By Bryan A. Garner
Thursday, October 22, 2026
The American experiment depended on citizens who could
read, think about what they had read, and change their minds when the evidence
required it. It made no promise of collective wisdom or civic harmony. It
rested on something simpler: citizens had to be able to follow an argument.
They needn’t be philosophers. But they have to hold a proposition in mind long
enough to examine it. What are its premises? What facts support it? What would
count against it?
The Founders understood the connection between education
and liberty. In a 1787 letter to James Madison, Thomas Jefferson urged that
“the education of the common people” be attended to “above all things,” because
“on their good sense we may rely” for “the preservation of a due degree of
liberty.” Massachusetts’s Constitution of 1780 likewise treated wisdom and
knowledge “diffused generally among the body of the people” as essential to
preserving rights and liberties. Government by the people becomes dangerous
when the habits of judgment aren’t widely distributed.
Print gave thought staying power. A speech disappears as
it is heard; a page remains. You can read it twice, underline it, compare it
with another account. You can find the missing premise, the doctored quotation,
the convenient statistic. Print doesn’t make people virtuous. The pamphlet wars
of the early republic could be vicious. Newspapers have always sold scandal,
libel, and partisan fantasy. Written communication produced conspiracy theories
and digital mobs long before video took over the feed. But writing has one
great advantage over live performance: you can stop reading it. You can close
the pamphlet. Look something up. Ask what the speaker left out. Come back
tomorrow. You aren’t required to cheer while the band plays. That pause between
stimulus and assent is a small constitutional safeguard.
The common school was supposed to produce citizens. Its
graduate should be able to read a ballot, a sermon, a contract, a statute, and
a political broadside. The 2025 international assessment of the Organization
for Economic Cooperation and Development, released in September 2026, found the
lowest average reading performance it has ever recorded among its members.
Reading scores have fallen 28 points since 2015. The United States’ reading
score fell 14 points between 2022 and 2025, to its lowest level since American
participation began in 2000. More alarming still, the gap between the nation’s
strongest and weakest readers has widened by 50 points since 2015, the
equivalent of roughly two and a half years of learning. A citizen who struggles
with a serious text will have trouble with a statute, a court opinion, a ballot
initiative, or a budget analysis. A headline or clip replaces the thing itself.
But the problem isn’t confined to people with weak
academic backgrounds. The professional class is drowning in words while doing
surprisingly little sustained reading. Lawyers, academics, journalists,
editors, executives, and public officials can spend ten hours a day staring at
screens. Much of this is necessary. Almost none of it is the same as settling
into an argument. The problem isn’t that we read too little. We read too much
that demands too little of us. We extract information, answer something, check
on something unrelated, move to the next thing. Reading becomes a series of
small transactions. The book waits on the nightstand. What gets lost is the
habit of staying with a thought after the first reaction has passed. We have
plenty of information but less practice with attention.
The deeper trouble isn’t simply impatience. Increasingly,
we don’t want evidence to complicate the story we’ve already chosen. Evidence
can be inconvenient. A document can contain something we’d rather not know. So
we dismiss the document or question its author. This habit is especially
dangerous in politics, where people increasingly encounter public controversies
through fragments: a clip from a hearing, a quotation stripped of context, a
headline about a report nobody has read. The fragment becomes the evidence for
the judgment. The temptation is obvious. Don’t show us the document. Tell us
whom to boo.
James Marriott’s recent book, The New Dark Ages,
describes a culture in which ideas increasingly travel through podcasts, short
videos, and social media rather than books, essays, and newspapers. Writing
allowed thought to be stored outside the mind — to be preserved, examined,
revised, and built upon. Oral culture can be magnificent. The sermon, lecture,
conversation, and great political speech aren’t enemies of intellect. But the
new oral culture isn’t Homeric. It’s algorithmic. It rewards immediacy and
confidence. A short video can turn a constitutional question into a mood. A
viral clip can reduce a complicated policy dispute to ten seconds of sneering,
applause, or righteous music.
A claim that looks thin on paper can feel substantial
when it arrives with a crowd, a familiar face, and the confidence of
repetition. Consider the familiar boast that a particular administration has
accomplished more than any administration in American history. On paper, the
claim demands obvious questions. More in what respect? Measured how? Spoken
before an enthusiastic audience, none of those questions is asked. The
superlatives accumulate. Repetition begins to feel like corroboration. This
isn’t a problem posed by one politician or one party. A political culture
shaped by clips, feeds, rallies, and streams will tend to reward performers.
There is an old temptation to blame the voters. That
would miss the point. Shakespeare’s groundlings weren’t stupid. They laughed,
shouted, responded, and sometimes missed the subtleties. Yet the plays gave
them something worth responding to. They could hear a claim and encounter a
counterclaim. Our own groundlings carry smartphones. The analogy has limits.
Books have carried poison as efficiently as wisdom. Newspapers have spread
lies. A printed falsehood can be more durable than a spoken one. Print isn’t a
moral technology. It is, however, an accountability technology. A page
preserves what was said. It can be quoted and checked.
So the answer isn’t to scold people for listening to
podcasts or watching videos. Nor should we imagine that an earlier age was a
golden one of rational citizens. The answer is to recover serious reading as a
civic habit. Read the whole opinion, not only the headline. Read the statute
rather than the pundit’s paraphrase. Read an argument made by someone you
dislike. And read long enough to become uncomfortable. Without that habit,
politics becomes a contest in volume. The loudest voice gets the last word, and
the crowd supplies the evidence. One of the services a serious book performs is
to prevent you from escaping too quickly. A good argument can force you to
answer a question you’d rather avoid. It can make you admit that the other side
has a point. Democracy doesn’t require agreement. It requires citizens willing
to read the terms of their disagreement.
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