Special Opinion to the Mirror by Paul Plante.
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
That, for anyone who recognizes it, is the language of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, and with respect to “freedom of the press,” it should properly be read as “Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.”
As I was taught when young, and God alone knows what is taught today on the subject, if anything, we in this country owe John Peter Zenger a debt for freedom of the press, not the First Amendment.
For those who have forgotten, or never were taught in the first place, John Peter Zenger (October 26, 1697 – July 28, 1746) was a German American printer and journalist in New York City who printed The New York Weekly Journal.
The New York Weekly Journal, which reminds me in spirit of the Cape Charles Mirror, was a weekly journal, printed by John Peter Zenger, from November 5, 1733 to March 18, 1751, long before there was a “United States of America,” or First Amendment to the United States Constitution.
It was the second journal in New York City and the only one that criticized New York Royal governor William Cosby, for which Cosby retaliated on January 15, 1734 by ordering the public burning of the newspaper on Wall Street, close to City Hall, and he also offered fifty pounds as reward for whomever revealed the names of the Journal’s authors.
Thereafter, on November 17, 1734, Zenger was arrested under a warrant of the Council for printing seditious libels in his Journal and he was placed in the City Jail then located in the attic of New York City Hall.
As an aside, I would not be surprised that there are people today in the pro-censorship crowd in America who would love to burn the Cape Charles Mirror, if only they could find in what barn and under what hay pile Wayne Creed has his printing press hidden, but I digress.
Not surprisingly, and it is the same today, because newspapers and the media, being free to say anything they wish, are partisan is all too many cases, nor are they truthful or factual, in 1733, the only newspaper in New York was The New York Gazette, and its printer, William Bradford, was a supporter of then New York Governor William Cosby.
That is called the press or media sucking up to power, just as they still do to this day, again in all too many cases, Cape Charles Mirror excepted, and power using the media or press to spread its propaganda, just as it does to this day.
The Popular Party in New York at that time wanted to attack Governor Cosby, and the only other printer in New York was John Peter Zenger, who had come from Germany to America in 1697, went to New York in 1711, and worked with Bradford for eight years prior he started his own print business on Smith Street.
In 1733, Zenger printed copies of newspapers in New York to voice his disagreement with the actions of newly appointed colonial governor William Cosby.
On his arrival in New York City, Cosby had plunged into a rancorous quarrel with the council of the colony over his salary and unable to control the colony’s supreme court, he removed Chief Justice Lewis Morris, replacing him with James DeLancey of the Royal Party.
Supported by members of the Popular Party, Zenger’s New-York Weekly Journal continued to publish articles critical of the royal governor, and finally, Cosby issued a proclamation condemning the newspaper’s “divers scandalous, virulent, false and seditious reflections.”
On October 15, 1734, Chief Justice James De Lancey had delivered a charge to the Grand Jury accusing the New York Weekly Journal of breaking the law of seditious libel in New York, but the Grand Jury returned with no indictments.
Zenger’s lawyers, Andrew Hamilton and William Smith, Sr., successfully argued that truth is a defense against charges of libel, and afterwards, De Lancey tried to convince the nineteen members of the Grand Jury that “just by reading the articles, one could tell that they were libels,” but the Grand Jury returned no indictment again.
After a grand jury refused to indict him, the Attorney General Richard Bradley charged him with libel in August 1735.
James Alexander was Zenger’s first counsel, but the court found him in contempt and removed him from the case.
After more than eight months in prison, Zenger went to trial, defended by the Philadelphia lawyer Andrew Hamilton and the New York lawyer William Smith, Sr.
The case was now a cause célèbre, with public interest at fever-pitch.
Rebuffed repeatedly by chief justice James DeLancey during the trial, Hamilton decided to plead his client’s case directly to the jury.
After the lawyers for both sides finished their arguments, the jury retired, only to return in ten minutes with a verdict of not guilty.
Zenger’s victory became the iconic American case for freedom of the press.
