2004–12–29

Is This What Democracy Looks Like?

The folks that comprise the Why War? Wobbly Squirrel Collective have written a great article which asks: Is This What Democracy Looks Like? They get off to a great start with this quote from Noam Chomsky:

One conception of democracy has it that a democratic society is one in which the public has the means to participate in some meaningful way in the management of their own affairs and the means of information are open and free. […] An alternative conception of democracy is that the public must be barred from managing their own affairs and the means of information must be kept narrowly and rigidly controlled. That may sound like an odd conception of democracy, but it’s important to understand that it is the prevailing conception.