Political, intellectual, and social leadership, in order to preserve its vitality needs a feeling of effective responsibility to a body of public opinion as wide, as varied, and as exacting as that of the whole community.
The desirable democratic object, implied in the traditional democratic demand for equality, consists precisely in that of bestowing a share of the responsibility and the benefits, derived from political and economic association, upon the whole community.

Democracies have assumed and have been right in assuming that a proper diffusion of effective responsibility and substantial benefits is the one means whereby a community can be supplied with an ultimate and sufficient bond of union.
The American democracy has attempted to manufacture a sufficient bond out of the equalization of rights: but such a bond is, as we have seen, either a rope of sand or a link of chains.

A similar object must be achieved in some other way; and the ultimate success of democracy depends upon its achievement.
The fundamental political and social problem of a democracy may be summarized in the following terms.

A democracy, like every political and social group, is composed of individuals, and must be organized for the benefit of its constituent members.

But the individual has no chance of effective personal power except by means of the secure exercise of certain personal rights.