Karl Popper on Public Opinion

Via Don Boudreaux:

From page 354 of Karl Popper’s important 1963 collection, Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge; specifically, it’s from Popper’s 1956 essay (originally a 1954 address to the Mont Pelerin Society) entitled “Public Opinion and Liberal Principles”:

That intangible and vague entity called public opinion sometimes reveals an unsophisticated shrewdness or, more typically, a moral sensitivity superior to that of the government in power.  Nevertheless, it is a danger to freedom if it is not moderated by a strong liberal tradition.

By “liberal tradition,” Popper here, of course, does not mean the illiberal statist tradition that today flatters itself with the euphemistic name “Progressivism.”  He means, instead, classical liberalism.