To see democracy as a culture of free expression is to foreground its susceptibility to end-less evolution, even danger. This is more than an academic distinction. And the direction any democracy takes largely depends on its tools of communication and the passions they promote. Democracies can be liberal or illiberal, populist or consensus based, but those are potential outcomes that emerge from this open culture.
Moreover, it’s better to think of democracy less as a government type and more as an open communicative culture. This description isn’t wrong so much as narrow it identifies the core features of democracy, but it doesn’t capture the constitutive condition of this type of society. We are told, time and again, that the touch-stone of any democratic society is the universal right to vote and a government that enshrines the law. In almost every major work on the subject, democracy is reduced to a body of institutions and practices. This book makes an unconventional claim about democracy. ( Book Excerpt from 'The Paradox of Democracy' Co-author of The Paradox of Democracy: Free Speech, Open Media, and Perilous Persuasion. ( Illing, senior writer at Vox, and the host of its Conversations podcast. Zac Gershberg, he teaches journalism and media studies at Idaho State University. Today, On Point: The paradox of democracy. But there are no guarantees," Illing adds. "Sometimes that openness leads to fascism and sometimes it leads to liberalism. "But what we’re experiencing instead is confrontation with real world democracy, a wide open culture in which anyone can say anything and anyone can be persuaded of anything." "It is tempting to suggest that democracy is exploding at the seams," Sean Illing says. An American flag flies over Point State Park in Pittsburgh.
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