Tensions

There is something to be said for the idea that democracy, and indeed that liberal institutions, bring about, by their internal logic, their own downfall. More exactly, that they bring into being precisely what their theoreticians hope to avoid. The Marxists and critical theorists have made a tremendous muck out of this idea though, and it is very necessary to ignore them, or at least to rescue the kernel of truth buried in their sententious twaddle. Anyway Schopenhauer says something interesting in this regard in the Parerga and Paralipomena:

“Freedom of the press is to the machinery of the state what the safety-valve is to the steam engine: every discontent is by means of it immediately relieved in words—indeed, unless this discontent is very considerable, it exhausts itself in this way. If, however, it is very considerable, it is as well to know of it in time, so as to redress it.—One the other hand, however, freedom of the press must be regarded as a permit to sell poison: poison of the mind and poison of the heart. For what cannot be put into the heads of the ignorant and credulous masses?—especially if you hold before them the prospect of gain and advantages. And of what misdeeds is man not capable once something has been put into his head? I very much fear, therefore, that the dangers of press freedom outweigh its usefulness…”

It is really a terrible bind in which he who despairs of democracy and liberal institutions finds himself. What on earth is one supposed to do instead, when everything else seems, if not worse, then at least as bad? For he who doubts that freedom of the press is a problem, I submit one fertile source of empirical data which fail to refute such worries: Americans.