We should also recognize and build on the connection between democracy and the environment. Governments that are not accountable tend not to be responsible. And if citizens are denied the right to participate in shaping decisions, they are also likely to be denied the clean air, safe water and productive land required to lead decent lives. Finally, we need to make the information revolution work for freedom. We should not allow the problems associated with globalization to obscure its stunning promise.
Information wants to be free.
And, in fact, the Internet is the Community of Democracies' technological mirror image. If knowledge is power, nothing could be more democratic than an instrument capable of transmitting a library's worth of information in an eyeblink to anyone, anywhere, at any time. Nothing could be more useful to the world's democrats than a means for comparing notes, sharing ideas, and planning for the future across every border and frontier. And nothing should do more than the new technologies to create a sense of common cause between the architects of economic modernization and the advocates of political freedom. For these technologies will thrive where traditional democratic rights are protected and new ideas welcomed.