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democracy by lawsuit. The number of lawyers and cases soared in the 1970s and 1980s.
Ezra Klein • Abundance
We hold that democracy demands equal access to goods, services, and knowledge. The culture of knowledge in America has been a servant of democratic governance. This instrumental view of knowledge meant that three principles would become fundamental to American-style democracy: The press must be free, the government must be open and accountable to
... See moreAbby Smith Rumsey • When We Are No More: How Digital Memory Is Shaping Our Future
Walter Lippmann, for example, wrote in 1920: “There can be no liberty for a community which lacks the means by which to detect lies.”
Neil Postman • Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business
Wilson’s economic analysis was unsophisticated and not quite responsive to the specific banking problem. Individuals did lack credit, but not merely—not even primarily—due to monopoly. He ignored the larger issue identified by Paul Warburg—the need to pool reserves to ensure a continual flow of loans.
Roger Lowenstein • America's Bank
The antimonopoly fervency in America traces back to Andrew Jackson and earlier. Hofstadter locates it in a culture of “farmers and small-town entrepreneurs—ambitious, mobile, speculative, antiauthoritarian, egalitarian, and competitive.”
Charles R. Morris • The Tycoons: How Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, Jay Gould, and J. P. Morgan Invented the American Supereconomy

The bankers of the country may have the highest and purest intentions, but no one class can comprehend the country; no one set of interests can safely be suffered to dominate it.”
Roger Lowenstein • America's Bank
Constitutionally guaranteed freedom of association is key in pluralizing the state and balancing the three branches of government, so that neither dominates the others.
Adrian Pabst • Postliberal Politics: The Coming Era of Renewal
John Locke, who held that individuals had a right to turn natural resources that belonged to no one into individual property for personal use, through labor. The Lockean idea justified all manner of accomplishments and violations in American history, including the colonial seizure of Native lands and the justification of resource extraction via the
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