Since the ability to manipulate public opinion is power, the same tenet clearly argues against the current trend towards concentration of news media ownership. The means of achieving good government is not to search for and locate the leader who can save us. Such searches are more properly the concern of religion. Good government depends utterly upon developing a more enlightened and critical civic environment. Blind faith is a foolish basis for satisfaction that one's agents are acting on one's behalf.
Accountability is essential.
A central obligation of government is to respond openly to credible questions about its performance. In evaluating public statements, the common approach of seeking to gauge the speaker's sincerity through facial or vocal cues, or through other emotion-based signals, is primitive and ineffective as a guide to the truth. Such an approach tends to favor leaders who either are dishonest or whose irrationality or personal instability gives them the ability to harbor contradictory beliefs simultaneously. In cases where the speaker may merely be an uninformed mouthpiece, sincerity is, in addition, irrelevant. Public statements should be evaluated critically and rationally.