Civility and Subversion Revisited: Twenty-First Century Media Intellectuals as Ideologists and Anti-ideologists

A framework for understanding the roles of the intellectuals as they support and undermine democracy is presented. The framework is applied to an examination of the danger of intellectuals as ideologists and the potential of civil and subversive intellectuals as they open public discussion about difficult problems. The ways these roles are played in the present political and media environments are explored.