If neither Dennis Kucinich nor Ron Paul is your first choice in this year’s civic decision that you should be making, I suggest that one of them should be.

There is no doubt that democracy has been diminished for their exclusion from multiple debates. The reasoned arguments from the edges are what sometimes steers a ship of state in the right direction.

If you won’t support either of them, you owe your country at least to listen to them. You don’t have to agree with them. Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich are voices we need.

And maybe when you listen, you’ll remember how media is supposed to work. An airing of ideas, not a lashing of tongues. It’s hard not to interpret the exclusion of candidates by large corporate “sponsors” of debates to be anything but silencing of voices of dissent.

This country was built on dissent.

I’ve put Bill Moyer’s Journal in my RSS aggregator, and the audio podcast in my iTunes. If you still prefer the cathode ray, they do allow him on the air waves, but only on a station funded by the public.

There are several other ways to expose yourself to real discourse,… if you choose civic responsibility.