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Academic

: Essentially Contested America

Fox-News and Rush Limbaugh: Enemies of Democracy

By Robert Justin Lipkin

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American "journalism" contributes to democracy's demise when it acts duplicitously, recklessly, or when it attempts to game the electoral system. Indeed, deliberative democracy cannot tolerate for long, intentional deception on the part of the media.

Nor can civil society tolerate admonitions to game the electoral system by urging voters to cast their votes strategically in an opposing Party's primary in order to help select a weaker opponent in the fall.

This is a travesty of republican democracy, the theory of self-government that embraces elections to help generate the reflective judgment of the community. Strategic voting is anathema to any authentic system of self-government.

If Fox-News and Rush Limbaugh weren't already such monumental disgraces, they certainly are now. While their inmprecations are protected speech, to deny the destructive force of such speech, the people--media, politicians, and citizens--must deny these anti-democratic forces a platofrm from which to attack our constitutional traditions. Shunning them politically may be the only solution.

Full post as published by Essentially Contested America on May 09, 2008 (boomark / email).