Someone mentioned to me today about the problems he noticed in the USA on his recent trip there. That gave me a chance to explain a little behind the philosophy of  "learning Torah." In the Litvak Yeshiva world [at least as I experienced it at Shar Yashuv and the Mir] learning Torah is the best way to help oneself and the whole world. It is not considered as hiding from the world but rather as the only true and effective means to help the world. And you can see this to some degree in the way politics is practiced in the USA which involves a lot of Lashon Hara and Bitul Torah. Are things so much better now than they were in Elizabethan England? People then also had some say in things because of he House of Commons, but not to the degree that we see now.