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How smartphones changed democracy · The Front

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  Speaker 1: You can listen to the Front on your smart speaker
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  Speaker 1: every morning to hear the latest episode, just say play
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  Speaker 1: the News from The Australian. From The Australian, I'm Claire Harvey.
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  Speaker 1: A special bonus episode of The Front for you Today.
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  Speaker 1: Over six weeks, The Australian is publishing six essays by
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  Speaker 1: remarkable Australians to mark our mast Head's sixtieth anniversary. Today
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  Speaker 1: journalist Chris Yulman, who's recently joined The Australian and Sky
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  Speaker 1: News as a commentator. He's writing on the theme of power.
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  Speaker 2: This January remarks a big anniversary for troops who fought
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  Speaker 2: an Operation Desert Storm. Of Operation Desert Storm amount of
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  Speaker 2: Desert Storm thirty years ago, one of the largest air
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  Speaker 2: campaigns in our military's history took place Operation Desert Storm.
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  Speaker 1: Operation Desert Storm the United Nations led response to Iraq's
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  Speaker 1: invasion of Kuwait. Here's how then US President George Herbert
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  Speaker 1: Walkerbush announced it to the world on January seventeenth, nineteen
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  Speaker 1: ninety one.
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  Speaker 2: Just two hours ago, Allied air forces began an attack
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  Speaker 2: on military targets in Iraq and Kuwait. These attacks continue
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  Speaker 2: as I speak. Five months ago Sadam Nssein started this
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  Speaker 2: cruel war against Kuwait tonight. The battle has been joined.
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  Speaker 1: A bit over a month later, the ground assault came
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  Speaker 1: his General Colin Powell.
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  Speaker 2: Our strategy to go after this army is very very simple.
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  Speaker 2: First we're going to cut it off, and then we're
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  Speaker 2: going to kill it.
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  Speaker 1: At the time, Kuwait was occupied by Iraqi forces. They'd
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  Speaker 1: been there for seven months.
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  Speaker 2: The answer to that question and will splitter is at
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  Speaker 2: your old workplace to the undergo.
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  Speaker 1: Newsrooms around the world watched this stunning assault, Operation Desert
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  Speaker 1: Storm unfold in real time via a CNN live feed.
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  Speaker 3: The President maybe going on television later this evening.
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  Speaker 2: To explain what I'm sorry to winter rupt. We're going
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  Speaker 2: back to Baghdad now because we can and we have.
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  Speaker 3: But we are then include them.
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  Speaker 2: Okayrding, go ahead, I can hear you and can record
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  Speaker 2: Please come in to us from Baghdad.
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  Speaker 1: Journalist Chris Hulman watched it from the news floor of
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  Speaker 1: the Canberra Times, where a rare mid morning edition of
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  Speaker 1: that paper had been sent to the printers, but it
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  Speaker 1: became old news almost immediately.
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  Speaker 3: We were standing to take a photograph with the mid
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  Speaker 3: morning edition that had done. We'd all work very very
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  Speaker 3: hard on It was to keep the good Burghers of
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  Speaker 3: Canberra across all of the details. And there was a
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  Speaker 3: television in the corner, just one television, and it was
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  Speaker 3: streaming CNN, one of the local stations. I can't remember
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  Speaker 3: which one had CNN on full time. And you might
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  Speaker 3: recall at that time they were the only ones who
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  Speaker 3: stayed in Iraq for the war. And they had a
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  Speaker 3: single camera which was on the balcony at the hotel,
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  Speaker 3: so it actually recorded the first shots of the war.
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  Speaker 3: It was the thing that made CNN. But as we
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  Speaker 3: were lining up for the photograph, what happened was that
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  Speaker 3: it cut dramatically to tele Aviv and there was a
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  Speaker 3: reporter in a gas mask it looked like a World
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  Speaker 3: War One issue gas mask, who said that a SCUD
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  Speaker 3: missile had fallen in Tel Aviv and it could be
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  Speaker 3: carrying a chemical payload. Now that was the great fear
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  Speaker 3: that Israel would be dragged into this war and there'll
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  Speaker 3: be a broader Middle Eastern war. Now we didn't know
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  Speaker 3: at the time that that wasn't the case. It wasn't
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  Speaker 3: carrying chemical weapons. But I looked at that television and
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  Speaker 3: at the front page, which was out of date before
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  Speaker 3: the print run had finished, and thought, this changes everything,
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  Speaker 3: and it did.
