"Moreover, if citizens of a country express their opinions and feelings....

[marmar]

over an extended period of time without evoking a meaningful response, then they naturally begin to feel angry. If the flow of communication provides little opportunity for citizens to express themselves meaningfully, they naturally begin to feel frustration and powerlessness. This has happened all too often to minority communities who suffer prejudice and are not given a fair hearing by the majority for complaints.
My generation learned in our youth to expect that democracy would work. Our frustration with the ineptitude and moral insensitivity of our national leaders in the last several years is balanced by the knowledge we gained in an earlier time and is influenced by the basic posture we adopted during our first experiences as citizens. Although many in my generation became disillusioned with self-government, most of us still believe that democracy works - or can work - that communication and participation are the keys to making it work well.
In the United States of America, the torch of democracy - to use John F. Kennedy's metaphor - is regularly passed from one generation to the next. But what happens if the torch is passed to a generation that has learned to adopt a different posture toward democracy and to assume that their opinions are not likely to evoke an appropriate, much less consistent, response from the broader community?
Many young Americans now seem to feel that the jury is still out on whether American democracy actually works or not........"

- Al Gore, from "The Assault on Reason"


Very thought-provoking and disturbing stuff. I'm a Gen-Xer, and I'm beginning to wonder if that "torch of democracy" has been dropped and extinguished. :cry:

[w8liftinglady]

1. a quote from another document

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.-The Constitution