The Paradox of Democracy

There is no democracy without an open process of deliberation, and there is no democracy whose processes of deliberation escape the hazards of persuasive rhetoric.

For many, persuasion still signals coercion or manipulation, yet the persuasion of rhetoric is the fundamental medium of democracy—a medium that, like all other communication technologies, opens itself to exploitation.

Free speech does not guarantee truth or virtue; it simply allows for the confrontation of persuasive communication.

Yet conflating democracy with good government would be an intellectual and historical mistake. Democracy, from the Athenians to today, has never promised good government. It has only promised—it can only promise—a freedom of deliberation among citizens and their representatives, with rhetoric as the key tool with which to exercise such freedom.

a flood of new digital communication platforms inundating free societies with instantaneous information and nonstop networked dialogue.

In his 1922 opus, Public Opinion, Lippmann poses a straightforward question: Can citizens achieve a basic knowledge of public affairs and then make reasonable choices about what to do? If the answer is no, then the entire democratic project is at best a folly.

democracies are defined by their cultures of communication. If a democracy consists of citizens deciding, collectively, what ought to be done, then the manner through which they persuade one another determines nearly everything else that follows. And that privileges media ecology as the master political science.

All democratic communities are held together not by a shared conception of truth but by a commonly recognized experience and a commitment to active dialogue.

We’re now confronting the greatest structural challenge to democracy we’ve ever seen: a truly open society. Without gatekeepers, there are no constraints on discourse. Digital technology has changed everything. Consequently, reality is up for grabs in a way it never has been before.