"In this new society there has come about a situation in which many who have lost faith in prevailing loyalties have not acquired new ones, and so they pay no attention to politics of any kind. They are not radical, not liberal, not conservative, not reactionary. They are inactionary. They are out of it. If we accept the Greek definition of the idiot as an altogether private man, then we must conclude that many American and Soviet citizens are now idiots. This spiritual condition--and I choose the phrase with care--is the key to many contemporary problems as well as to much political bewilderment. Intellectual 'conviction' and moral 'belief' are not necessary, in either the ruled or the rulers, for a ruling power to persist and even to flourish. The prevalence of mass indifference is surely one of the major political facts about the Western societies today" (The Causes of World War III, 1958, pp. 81-82).