Public Opinion — Chapter XVI The Self-Centered Man

1. 1. Public opinion is often taken for granted in democratic theory, with little study of its sources and formation processes.
2. 2. Casual opinion, shaped by partial contact, tradition, and personal interests, resists realistic political thought based on exact record and analysis.
3. 3. Democracies have mystified public opinion, while skilled organizers understood how to create majorities on election day.
4. 4. Eighteenth-century democratic thinkers needed an infallible origin for the new social order, finding it in the doctrine of popular sovereignty.
5. 5. Both aristocrats and democrats assumed that the art of government was a natural endowment, differing only on who possessed it.
6. 6. Spontaneous politics are only possible within the range of a ruler's direct and certain knowledge, which conflicts with large democratic electorates.
7. 7. The key inventions for bringing the unseen world into judgment—measurement, record, and analysis—were not available to eighteenth-century political theorists.
8. 8. Political thinkers from Plato to democratic theorists have revolved around the self-centered man who sees the world through a few pictures in his head.