Political Science has long been interested in opinion. It is supposed that expressed views are indicators of behavior or potential behavior and are therefore worthy of attention as aids in understanding the present and predicting the future. While there can be little doubt that people's feelings guide their actions, we can sometimes be deceived because manifest opinion may be merely an epiphenomenon derivative from other factors, rather than vice versa. This is a problem most evident when trying to relate the true designs of an ideological movement's leadership to its pronouncements.

The problem of community, as Proudhon understands it, is to reconcil individual freedom with social peace. His political theorizing can best be seen as a prolonged effort to achieve this reconciliation. Proudhon was not at all original in placing the problem of community, as thus conceived, at the top of his agenda. He was simply responding in the usual way to the challenge presented by the Revolution to all writers on politics in early nineteenth-century France.- By disrupting social order at the same time that it awakened demands for freedom, the Revolution had made an answer to the problem of community both urgent and difficult. A reconstructed French community both free and safe was clearly needed, but how could it be achieved? If pressing demands for freedom were met, a tenuous social peace would be endangered, while if peace were secured, demands for fredom would go unsatisfied. The need and the difficulty of reconciling peace and freedom under the circumstances prevailing in France led Proudhon, like so many of his contemporaries, to devote himself to finding an answer to the problem of community.

Popular elections are generally assumed to be the crucial element of democratic governments, but the significance of elections is so widely assumed that it is rarely examined. Although studies of voting behavior abound, there are relatively few theoretical or empirical investigations of the effects of voting on the total political system. To clarify our thinking, and as a preliminary to contemporary discussion, it may prove helpful to reexamine some major works of premodern European and American political thought.

The political thought of Leo Strauss commands the respect and admiration of even his critics. His critical intellectual carpentry is sharp, cutting, and often rebuking. His criticism of modernity, whether it be that of Machiavelli, Max Weber, an existentialist, or a scientific political scientist, is inspired by and deeply rooted in the Greek intellectualistic essentialism, particularly that of Aristotle, and the age-old tradition of nature and natural right as is shown in his work, Natural Right and History

Dr. Thomas Arnold, headmaster of Rugby school, was perhaps one of the most consistent totalitarians of the nineteenth century — he constitutes almost a pure type of totalitarianism and for this reason alone it is worth taking a look at his political ideas. He was also a good man — in certain respects a great man — and a study of Arnold's ideas will remind us that totalitarian theories are not always set forth by wicked men, but are often the conclusions of good ones. Two other reasons for examining Arnold's ideas may be mentioned; in the first place he had a considerable influence on a generation of Englishmen, as headmaster of Rugby; second, he is generally believed to have been a liberal, and it will I hope be clear from what follows that his was one of the most illiberal systems of politics ever set forth by English writers.

Almost thirty years ago Nicholas Mansergh concluded that the political parties in Northern Ireland did not fulfill the needs of the political system: that (to put his statement in more contemporary terms) the input functions, particularly that of political socialization, were enfeebled to the extent that one party constituted a permanent government while the other became an equally permanent opposition. What is more, underlying the party system and within the political society itself there existed no consensus on fundamentals: “There is no residue of political beliefs—as in Great Britain and the Free State—acceptable to both parties.”

Adenauer's role during the Rhineland occupation after the First World War has been the subject of bitter controversy. His critics, whether Nazi, Communist, or Socialist, have depicted him as a “Rhenish separatist” devoid of German patriotism and willing — perhaps even eager to — collaborate with France at the expense of national unity; parallels were often drawn between his alleged eagerness to create an independent West German Republic allied to France in 1919 and 1923, and his alleged indifference to the cause of German reunification after 1949. His foes depicted him steadily in the 1950's as a Prussophobe-Rhenish provincialist who preferred alliance with the Western Powers to any unification of Germany which might require the loosening of NATO ties.