Thomas Jefferson once wrote that "whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government; that, whenever things get so far wrong as to attract their notice, they may be relied on to set them right." He also said: "If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." But we are right now in a period of great vulnerability. As noted earlier, when television became the primary source of information in the United States, the "marketplace of ideas" changed radically. Most communication was in only one direction, with a sharp decline in participatory democracy. During this period of vulnerability for American democracy-while traditional television is still the dominant source of information and before the Internet is sufficiently developed and secured as an independent, neutral medium-there are other steps that can and should be taken to foster more connectivity in our self-government.
( Al Gore )
[ The Assault on Reason ]
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