But we want not only a genuine public opinion, but a progressive public opinion. We cannot understand once for all, we must be constantly understanding anew. At the same time that we see the necessity of creating the common will and giving voice to it, we must bear in mind that there should be no crystallizing process by which any particular expression of the common will should be taken as eternally right because it is the expression of the common will. It is right for to-day but not for to-morrow. The flaming fact is our daily life, whatever it is, leaping forever and ever out of the common will. Democracy is the ever-increasing volume of power pouring through men and shaping itself as the moment demands. Constitutional conventions are seeking the machinery by which the reason and justice which have existed among us can be utilized in our life. We must go beyond this and unseal the springs which will reveal the forms for the wisdom and justice of their day. This is life itself, the direct and aboriginal constructor. We meet with our neighbors at our civic club not in order to accumulate facts, but to learn how to release and how to control a constructive force which will build daily for us the habitation of our needs. Then indeed will our government be no longer directed by a “body of law,” but by the self-renewing appearing of the will of the people. The chief need of society to-day is an enlightened, progressive and organized public opinion, and the first step towards an enlightened and organized public opinion is an enlightened and organized group opinion. When public opinion becomes conscious of itself it will have a justified confidence in itself. Then the “people,” born of an associated life, will truly govern. Then shall we at last really have an America. ----- Footnote 84: Public opinion in a true democracy is a potential will. Therefore for practical purposes they are identical and I use them synonymously. Footnote 85: Our federal system of checks and balances thwarted the will of the people. The party system thwarted the will of the people. Our state governments were never designed to get at the will of the people. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ XXV NEIGHBORHOOD ORGANIZATION VS. PARTY ORGANIZATION Leaders or Bosses? -------------- NEIGHBORHOOD organization will prove fatal to party organization not only through the creating of a genuine will of the people, but also through the producing of real leaders to take the place of the bosses.