"Such images of democracy are still used as working justifications of power in America. Surely we must all now recognize such descriptions as more fairy tale than useful approximation. The issues that now shape man's fate are neither raised nor decided by any public at large. The idea of a society that is at bottom composed of publics and run by publics is not a matter of fact; it is the proclamation of an ideal and, as well, the assertion of a legitimation masquerading as fact.

I. As the political order is enlarged and centralized it becomes less political and more bureaucratic, less the locale of a struggle than an object to be managed.
II. The old middle-classes--once an independent source of democratic strength--are transformed into a set of white-collar men who duly make their declarations of dependence.
III. Mass communications do not link and feed discussion circles; they convert them into mere media markets. They do not truly communicate; they trivialize and they distract.
IV. Communities decline; the metropolitan segregation of men and women into narrow routines and milieus causes them to lose any sense of integrity as a public that might have structural relevance for the history of their society.
V. Voluntary associations, open to individuals and small groups and connecting them with centres of power, no longer are dominant features of the social structure of the United States" (The Causes of World War III, 1958, pp. 39-40).