Things always get better—that is a key aspect of progressive thought, and a fundamental aspect of the teleology of the Left and associated liberal strands. The approach, of course, is naive, the conclusions wrong, but that does not prevent it from being quasi-hypnotic. Progressivism knows no bounds in its range and application, but the world of print is a central topic of its concern. This reflects the views that opinion is important, that opinion is influenced by publications (frequently a very top-down assumption), and that the Left has gained particularly from the world of print because free-thinking people who are fully informed must necessarily, or at least should, support the Left. As a consequence, freedom of expression and thought—classics of traditional liberal thought—were annexed by and for the Left.
Alongside the propagation of this view, indeed of this ideology, however, has come a more troubling reality. While most states proclaim democracy and freedom in their constitutions, the reality is often anything but—so also with the freedom to publish. Indeed, it is the very significance of the press and other publications, combined with the distrust that is shown by dictatorships, technocrats, and corporatist governmental systems toward both independence of mind and democracy in practice that encourages control. So on the global scale during the Cold War, it was readily possible to distinguish between the autocratic manipulation of opinion in the Communist bloc and a free counterpart in the West.
The situation since, however, has been far
