While Daniels was worlds ahead of newspaper editors at large, he was showing the vestiges of the gatekeeping mindset that the new technology had made obsolete. I myself disliked unmitigated flaming. And yet there were times when harsh words were called for. The _N & O_ didn’t wimp out when the editorial board attacked the Ku Klux Klan or the more outrageous statements of Jesse Helms, the right-wing senator. Why should people online be any different? And although it might be nice for a policymaker to read my public messages as soon as I sent them out—and, yes, I could recall hearing out of the blue from the White House after one such posting—that was hardly necessary. Democracy isn’t just a citizen writing to a congressman. It is also citizens communicating with citizens, educating, proselytizing; and with the economies of Usenet, more citizens could reach their peers for greater enlightenment. And then, if a consensus were reached, political action might ensue, such as letters to Congress. So why must politicians be involved from Day One? Daniels was out of touch here, and I hoped he’d catch on. Admittedly NandO.Netters could hook up with the Usenet political areas, even if the _N & O_ played them down; but the newspaper didn’t really promote political debates on the BBS itself. And it was not just because Daniels believed that the readers disliked flaming and extremism—it was also because he felt that real, live politicians were not ready for online appearances yet. “When we can get commitment from the politicians and policymakers, then we’ll make a push at it. But not until it becomes something where our community can have really productive discussions. I don’t want to train them not to like them. What happens is that the people on the Net are trained not to like them. Extremists and flamers love them.” I supposed there were a lot of us undesirables, however; for alt.activism and similar areas were among the more popular newsgroups on the Net—no match for alt.sex, but certainly not small time. If Daniels had had a complete set of Net values, he would have understood the benefits of debate online, and not just the political action but the _education_. I myself was liberal. And yet when discussing information policy, I could learn at times from the most zealous of Libertarians and Objectivists. Some were among the most advanced of the technologists. In fact, their technical backgrounds may have led to their hatred of regulation—they loathed the bureaucrats who could not fathom the direction in which computers and communications were headed. To his credit, Daniels at least was not calling for censorship of Usenet; he was merely saying that he wanted his own service to be different. What’s more, technology and marketing forces, the great deciders of cyberspace, might change his mind for him.