Not only were all opinions equally to be tolerated but everyone and anyone in the society should be equally able to express them. Truth was actually the creation of many voices and many minds, no one of which was more important than another and each of which made its own separate and equally significant contribution to the whole. Solitary opinions of single persons may now have counted for less, but in their statistical collectivity they added up to something far more significant than ever existed before. They became what Americans obsessively labeled “public opinion.”46
