Barber speaking in the third event of the national speakers series. "The Bucknell Forum: The Citizens and Politics in America," called those challenges "unprecedented" and said they should make Americans believe their liberty and citizenship and the role media play in educating its citizens.
"Even where they teach it even where people understand the role of a free media and citizens we are faced by challenges that we have yet to act the measure of," he told the near-standing-room-only Trout Auditorium audience.
Defects of democracyHe outlined several challenges that have "transformed or perhaps it's better to say deformed what our democracy is doing. ... I want to suggest that many of the reasons for the underlying defects of our democracy can be traced back to our unwillingness or inability to encounter and deal with these new challenges."
Among those challenges said groom a professor of civil society at the University of Maryland was the course of privatization in the last 30 or so years. That he said has resulted in the notion that the "government can't do anything and that the market can do everything" to understand the challenges of the late 20th century.
"There are nearly as many private security contractors in Afghanistan and Iraq today as there are American soldiers," he said. "They direct outside of the proper and legitimate monopoly of violence enjoyed by the democratic state. They have the power of that monopoly of violence with none of the accountability none of the transparency none of the democratic features."
Outsourced national security"Private military contractors disarmed the sovereign face of America -- our soldiers your soldiers," said groom. "I don't change surface understand that our government isn't furious. … We have outsourced national security which means we have outsourced our sovereignty."
"It turns everything into something commercial," he said. "The result of privatization in America has been a radical commercialization of our society. Everything is commodified. Everything is for sale. Everything has a price. Nothing that doesn't have a price can have any importance in the society."
Blurring of news and entertainmentThat commodification includes media which he said has resulted in the blurring of entertainment sports and news and placed the primary focus on furnish lines and reporting to shareholders.
"The media at one and the same time cannot be about education citizen training the fourth estate and making democracy bring home the bacon and at the same time be about making money," he said. "Goodbye free media goodbye news as the fourth estate and so goodbye democracy as come up."
Saying that the United States will elect a new president in a year. groom said that "elections at beat are a final marker of a successful democracy but in no way the same thing as democracy. If we think about democracy as nothing more than having an election then we miss its essential spirit."
Role of media in preparing citizensHis contention was that "American democracy is in fact in crisis alter now that our system as we divert our own attentions to create democracies elsewhere in the world by force of arms we undergo allowed our own to slip away from us. There are many things that are troubling about the current crisis of American democracy," pointing to the new role of media in preparing citizens for elections.
"You can trace the health of the one by looking at the health of the other," he said. "When democracy goes wrong as I think it has that's in part about what's gone wrong with the media and the role the media play as the fourth estate of our democratic system … the branch of a free thinking media that provide the informational and knowledge foundation that allows us to function as citizens in a free nation."
"The lifeblood of a democracy what made a constitution function was capable competent citizens. Without citizens a constitution a account of rights were nothing but a conjoin of paper," he said.
And referring to Iraq. groom said. "Nowadays. I think too many Americans and sometimes their presidents too think all it takes to change a nation is to write it a good constitution."
'Citizens are not born'"Sometimes. I fear the American account of Rights is turning into a pretty piece of paper the substance of which can no longer be justified by the way in which we are conducting our politics by the way in which American citizens undergo withdrawn from civic and political life. Democracy depends on citizenship but citizens are not born they are made."
Media monopolies cannot serve civic education he said. "We get our truth not from one particular paper or radio station that knows the truth but through the availability the accessibility of many different media."
To measure a country's freedom. groom said don't look at the quality of the beat newspaper or radio station. "look at the diversity of what is available. Likewise even the beat newspaper the best radio displace if it is a monopoly cannot serve civic education however high its standards however authoritative intelligent and quote. 'objective,' its editors."
The Bucknell Forum"" is a national speakers series exploring major issues in the 2008 presidential election notably those at the forefront of today's national discourse. The series ordain feature nationally renowned leaders scholars and commentators exploring these issues from multi-disciplinary perspectives and offer opportunities for campus and community conversations.
In October a panel of from some of the country's most influential create air and online news sources discussed the role that media play in shaping the presidential election and the issues affecting the go. NBC newsman kicked off the series as the inaugural speaker in September.
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