and elaborate on at length, that there is no such thing as inalienable rights, that liberty is just a power struggle, etc. And in another book, he praises in passing, without elaborating, the Bill of Rights. Or in another book, go on for pages speaking against using force to set up a socialist state, and then end with: except when it’s really necessary — totally undermining what he’d just said.
When you take food and mix poison with it, what you get is poisoned food. The poison is the operative ingredient.
Despite Dewey’s inconsistency the predominant outline — the real message, what is really new — the poison — is as I have presented in these pages. Any contradiction is Dewey’s; I haven’t quoted him out of context. The quotes won’t go away by quoting more.