Democracy Dies On The Blackboard

“Democracy dies in darkness.” When the Washington Post formally adopted this phrase in 2017, critics immediately questioned the implication hidden within it. Why?

Perhaps because the phrase originated in a judicial ruling that echoed a modern myth about the role of newspapers in our country’s history. Judge Damon J. Keith of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit wrote in his opinion for the court in Detroit Free Press v. Ashcroft, 303 F.3d 681 (6th Cir. 2002): “Democracies die behind closed doors. The First Amendment, through a free press, protects the people’s right to know that their government acts fairly, lawfully, and accurately in deportation proceedings. When government begins closing doors, it selectively controls information rightfully belonging to the people.”

The opinion, and many subsequent interpretations of it, overstate the importance of newspapers as a self-proclaimed government “watchdog.” The media (not just newspapers) can shed valuable light on government affairs, but historically they’ve played a more critical part in the national discourse.

Dating back to the time of Revolutionary War pamphlets, the press shone brightest in its role as an advocate (see “Today’s Columnists Find Their Roots In Revolutionary War Era Pamphleteers,” Mendon-Honeoye Falls-Lima Sentinel, July 5, 2018). These pamphlets were the internet of colonial times. Anybody could say anything in print. The British government jailed people for expressing opinions contrary to the King’s wishes. That’s one reason we revolted.

Pamphlets and newspapers created civic participation. They forced citizens to wrestle with ideas. You can see this in action with the Federalist Papers/Anti-Federalist Papers. So important was the right of free speech that the Founding Fathers memorialized it in the First Amendment.

For almost a century following the Revolution, newspapers retained this historic role. That’s why you see “Republican” and “Democrat” in so many newspaper names. It wasn’t merely because of some truth in advertising regulation; it was because publishers proudly displayed their political preference.

Speaking of advertising, newspapers eventually discovered there was more money in attracting everybody than in preaching to just one political tribe.

By the early twentieth century, the business model shifted. Bigger circulation meant bigger advertising revenue. Suddenly, neutrality sold better than partisanship.

Or at least the appearance of neutrality did.

Beginning with the New Journalism movement of the late 1960s, the media gradually drifted back toward advocacy. Only this time, it often portrayed itself not as a participant in the debate, but as the referee.

Of course, the industry didn’t call this advocacy journalism.

It called itself “watchdog journalism.” It championed “investigative reporting.” Watergate transformed reporters from observers into cultural heroes.

But there was a tradeoff.

The more the press positioned itself as the guardian of truth, the more Americans began asking a dangerous question:

Who watches the watchdogs?

Ironically, Judge Keith tacked on this sentence immediately after the above quote: “Selective information is misinformation.”

For all the “watchdog” hosannas of the free press implied in the judge’s ruling, the underlying problem never went away.

Our Founding Fathers already knew the answer.

Competition.

Pamphleteers battled pamphleteers. Newspapers attacked rival newspapers. Citizens heard competing arguments and had to decide for themselves who made more sense.

Unlike 250 years ago, it’s much easier for citizens to stay within the news silo of their choice (or not their choice if they don’t know how to access non-traditional media sources).

Newspapers could provide arguments.

Only an educated citizenry could judge them.

Influenced heavily by Enlightenment thinkers, the architects of our Constitution also recognized Montesquieu’s warning that virtue was the “spring” of democracy (see “Of the Principles of Democracy,” Book III, Chapter III, The Spirit of Laws, 1748). Washington echoed this reference when, in his Farewell Address of 1796, he stated, “It is substantially true that virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government.”

Montesquieu maintains (Book IV, Chapter VI) that “virtue is a self-renunciation, which is ever arduous and painful.” Furthermore, he says, “to inspire it ought to be the principal business of education.” (Although he does put this onus on the parents.)

Washington said this most directly in his Farewell address: “Promote then, as an object of primary importance, institutions for the general diffusion of knowledge. In proportion as the structure of a government gives force to public opinion, it is essential that public opinion should be enlightened.”

A decade earlier, Jefferson didn’t merely say it; he implemented it. In his Notes on the State of Virginia (1785), Jefferson outlined (in Query XIV) his public education plan to help citizens “guard the sacred deposit of the rights and liberties of their fellow citizens.”

Decades later, in a January 6, 1816, letter to Charles Yancey, our nation’s third president wrote, “If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.”

The Founding Fathers returned to this theme repeatedly because they understood something essential:

Self-government requires self-discipline.

They were not seeking a nation of credentialed experts. They sought, in a nod to Montesquieu, a well-educated population capable of discipline and reason. They understood our country could survive ignorance among the few, but they knew it could not last if ignorance existed among the voting many.

Events today sorely remind us of this 250-year-old vision. During a May 7, 2026, podcast appearance, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) stated that “black Americans really created democracy in this country.” Those who mindlessly attack miss the point. She is not the problem. She is the symptom.

But not where you think.

The frightening part is not that public figures make historical mistakes. There’s nothing unusual about that. Politicians have always done that.

The real scary thing is that millions no longer recognize these mistakes.

Somewhere along the way, too many classrooms stopped teaching citizens how to reason through history and started teaching them which conclusions they were expected to reach.

Ignore the fact that, unless you live in a Hamilton multiverse, all the Founding Fathers were white. Focus instead on the word “democracy.” And what that says about the weakening of America’s civic immune system.

The men who forged our founding documents never intended the United States of America to be a pure democracy. These well-read thinkers admired the promise of Athens (the classical world’s most famous example of a democracy). But for all Athens’ attraction in the Age of Enlightenment, they feared its instability. In particular, they worried about the dictatorship of the majority. In essence, they understood democracy could devolve into mob rule.

In contrast, they saw the Roman Republic (not the Empire) as a better model. Its structured design restrained raw democratic impulse. The Romans built into their system an institutional friction that purposely slowed things down. Still, it wasn’t perfect. Close, but not quite there.

The Founders understood something modern America increasingly forgets:

A republic only works when citizens possess the patience and discipline to think beyond the emotion of the moment.

After much deliberation, they took a leap. They attempted something radically new. We take it for granted now because we’ve been living in that forest for two-and-a-half centuries and because other nations have attempted to duplicate our model.

To best achieve the longevity of the Roman Republic while avoiding its Achilles’ Heel, our constitution blended the best of Rome with the best of Athens. We openly spurned aristocracy and monarchy. Yet, we don’t have a pure democracy.

We don’t have just a republic. We have a democratic republic. A government that aspires to achieve and ensure liberty, equality, discipline, representation, and restraint. It was historically unprecedented.

Democracy alone can become a tyranny of emotion.

Republics alone can become a totalitarian oligarchy.

America’s experiment attempted to balance both.

The Founders trusted neither kings, mobs, nor newspapers completely. They trusted an educated, enlightened, and, ultimately, virtuous citizenry.

Do you think our current education measures up to that?

Democracy doesn’t die in darkness; it dies on the blackboard.