We may repeat the awful revolutionary history of the 20th century because of the vulnerability of social movements to demagoguery.

Mills insisted that a sociologist's proper subject was the intersection of biography and history.

Some fine day, Democrats may figure out how to get on the right side of the value divide - how to define America as a place of the common good and not a playground of the strong.

Collectively, we are in thrall to media - because they deliver to us many of the psychic goods we crave, and we know no other way to live.

The mobilisation which Bush has been able to perform since 11 September 2001 has to be fought - at least by Americans - in the name of a wise, honourable and democratic patriotism.

Who of us does not recognize that the life we live, however larded with brave talk about values and thought and ideals, is not actually a life dedicated to immersion in the endless torrent of images, songs, sounds and stories?

I am a realist as well as an idealist, and I think that it is incumbent upon those of us in opposition to try to work within what are always arduous circumstances to stretch the limits of the possible.