You seem to assume that public opinion is an independent variable, but it&#x27;s not. It shifts in response to elite opinion, media coverage, how poll questions are asked, and no doubt other things. It is as much an effect as a cause of the forces that shift policy; only in dramatic cases does it become causal. Appealing to public opinion to predict that the status quo will persist is therefore a historical fallacy.<p>There&#x27;s an example of this in Boswell&#x27;s Life of Johnson. Here is Johnson, the great English Tory, arguing in 1769 that general warrants are a non-issue because the public doesn&#x27;t care:<p><i>[Johnson] would not admit the importance of the question concerning the legality of general warrants. &quot;Such a power (he observed) must be vested in every government to answer particular cases of necessity; and there can be no just complaint but when it is abused, for which those who administer government must be answerable. It is a matter of such indifference, a matter about which the people care so very little, that were a man to be sent over Britain to offer them an exemption for it at a halfpenny a piece, very few would purchase it.&quot; This was a specimen of that laxity of talking, which I had heard him fairly acknowledge; for surely, while the power of granting general warrants was supposed to be legal, and the apprehension of them hung over our heads, we did not possess that security of freedom, congenial to our happy constitution, and which, by the intrepid exertions of Mr. Wilkes [1], has been happily established.</i> [2]<p>It&#x27;s striking how modern Johnson&#x27;s arguments about general warrants—the mass surveillance issue of his time—sound now. He was probably correct about the public and could have cited polls had they existed. Yet that was far from dispositive: the American Revolution was imminent, and to Boswell, writing 20 years later, it is so obvious that Johnson was on the wrong side of history that he hastens to make clear that <i>he</i> (Boswell) wasn&#x27;t.<p>1. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;John_Wilkes" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;John_Wilkes</a><p>2. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;books.google.ca&#x2F;books?id=qBFXAAAAYAAJ&amp;pg=PA255&amp;lpg=PA255&amp;dq=%22he+would+not+admit+the+importance%22+general+warrants&amp;source=bl&amp;ots=s3ZsrSfApC&amp;sig=G8ueW1Vbu3k4vWZO-BWqsXOh_IE&amp;hl=en&amp;sa=X&amp;ved=0CB8Q6AEwAWoVChMIpfOhjYPFyAIVj5WICh19FA7V#v=onepage&amp;q=%22he%20would%20not%20admit%20the%20importance%22%20general%20warrants&amp;f=false" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;books.google.ca&#x2F;books?id=qBFXAAAAYAAJ&amp;pg=PA255&amp;lpg=P...</a><p>p.s. I hope it&#x27;s obvious, but this is just a personal comment and not
moderation-related.