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Foreword
As I sit down to write this foreword, it is perhaps only fitting that I do so in the midst of America’s quadrennial (and noisy) exercise in participatory democracy: the presidential election. The Republican National Convention in Tampa has just ended (with Mr. Mitt Romney anointed the party standard bearer), loyal Democrats will rally around President Barack Obama at their convention in Charlotte this week, and sixty-four days from now the country will head to the polls to elect a national leader. During this election cycle there will be talk, talk, and more talk. Impassioned speeches, attack ads, editorials, testimonials, talking heads, and twitter mania; insistent e-pleas for contributions to keep it all going; and, of course, charges and countercharges that the other side is bending the facts to secure the election.1 Political factions and interest groups abound, all speaking and writing and texting their conflicting views at the same time, all covered by a ubiquitous media that reports, polls and analyzes 24/7. And from this cacophony of free speech––this “uninhibited, robust and wide-open” debate2––majoritarian consensus, perhaps even truth, will emerge.
Or so the theory goes.