Much will be made, much more than deserved, of Al Gore’s recent speech, but I’d like to point out this:
Our founders knew all about the Roman Forum and the Agora in ancient Athens. They also understood quite well that in America, our public forum would be an ongoing conversation about democracy in which individual citizens would participate not only by speaking directly in the presence of others — but more commonly by communicating with their fellow citizens over great distances by means of the printed word. Thus they not only protected Freedom of Assembly as a basic right, they made a special point – in the First Amendment – of protecting the freedom of the printing press.
Their world was dominated by the printed word. …
And yet, as we meet here this morning, more than 40 years have passed since the majority of Americans received their news and information from the printed word. Newspapers are hemorrhaging readers … Radio, the internet, movies, telephones, and other media all now vie for our attention – but it is television that still completely dominates the flow of information in modern America.
And here is my point: it is the destruction of that marketplace of ideas that accounts for the “strangeness” that now continually haunts our efforts to reason together about the choices we must make as a nation.
The marketplace of ideas is wider than it’s ever been. Only a statist like Gore could see discussions spreading from one medium to a vast array of other media as “the destruction of the marketplace of ideas.” Heckuva lot easier to regulate the flow of ideas when there’s only one place for it, isn’t it, Mr. Whoops!-I-Invented-the-Internet?
Frankly,1 I believe our Founders would be pleased to learn of so many timely ways for citizens across this great nation to engage each other in debate over the issues of the day.
How can I describe my emotions at this catastrophe,
or how delineate the wretch whom with such infinite
pains and care I had endeavoured to form?
? Al “Victor Frankenstein” Gore
Note
1. No pun intended.
