One great lesson that we can learn from its systematic absence in the work of the grand theorists is that every self-conscious thinker must at all ti… - C. Wright Mills

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.

People with advantages are loath to believe that they just happen to be people with advantages. They come readily to define themselves as inherently worthy of what they possess; they come to believe themselves 'naturally' elite, and, in fact, to imagine their possessions and their privileges as natural extensions of their own elite selves.

To really belong, we have got, first, to get it clear with ourselves that we do not belong and do not want to belong to an unfree world. As free men and women we have got to reject much of it and to know why we are rejecting it.