1922 · English

Public Opinion

Walter Lippmann

Read text ↓View source edition ↗Download text

3 selected passages and classifications

Passage 1

The democratic fallacy has been its preoccupation with the origin of government rather than with the processes and results. The democrat has always assumed that if political power could be derived in the right way, it would be beneficent. His whole attention has been on the source of power, since he is hypnotized by the belief that the great thing is to express the will of the people, first because expression is the highest interest of man, and second because the will is instinctively good. But no amount of regulation at the source of a river will completely control its behavior, and while democrats have been absorbed in trying to find a good mechanism for originating social power, that is to say a good mechanism of voting and representation, they neglected almost every other interest of men. For no matter how power originates, the crucial interest is in how power is exercised. What determines the quality of civilization is the use made of power. And that use cannot be controlled at the source.

Government, measurement, and surveillance Crowds, media, and public opinion human institutions · advances effective will · rejects govern · advances Rights and self-government Economic and material power Conditional or mixed

Lippmann argues that democracy cannot secure good government merely by arranging the proper origin of political power or expressing popular will. Human autonomy and dignity depend instead on how power is exercised and on the practical results of government, so political power must be evaluated and governed beyond the act of voting.

Local word range 78101–78525

Passage 2

In all these instances we must note particularly one common factor. It is the insertion between man and his environment of a pseudo-environment. To that pseudo-environment his behavior is a response. But because it is behavior, the consequences, if they are acts, operate not in the pseudo-environment where the behavior is stimulated, but in the real environment where action eventuates. If the behavior is not a practical act, but what we call roughly thought and emotion, it may be a long time before there is any noticeable break in the texture of the fictitious world. But when the stimulus of the pseudo-fact results in action on things or other people, contradiction soon develops.

Cognition, attention, and judgment Crowds, media, and public opinion meaning and understanding · advances selection and judgment · considers Meaning, experience, and interpretation Conditional or mixed Individual Interpersonal Institutional Mind and body Administration and public order

Lippmann argues that action is guided through socially made representations of an environment, whose practical consequences nonetheless unfold in the real world.

Chapter I, "The World Outside and the Pictures in Our Heads"

Passage 3

Without some form of censorship, propaganda in the strict sense of the word is impossible. In order to conduct a propaganda there must be some barrier between the public and the event. Access to the real environment must be limited, before anyone can create a pseudo-environment that he thinks wise or desirable. For while people who have direct access can misconceive what they see, no one else can decide how they shall misconceive it, unless he can decide where they shall look, and at what.

Government, measurement, and surveillance Crowds, media, and public opinion human institutions · advances dependence · considers Economic and material power Meaning, experience, and interpretation Diminishes autonomy Interpersonal Institutional Administration and public order Mind and body

Propaganda works here by arranging access and attention: an institution that controls what people can see can steer the public's interpretation of events.

Chapter III, "The Contact Between the World Outside and the Pictures in Our Heads"

Text

107,276 words

Loading text…