The Paradox of Democracy

For several decades, the American mainstream press endeavored to satisfy the political demand of neutrality, sacrificing even objectivity itself to avoid labels of bias.

Anne Applebaum’s Twilight of Democracy is another deeply instructive study of the illiberal drift of so many democracies across the globe.3 However, like so many others, Applebaum’s view proceeds from a default assumption that democracy is a discrete system. But that assumption prevents us from understanding democracy as a constantly evolving cultu

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.

The wager of democracy is precisely this: that a free society must allow for isegoria no matter how unseemly the results.

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.

with so much noise on social media and so many news outlets disseminating contradictory information, citizens are justifiably confused and cynical. Many find it easier to retreat into echo chambers and share misinformation than discern what’s real amid the chaos of the public sphere.

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.

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.