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  Speaker 1: Desert Storm was a turning point in the way we
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  Speaker 1: report the news, both because of the dawn of the
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  Speaker 1: twenty four hour news cycle and of the Internet. In
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  Speaker 1: twenty oh seven, the smartphone followed.
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  Speaker 2: It's the Internet in your pocket.
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  Speaker 1: For the first time ever. Suddenly everyone everywhere had access
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  Speaker 1: to information, news, ideas, entertainment all the time. It was
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  Speaker 1: a technological revolution with implications we couldn't imagine.
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  Speaker 3: But this much is certain. We're living through the greatest
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  Speaker 3: power shift in human history.
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  Speaker 1: That's Chris Yulman reading excerpts of the essay he's written
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  Speaker 1: for The Australian.
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  Speaker 3: Because the well head of power does not flow down
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  Speaker 3: from monarchies to tyrannies or democracies, but up from the
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  Speaker 3: air and flow of ideas that transform crowds into mobs.
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  Speaker 3: Ideas are the source of all power in human affairs,
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  Speaker 3: as rational animals. Ideas are the ground of our being
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  Speaker 3: because we only make sense of ourselves and the world
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  Speaker 3: by standing on the mental flagstones of our culture. That's
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  Speaker 3: both a blessing and a curse, because cultures can be
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  Speaker 3: wildly divergent. Two people witnessing the same event can take
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  Speaker 3: pole or opposite views on it based entirely on their worldview.
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  Speaker 3: In a politically diverse, multicultural democracy, those differences exist in
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  Speaker 3: the same postcode.
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  Speaker 1: To explain this, Yulman invokes John Milton's epic poem Paradise Lost,
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  Speaker 1: published in the seventeenth century. Milton's masterpiece explores over ten
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  Speaker 1: thousand lines the biblical conflict between God and Satan over
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  Speaker 1: the devil's corruption of humanity.
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  Speaker 3: No one better encapsulated the power of the human psyche
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  Speaker 3: to shape its own reality than John Milton in Paradise Lost.
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  Speaker 3: When he's fallen, Satan decides it's better to rule in
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  Speaker 3: hell than to serve in heaven. The mind is its
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  Speaker 3: own place, and in itself can make a heaven of
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  Speaker 3: hell or a hell of heaven. Political power may grow
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  Speaker 3: out of the barrel of a gun, but it is
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  Speaker 3: an idea that compels someone to pull the trigger to
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  Speaker 3: raise an army to start a war.
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  Speaker 1: Coming up. If power flows from ideas, where can we
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  Speaker 1: expect it to land. The Australian has been holding power
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  Speaker 1: to account for six decades and our subscribers are the
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  Speaker 1: first to read our lively commentary, in depth analysis and
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  Speaker 1: game changing news. Join us at the Australian dot com
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  Speaker 1: AU and we'll be back after this break. The Internet
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  Speaker 1: and smart devices have facilitated an unprecedented information exchange, but
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  Speaker 1: they've also helped miss and disinformation to spread unchecked.
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  Speaker 3: The best and worst desires of almost every human heart
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  Speaker 3: have now been grafted to an irresistible Internet appendage, just
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  Speaker 3: a hair brained thought away from international broadcast. The portal
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  Speaker 3: to all this is in your pocket. Step through the
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  Speaker 3: looking glass, and all manner of wonder and horror abound,
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  Speaker 3: and it comes with the illusion that you are in control.
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  Speaker 1: All this chaos springs from ideas and from our unfettered
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  Speaker 1: access to them. But if, as Chris Yilman argues in
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  Speaker 1: his essay for the Australian Power is born of ideas,
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  Speaker 1: who's going to end up holding it?
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  Speaker 3: Well, it's impossible to know. And that's just it. All
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  Speaker 3: of us want to know the future. It's one of
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  Speaker 3: the great human longings. I'm constantly being asked, who's going
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  Speaker 3: to win the next election? Have been all of my
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  Speaker 3: political career. I don't know. It's the answer to that question.
