It is not an accident that the rise of democratic and republican forms of government in the modern period coincided with the rise of the public sphere of rational-critical debate.1 This is particularly clear in the case of America, where the founding itself was the product of a rich and robust public discussion and debate. Although many members of the Constitutional Convention were not college-educated, they nonetheless were very well-read and informed.2 At the time, it was even reported that some British booksellers were selling more law books in the colonies than in England.3 But although the genesis of government “of, by, and for the people” has its roots in a public sphere of rational-critical debate, such a foundation is equally necessary for the endurance and continued existence of such governments and societies. Yet today in America the public sphere of rational-critical debate has all but disappeared, in many ways existing only as a simulacrum of what it once was. For the most part, it has transformed into the mass media of opinions ready-made to consume and independent structures of sociological propaganda.4 This general weakening of the public sphere is connected to at least three socioeconomic factors, each of which in its own way undermines our ability as a society to participate in democratic behavior.
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