John Dewey, a great ethical humanist thinker, wrote: “Democracy is a way of personal life controlled . . . by faith in the capacity of human beings for intelligent judgment and action if proper conditions are furnished . . . [conditions] of [free inquiry] of consultation, of conference, of persuasion, of discussion . . . which in the long run is self-corrective.”  Present day politics of demagoguery and paranoia appear to contradict Dewey’s belief in democracy.  But the potential that Dewey sees in democracy can and must be realized.