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  Speaker 3: Sometimes you can have some sort of idea about where
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  Speaker 3: things are heading. But we can't stand the idea that
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  Speaker 3: we don't know what's going to happen next. All that
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  Speaker 3: I know is that the most powerful things are human ideas.
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  Speaker 3: The great changes that we see in history, the monumental events,
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  Speaker 3: are all driven by the invisible changes in human ideas.
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  Speaker 3: And you might think that power comes down from monarchies,
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  Speaker 3: or from tyrannies, or from democracies. It flows up from
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  Speaker 3: the mob to those people in power. And when the
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  Speaker 3: ideas of the mob change, it doesn't matter what form
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  Speaker 3: of government you have, then government's full. So it's the
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  Speaker 3: power of ideas, I think, which are the driving force
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  Speaker 3: of change in the world and have always have been
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  Speaker 3: in human events because our culture is the ground of
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  Speaker 3: our being, and our culture decides everything that we perceive.
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  Speaker 1: What makes a good idea good and a bad idea
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  Speaker 1: bad then is a matter of perspective, not speed.
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  Speaker 3: It's bewildering. We can't keep up with the rate of
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  Speaker 3: ideas as they flow and things change. That wherein constant
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  Speaker 3: takes a state of flux, now of chaos, and human
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  Speaker 3: ideas have always thrown up good ideas and bad ideas.
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  Speaker 3: We all know that as as far as government forms go,
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  Speaker 3: I think fascism is a bad idea. I think communism
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  Speaker 3: has turned out to be a pretty bad idea in democracy,
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  Speaker 3: for all of its faults, turns out to be one
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  Speaker 3: of the best ideas about how you should order human affairs.
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  Speaker 3: But all these forms of governments now face their challenges
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  Speaker 3: with this, and they're all responding in different ways. In
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  Speaker 3: Hujing things, China is essentially locking down the Internet and
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  Speaker 3: making sure that only the ideas that are sanctioned by
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  Speaker 3: the government can be put before the people. He spends
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  Speaker 3: more time and more money policing his own people than
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  Speaker 3: he does in building his enormous defense force. In a democracy,
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  Speaker 3: it's much more difficult, you know, how do we be
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  Speaker 3: gatekeepers to these ideas that a lot of people talking
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  Speaker 3: at the moment about the ideas that they would like ban.
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  Speaker 3: And I think sometimes the only difference between left and
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  Speaker 3: right are the things that they want to ban. And
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  Speaker 3: it is a difficult thing when you believe, as I do,
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  Speaker 3: that free speech is a foundation stone of a liberal democracy,
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  Speaker 3: and yet some of these ideas are clearly destructive. Free
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  Speaker 3: speech has always been regulated in some way, but I
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  Speaker 3: don't know how liberal democracy confronts this challenge. And what's
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  Speaker 3: happening is that we are being eaten apart internally by
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  Speaker 3: the warring tribes. And that's not just cultural differences, that's
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  Speaker 3: political differences. We're constantly being told about the threats from
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  Speaker 3: the right, and we saw that with Donald Trump not
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  Speaker 3: wanting to leave power in the United States, and that's
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  Speaker 3: clearly a threat because the defining feature of democracy is
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  Speaker 3: the governments willingly give up power. If you decide you're
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  Speaker 3: going to challenge that, then you really are starting to
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  Speaker 3: make a challenge of the foundation stones of democracy. But
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  Speaker 3: there's also a project on the left which would appear
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  Speaker 3: to be that it wants to lift up every flagstone
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  Speaker 3: of the ideas that have built our society and dismissed
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  Speaker 3: them all as a white, colonial, racist project. And when
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  Speaker 3: they rip up the last flagstone, where will we stand?
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  Speaker 3: Wherell we plant our feet? So I genuinely think that
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  Speaker 3: at the moment, liberal democracies face the biggest threat from
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  Speaker 3: what we're seeing and the expansion and the sort of
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  Speaker 3: rapid changing of ideas and of the chaos that that
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  Speaker 3: sort of has engendered in society.
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  Speaker 1: You can read Chris Yuelman's sixtieth anniversary essay at the
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  Speaker 1: Australian dot com dot au. This episode of the Front
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  Speaker 1: was produced by Kristin Amiot