文の意味
次の文章は"The Closing of the American Book"という記事の一部です。
I will never forget seeing, as a high school student on my first trip to East Berlin, the plaza where Hitler and Goebbels had burned books from the university library. Those bonfires were predicated on the idea that texts could undermine armies. Soviet repression of literature followed the same principle.
The Nazis were right in believing that one of the most powerful weapons in a war of ideas is books. And for better or worse, the United States is now in such a war. Without books, we cannot succeed in our current struggle against absolutism and terrorism. The retreat from civic to virtual life is a retreat from engaged democracy, from the principles that we say we want to share with the rest of the world. You are what you read. If you read nothing, then your mind withers, and your ideals lose their vitality and sway.
So the crisis in reading is a crisis in national politics.
この文章のThe retreat from civic to virtual life is a retreat from engaged democracy, from the principles that we say we want to share with the rest of the world. の部分の言いたい事がよくわからないんですが、どういう事なんですか？
お礼
その種の集まり、全然思いつかなかったです。助かりました！ ありがとうございました。