The key question for Lippmann wasn’t whether the average person was intelligent enough to make decisions about public policy; it was whether the average person could ever know enough to choose intelligently.

A properly liberal state is one in which individual rights are paramount; it protects the individual not only against the abuses of a tyrant but also against the abuses of democratic majorities. Think of liberal democracy as democracy with moral and legal buffers.

As John Dewey once observed, communication is not simply the pipe through which water flows. It locates humans squarely in the realm of meanings, and that struggle over meaning is always where democracy can be found.

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.

To function, democracies require more than just voting. Citizens are afforded access to information and an open system of debate. But throughout history, when new forms of communications arrive—from the disingenuous use of sophistic techniques developed in Athens to the social media–enabled spread of propaganda we see today—they often undermine the

technological maelstrom that saturates our own cultural environment

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.

To function, democracies require more than just voting. Citizens are afforded access to information and an open system of debate. But throughout history, when new forms of communications arrive—from the disingenuous use of sophistic techniques developed in Athens to the social media–enabled spread of propaganda we see today—they often undermine the