The Public Interest May Be

Successful Democratic Politicians Are Insecure And Intimidated Men. They Advance Politically Only As They Placate, Appease, Bribe, Seduce, Bamboozle, Or Otherwise Manage To Manipulate The Demanding And Threatening Elements In Their Constituencies. The Decisive Consideration Is Not Whether The Proposition Is Good But Whether It Is Popular -- Not Whether It Will Work Well And Prove Itself But Whether The Active Talking Constituents Like It Immediately. Politicians Rationalize This Servitude By Saying That In A Democracy Public Men Are The Servants Of The People.

When Distant And Unfamiliar And Complex Things Are Communicated To Great Masses Of People, The Truth Suffers A Considerable And Often A Radical Distortion. The Complex Is Made Over Into The Simple, The Hypothetical Into The Dogmatic, And The Relative Into An Absolute.

A Country Survives Its Legislation. That Truth Should Not Comfort The Conservative Nor Depress The Radical. For It Means That Public Policy Can Enlarge Its Scope And Increase Its Audacity, Can Try Big Experiments Without Trembling Too Much Over The Result. This Nation Could Enter Upon The Most Radical Experiments And Could Afford To Fail In Them.

A Useful Definition Of Liberty Is Obtained Only By Seeking The Principle Of Liberty In The Main Business Of Human Life, That Is To Say, In The Process By Which Men Educate Their Responses And Learn To Control Their Environment.

But What Is Propaganda, If Not The Effort To Alter The Picture To Which Men Respond, To Substitute One Social Pattern For Another?