“Yet there is in any case a weapon which they should particularly treasure as a bulwark of their political liberties. Namely the freedom of expression and criticism. That’s a new reason to confirm what has been said in this chapter about the freedom of the press and of the means of expression of thought, even at the price of great risks,—still less great than the loss of liberty. A free people needs a free press, I mean free from the State, and free from economic bondage and the power of money.
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“I have said that democracy cannot do without the prophetic element; that it is a sad necessity; or, rather, that in a democracy which has come of age, in a society of free men, expert in the virtues of freedom and just in its fundamental structures, the prophetic function would be integrated in the normal and regular life of the body politic, and issue from the people themselves. In such a society inspiration would rise from the free common activity of the people in their most elementary, most humble communities. By choosing their leaders, at this most elementary , through a natural and experiential process, as fellow-men personally known to them and deserving their trust in the minor affairs of the community, the people would grow more and more conscious of political realities and more ready to choose their leaders, at the level of the common good of the body politic, with true political awareness, as genuine deputies for them.”~Jacques Maritain: Excerpt from Man and the State, Chap. V.—The Democratic Charter.
