Just
those qualities of the mind which determine what shall seem
interesting, important, familiar, personal, and dramatic, are the
qualities which in the first instance realistic opinion frustrates.
Therefore, unless there is in the community at large a growing
conviction that prejudice and intuition are not enough, the working
out of realistic opinion, which takes time, money, labor, conscious
effort, patience, and equanimity, will not find enough support. That
conviction grows as self-criticism increases, and makes us conscious
of buncombe, contemptuous of ourselves when we employ it, and on guard
to detect it. Without an ingrained habit of analyzing opinion when we
read, talk, and decide, most of us would hardly suspect the need of
better ideas, nor be interested in them when they appear, nor be able
to prevent the new technic of political intelligence from being
manipulated.
Yet democracies, if we are to judge by the oldest and most powerful of
them, have made a mystery out of public opinion. There have been
skilled organizers of opinion who understood the mystery well enough
to create majorities on election day. But these organizers have been
regarded by political science as low fellows or as "problems," not as
possessors of the most effective knowledge there was on how to create
and operate public opinion. The tendency of the people who have voiced
the ideas of democracy, even when they have not managed its action,
the tendency of students, orators, editors, has been to look upon
Public Opinion as men in other societies looked upon the uncanny
forces to which they ascribed the last word in the direction of
events.
Pages:
242
243
244
245
246
247
248
249
250
251
252
253
254
255
256
257
258
259
260
261
262
263
264
265
266