And so, I’ve again reneged on a promise to blog more frequently. I’ve been working / interning, so much of my day is consumed by the mundane. Some of my time at home is also devoted to editing and proof-reading any number of soon-to-be-published academic articles. Plus, I’ve also been catching up on my reading on legal philosophy, so outside of work, I’m usually in a ruminatory frame of mind, not at all conducive to dolling out trenchant social critiques.
One of the books I’ve been reading is Cass Sunstein’s Republic.com (not the latest edition, Republic.com 2.0, which I must get my hands on). His basic thesis is a provocative and counter-intuitive one: government should regulate the Internet in order to promote freedom of speech. His supporting arguments are too intricate to be set out in full here.
An important cornerstone of his view, however, is that there is a distinction between ‘freedom’ in the sense of consumer sovereignty, and ‘freedom’ in the sense of a true deliberative democracy. Left to their own devices, people will choose based on their pre-existing inclinations, i.e. as mere consumers of information. These inclinations, however, are the very product of the environment we happen to be placed in.
Continue reading ‘Why blogging is not the antidote to illiberalism.’