In defending Zenger in this landmark case, Hamilton and Smith attempted to establish the precedent that a statement, even if defamatory, is not libelous if it can be proved, thus affirming freedom of the press in America.
However, general distaste for Cosby was the main reason why Zenger was found not guilty, and succeeding Royal Governors clamped down on Freedom of the Press up until the American Revolution.
This case is the groundwork of the aforementioned freedom, not the legal precedent.
As late as 1804, the journalist Harry Croswell was prosecuted in New York in a series of trials that led to the famous People v. Croswell.
The People of the State of New York v. Harry Croswell (3 Johns. Cas. 337 N.Y. 1804), commonly known and cited as People v. Croswell, is an important case in the evolution of United States defamation law.
It was a criminal libel case brought against a Federalist journalist named Harry Croswell for his statements about a number of public officials, including then-President Thomas Jefferson.
Croswell was initially convicted in Columbia County court, where the jury was instructed to consider only the question of fact before them, as to whether Croswell had been the one to publish the statements at issue under a pseudonym.
He appealed to the Supreme Court of New York, then the state’s highest court, for a new trial on several issues including those instructions.
In a famous and lengthy argument on Croswell’s behalf, Alexander Hamilton tried to convince the judges that truthful statements should not be considered defamatory, regardless of what they concerned.
The judges deadlocked and Croswell’s conviction stood, although he was never sentenced or retried.
The following year the issue became legally moot as the New York State Legislature wrote Hamilton’s argument into the state’s libel law, breaking with English precedent under which the truthfulness of the statements alone is not a defense.
Other states and the federal government followed suit.
Since then it has been a cornerstone of American law on the subject that truthful statements are not actionable.
Getting back to the First Amendment, James Madison’s version of the speech and press clauses, introduced in the House of Representatives on June 8, 1789, Annals of Congress 434 (1789), provided: ”The people shall not be deprived or abridged of their right to speak, to write, or to publish their sentiments; and the freedom of the press, as one of the great bulwarks of liberty, shall be inviolable.”
The special committee rewrote the language to some extent, adding other provisions from Madison’s draft, to make it read: ”The freedom of speech and of the press, and the right of the people peaceably to assemble and consult for their common good, and to apply to the Government for redress of grievances, shall not be infringed.”
In this form it went to the Senate, which rewrote it to read: ”That Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble and consult for their common good, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”
Debate in the House is unenlightening with regard to the meaning the Members ascribed to the speech and press clause and there is no record of debate in the Senate.
In the course of debate, Madison stated, “I venture to say, that if we confine ourselves to an enumeration of simple, acknowledged principles, the ratification will meet with but little difficulty.”
As the annotations at Findlaw tell us, the ”simple, acknowledged principles” embodied in the First Amendment have occasioned controversy without end both in the courts and out, which should alert one to the difficulties latent in such spare language.
Insofar as there is likely to have been a consensus, it was no doubt the common law view as expressed by Blackstone: ”The liberty of the press is indeed essential to the nature of a free state; but this consists in laying no previous restraints upon publications, and not in freedom from censure for criminal matter when published.”
“Every freeman has an undoubted right to lay what sentiments he pleases before the public; to forbid this, is to destroy the freedom of the press: but if he publishes what is improper, mischievous, or illegal, he must take the consequences of his own temerity.”
“To subject the press to the restrictive power of a licenser, as was formerly done, both before and since the Revolution, is to subject all freedom of sentiment to the prejudices of one man, and make him the arbitrary and infallible judge of all controverted points in learning, religion and government.”
“But to punish as the law does at present any dangerous or offensive writings, which, when published, shall on a fair and impartial trial be adjudged of a pernicious tendency, is necessary for the preservation of peace and good order, of government and religion, the only solid foundations of civil liberty.”
“Thus, the will of individuals is still left free: the abuse only of that free will is the object of legal punishment.”
“Neither is any restraint hereby laid upon freedom of thought or inquiry; liberty of private sentiment is still left; the disseminating, or making public, of bad sentiments, destructive to the ends of society, is the crime which society corrects.”
From Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England 151-52 (T. Cooley 2d rev. ed. 1872).
As the annotations to the Constitution inform us, the most comprehensive effort to assess theory and practice in the period prior to and immediately following adoption of the Amendment is L. Levy, “Legacy of Suppression: Freedom of Speech and Press in Early American History” (1960), which generally concluded that the Blackstonian view was the prevailing one at the time and probably the understanding of those who drafted, voted for, and ratified the Amendment.
From a review of the history of that period, it would appear that
Madison advanced libertarian views earlier than his Jeffersonian compatriots – ”If we advert to the nature of republican government,” Madison told the House, ”we shall find that the censorial power is in the people over the government, and not in the government over the people.” Annals of Congress 934 (1794).
On the other hand, the early Madison, while a member of his county’s committee on public safety, had enthusiastically promoted prosecution of Loyalist speakers and the burning of their pamphlets during the Revolutionary period.
There seems little doubt that Jefferson held to the Blackstonian view.
Writing to Madison in 1788, he said: ”A declaration that the federal government will never restrain the presses from printing anything they please, will not take away the liability of the printers for false facts printed.”
Commenting a year later to Madison on his proposed amendment, Jefferson suggested that the free speech-free press clause might read something like: ”The people shall not be deprived or abridged of their right to speak, to write or otherwise to publish anything but false facts affecting injuriously the life, liberty, property, or reputation of others or affecting the peace of the confederacy with foreign nations.”
Whatever the general unanimity on this proposition at the time of the proposal of and ratification of the First Amendment, it appears that there emerged in the course of the Jeffersonian counterattack on the Sedition Act and the use by the Adams Administration of the Act to prosecute its political opponents, something of a libertarian theory of freedom of speech and press, which, however much the Jeffersonians may have departed from it upon assuming power, was to blossom into the theory undergirding Supreme Court First Amendment jurisprudence in modern times.
The Sedition Act, Ch. 74, 1 Stat. 596 (1798), punished anyone who would ”write, print, utter or publish . . . any false, scandalous and malicious writing or writings against the government of the United States, or either house of the Congress of the United States, or the President of the United States, with intent to defame the said government, or either house of the said Congress, or the said President, or to bring them, or either of them, into contempt or disrepute.”
Full acceptance of the theory that the Amendment operates not only to bar most prior restraints of expression but subsequent punishment of all but a narrow range of expression, in political discourse and indeed in all fields of expression, dates from a quite recent period, although the Court’s movement toward that position began in its consideration of limitations on speech and press in the period following World War I.
So there is some necessary background to this subject, which brings us to present time and a New York Post article entitled “Nearly half of Republicans say Trump should have power to shut down media” by Bob Fredericks published August 7, 2018, which tells us that President Trump’s repeated cries of “fake news” and attacks on journalists as “enemies of the American people” have resonated with his base, with 43% of Republicans saying he “should have the authority to close news outlets engaged in bad behavior.”
The results — suggesting that a plurality of Republicans would have no problem trashing the First Amendment — came from a stunning new poll conducted by Ipsos and reported Tuesday by The Daily Beast.
The survey also showed that just 36% of GOP voters disagreed with that statement.
When asked if Trump should close down specific news organizations, such as CNN, The Washington Post and The New York Times — all frequent Trump targets — 23% of GOP voters agreed while 49% did not.
Overall, Republicans were more likely to take a dim view of the media, the website reported.
Forty-eight percent said they believed “the news media is the enemy of the American people,” with only 28% disagreeing.
Nearly four out of five — 79% — said that they believed “the mainstream media treats President Trump unfairly.”
The commander-in-chief — who as recently as January called existing U.S. libel laws “a sham and a disgrace” — has routinely accused journalists of lying, making up sources and knowingly reporting false information to make him look bad.
“The Fake News hates me saying that they are the Enemy of the People only because they know it’s TRUE.”
“I am providing a great service by explaining this to the American People.”
