PUBLIC OPINION by WALTER LIPPMANN TO FAYE LIPPMANN ...

But if one could assume that there was circulation through the whole
system between government departments, factories, offices, and the
universities; a circulation of men, a circulation of data and of
criticism, the risks of dry rot would not be so great. Nor would it be
true to say that these intelligence bureaus will complicate life. They
will tend, on the contrary, to simplify, by revealing a complexity now
so great as to be humanly unmanageable. The present fundamentally
invisible system of government is so intricate that most people have
given up trying to follow it, and because they do not try, they are
tempted to think it comparatively simple. It is, on the contrary,
elusive, concealed, opaque. The employment of an intelligence system
would mean a reduction of personnel per unit of result, because by
making available to all the experience of each, it would reduce the
amount of trial and error; and because by making the social process
visible, it would assist the personnel to self-criticism. It does not
involve a great additional band of officials, if you take into account
the time now spent vainly by special investigating committees, grand
juries, district attorneys, reform organizations, and bewildered
office holders, in trying to find their way through a dark muddle.
If the analysis of public opinion and of the democratic theories in
relation to the modern environment is sound in principle, then I do
not see how one can escape the conclusion that such intelligence work
is the clue to betterment. I am not referring to the few suggestions
contained in this chapter. They are merely illustrations. The task of
working out the technic is in the hands of men trained to do it, and
not even they can to-day completely foresee the form, much less the
details. The number of social phenomena which are now recorded is
small, the instruments of analysis are very crude, the concepts often
vague and uncriticized. But enough has been done to demonstrate, I
think, that unseen environments can be reported effectively, that they
can be reported to divergent groups of people in a way which is
neutral to their prejudice, and capable of overcoming their
subjectivism.
If that is true, then in working out the intelligence principle men
will find the way to overcome the central difficulty of
self-government, the difficulty of dealing with an unseen reality.
Because of that difficulty, it has been impossible for any
self-governing community to reconcile its need for isolation with the
necessity for wide contact, to reconcile the dignity and individuality
of local decision with security and wide coordination, to secure
effective leaders without sacrificing responsibility, to have useful
public opinions without attempting universal public opinions on all
subjects. As long as there was no way of establishing common versions
of unseen events, common measures for separate actions, the only image
of democracy that would work, even in theory, was one based on an