The ways in which issues and the popular will on any issue are being
manufactured is exactly analogous to the ways of commercial advertising.
We find the same attempts to contact the subconscious. We find the same
technique of creating favorable and unfavorable associations which are
the more effective the less rational they are. We find the same
evasions and reticences and the same trick of producing opinion by
reiterated assertion that is successful precisely to the extent to which
it avoids rational argument and the danger of awakening the critical
faculties of the people. And so on. Only, all these arts have
infinitely more scope in the sphere of public affairs than they have in
the sphere of private and professional life. The picture of the
prettiest girl that ever lived will in the long run prove powerless to
maintain the sales of a bad cigarette. There is no equally effective
safeguard in the case of political decisions. Many decisions of fateful
importance are of a nature that makes it impossible for the public to
experiment with them at its leisure and at moderate cost. Even if that
is possible, however, judgment is as a rule not so easy to arrive at as
it is in the case of the cigarette, because effects are less easy to
interpret.
(Joseph A. Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy [1942])
Note from KBJ: A good example of what Schumpeter is talking about is the call for homosexual "marriage." Over and over again, you hear talk of "marriage equality." This is designed not to stimulate rational thought but to bypass it. Suppose a group of people advocated changes to the law of statutory rape, so that adults could have sexual intercourse with children. Would calling this issue "sexual equality" carry any weight? Of course not. People would immediately see that the things being compared—sex between adults and sex between adults and children—are not morally comparable. Justice, as Aristotle taught us long ago, requires that likes be treated alike and unlikes differently (in proportion to their differences). The question in the case of marriage is whether homosexual relationships are like (i.e., "equal to") heterosexual relationships. This is a substantive question that calls for careful analysis and argumentation. Merely calling it "marriage equality" (however many times, and in however strained a voice) begs the question, for it assumes, without argument, that the things being compared are relevantly alike.
