Word: opinioned
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Dates: during 1920-1929
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...asked to believe that public opinion rules the Unitd States. It is the ultimate sovereign, the supreme law of the land. This is proposition number three in our fundamentalist decalogue. Government by public opinion is a phrase that slips easily from the tongue and has been so often repeated that most people believe it to be true. Yet public opinion, when you try to define it, proves to be a very elusive thing. What passes on public opinion, in perhaps the majority of cases, is simply the outcome of propegrade and counter-propaganda working the upon the traditions, prejudices, aversions...
...Public Opinion Not Spontaneous
...Public opinion does not exude spontaneously from the cogitations of the multitude...In large measure it is a manufactured product, prepared for the purpose of selling it to the people and marketed to them in the accustomed way. We are prone to forget that you can sell an idea to the people in the same way that you sell them any other commodity, from a Liberty Bond to a break and our politicians are the brokers who put through the sale. Our political brokers even deal in futures, and have marketed to the country a large block of that somewhat...
...Chance for Qualified Opinion...
...refundum as an expression of the public will. But this is merely one of the pleasant self-deceptions which a democracy likes to cherish. For a referendum is at best nothing more than a call for the yeas and nays, with no opportunity for anyone to voice a qualified opinion. It assumes that every voter is ready to say yes or no to any question that may be placed before him, whether it relate to the extension of a street-railway franchise, the independence of the Philippines, or the pay of the police force. The unthinking person may be able...