As Candidates Speak in France, the Meter Is Running

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/08/world/europe/as-french-candidates-speak-the-meter-is-running.html

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Thu, Mar 8, 2012 at 9:16 AM
Subject: re: As Candidates Speak in France, the Meter Is Running
To: letters@nytimes.com


To the Editor:

   Despite this newspaper's sneering condescension, the French have much to teach us about running a democracy. Too many Americans have been taught that our participation in our government--outside one day of voting each cycle--is a limited to giving or soliciting money. Proper democracy however requires that all of us engage in discussing the issues of our day. The moment in the voting booth is only the culmination of that long process. In 2012, political discussion in the U.S. has been usurped by the corporate noise machine. Real issues (campaign finance reform, prosecuting torture, America's role as cop-of-the world...) can't even get into the media.  This is not the America our Founding Fathers staked their lives on. If the French have a better idea of how to embody our shared revolutionary dreams, we should sneer less and attend more.

Barry Haskell Levine