Your Mail and Our Democracy

Journalist Bill Moyers has a new weekly program on PBS. Bill Moyers Journal generally takes the form of one-on-one interviews and the topics thus far have been wide-ranging. I admire few people in contemporary public life, but Moyers is one person who has my admiration. The program appears for us on Friday evenings, so we generally record it for viewing over the weekend. You can check your local PBS listing for it in your area. It comes highly recommended.

Last week, Moyers opened his program with an oral essay regarding the new postal system rate hike and the affect it can have on our democracy, specifically through how it will affect smaller publications of all varieties. I have been hearing much on this issue of late, but Moyers put it as well as I’ve encountered, as noted in his 18 May 2007 blog entry.

It's time to send an SOS for the least among us — I mean small independent magazines. They are always struggling to survive while making a unique contribution to the conversation of democracy. Magazines like NATIONAL REVIEW, THE AMERICAN PROSPECT, SOJOURNERS, THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE, THE NATION, WASHINGTON MONTHLY, MOTHER JONES, IN THESE TIMES, WORLD MAGAZINE, THE CHRISTIAN CENTURY, CHRISTIANITY TODAY, COLUMBIA JOURNALISM REVIEW, REASON and many others.

The Internet may be the way of the future, but for today much of what you read on the Web is generated by newspapers and small magazines. They may be devoted to a cause, a party, a worldview, an issue, an idea, or to one eccentric person's vision of what could be, but they nourish the public debate. America wouldn't be the same without them.

Our founding fathers knew this; knew that a low-cost postal incentive was crucial to giving voice to ideas from outside the main tent. So they made sure such publications would get a break in the cost of reaching their readers. That's now in jeopardy. An impending rate hike, worked out by postal regulators, with almost no public input but plenty of corporate lobbying, would reward big publishers like Time Warner, while forcing these smaller periodicals into higher subscription fees, big cutbacks and even bankruptcy.

It's not too late. The postal service is a monopoly, but if its governors, and especially members of Congress, hear from enough citizens, they could have a change of heart. So, liberal or conservative, left or right, libertarian, vegetarian, communitarian or Unitarian, or simply good Samaritan, let's make ourselves heard.

Making your voice heard is easy. I invite you to visit the FreePress.net site for Stamping Out Rate Hikes. It will further explain the issue and – farther down the page – provides a link to send an e-mail to your legislators and the governors of the postal system, urging them to reconsider their current rate plans.

This truly isn’t an issue for any particular political stripe. It affects all of us equally and its chilling affect on our democracy is very real. Voice your opinion today.

22 May 2007