If public opinion is ill-informed, unintelligent, prejudiced and misguided, it becomes a great threat to the strength, stability and unity of the democratic State. Then the watchdog of democracy becomes the mad dog of tyranny. Under a dictatorship, it becomes an instrument of violence and intimidation.
The dictator bans all parties except his own; he controls all the agencies of public opinion and propaganda, while the people are denied the rights and freedoms of speech, press, association and public meeting. He indoctrinates the public mind and thus manufactures public opinion in his own favour. When public opinion is made and influenced by ignorance, prejudice, parochialism, and petty hatreds, class antagonism, and vested interests, it ceases to be public.
Then the voice of the people is no longer the voice of God, but becomes the voice Satan. Another source of polluting the spring of public opinion are the frustrations, maladjustments and such other mental and moral aberrations of the otherwise normal individuals. They prevent them from thinking and reacting rationally and properly to the public problems and issues, especially in times of storms and strains of modern life and in the national emergencies and crises.