For the first time in American history, men in authority are talking about an 'emergency' without a foreseeable end,...Such men as these are crackpot… - C. Wright Mills

The two greatest blinders of the intellectual who today might fight against the main drift are new and fascinating career chances, which often involve opportunities to practice his skill rather freely, and the ideology of liberalism, which tends to expropriate his chance to think straight. The two go together, for the liberal ideology, as now used by intellectuals, acts as a device whereby he can take advantage of the new career chances but retain the illusion that his soul remains his own.

Today in the United States there is no Left: practical political activities are monopolized by an irresponsible two-party system; cultural activities - although formally quite free - tend to become nationalist or commercial or mere private.
Today in Western Europe what remains of the older Left is weak; its remnants have become inconsequential as a cultural and political center of insurgent opposition. "The Left" has indeed become "established." Even if the Left wins state power, as in Britain, it often seems to its members to have little room for maneuver - in he world or in the nation.

Religion, virtually without fail, provides the army at war with its blessings, and recruits from among its officials the chaplain, who in military costume counsels and consoles and stiffens the morale of men at war.