ABSTRACT
Culture, communication and information are central to the important political struggles in our time. Everybody who has thought seriously about democracy knows that both science and democracy depend on open access to information and public processes that permit criticism. Totalitarians, however, seek to politicize and control a whole culture and society. They seek, literally, to determine how everybody perceives everything. Human beings are purposeful creatures: we act and direct our lives in terms of understandings and meanings, and the manipulation of this is the basic instrument of totalitarian expansion and consolidation of power and control. Telling the truth about the political events of our time is honoring its victims; it is doing justice; it is fighting tyrants, and it is preserving the future. The most important single weapon in the struggle between democracy and totalitarianism is information. It is the cheapest and the safest for us to use; it is the most effective weapon we can use against our adversaries.