“They purposely cause great division & distrust.”
“They can also cause War!”
“They are very dangerous & sick!” he ranted Sunday in a typical media-bashing tweet.
But it’s not only Republicans who think the president should have the power to muzzle the media, a common practice in dictatorships and authoritarian states like Russia, North Korea and China.
According to the survey, 12% of Democrats and 21% of Independents agreed that “the president should have the authority to close news outlets engaged in bad behavior.”
Conversely, 74% of Dems and 55% of Independents disagreed with the statement.
But 12% of Democrats and 26% of Independents agreed that “the news media is the enemy of the American people,” while 74% of Democrats and 50% of Independents disagreed.
But there were kernels of positive news for the press in the survey as well.
Overall, 57% of those surveyed said that they believed the news media and reporters were “necessary to keep the Trump administration honest” — including a 39% plurality of Republicans.
And a large majority — 85% — believed that “freedom of the press is essential for American democracy,” compared to 4% who opposed that statement.
The 43% figure roughly corresponds to the president’s loyal base.
Gallup’s most-recent weekly tracking poll showed that 41% of voters approved of the job Trump is doing while 54% disapproved.
End quotes
Are we going to become another Turkey under Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, or an Egypt under El Sisi?
Stay tuned, more is yet to come.
“That the freedom of the press is one of the greatest bulwarks of liberty and can never be restrained but by despotic governments.”
That, people, is the language of section XII of the Virginia Declaration of Rights drafted by Virginian George Mason in May 1776 and amended by Thomas Ludwell Lee and the Virginia Convention, and adopted by the Virginia Constitutional Convention on June 12, 1776, which document starts in section I by stating “That all men are by nature equally free and independent, and have certain inherent rights, of which, when they enter into a state of society, they cannot, by any compact, deprive or divest their posterity; namely, the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety.”
Thomas Jefferson drew heavily from the Virginia Declaration of Rights when he drafted the Declaration of Independence one month later, and this uniquely influential document was also used by James Madison in drawing up the Bill of Rights (1789) and by the Marquis de Lafayette in drafting the French Declaration of the Rights of Man (1789).
Compare that language to the weak and watered down language of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution which provides that “Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom the press.”
But freedom to do what?
And be what?
Besides what the United States Supreme Court says “freedom of the press” means, how do we, the people today know what that amendment is supposed to mean?
And what happens if the press itself becomes a despot?
To gain some understanding here, and to provide some much-needed context as to the language in the Virginia Declaration of Rights, adopted by the Virginia Constitutional Convention on June 12, 1776, three weeks before the Declaration of Independence in July of 1776, it is necessary to drop back in time about a year to July 18, 1774, and the Fairfax County Resolves, also authored by George Mason, which start in paragraph 1 by stating “Resolved that this Colony and Dominion of Virginia can not be considered as a conquered Country; and if it was, that the present Inhabitants are the Descendants not of the Conquered, but of the Conquerors,” and in paragraph 8: “Resolved that it is our greatest Wish and Inclination, as well as Interest, to continue our Connection with, and Dependance upon the British Government; but tho’ we are it’s Subjects, we will use every Means which Heaven hath given us to prevent our becoming it’s Slaves.”
Paragraph 1 further provided this factual background, to wit:
“That the same was not setled at the national Expence of England, but at the private Expence of the Adventurers, our Ancestors, by solemn Compact with, and under the Auspices and Protection of the British Crown; upon which we are in every Respect as dependant, as the People of Great Britain, and in the same Manner subject to all his Majesty’s just, legal, and constitutional Prerogatives.”
“That our Ancestors, when they left their native Land, and setled in America, brought with them (even if the same had not been confirmed by Charters) the Civil Constitution and Form of Government of the Country they came from; and were by the Laws of Nature and Nations, entitled to all it’s Privileges, Immunities and Advantages; which have descended to us their Posterity, and ought of Right to be as fully enjoyed, as if we had still continued within the Realm of England.”
end quotes
The reference to “The Adventurers” in paragraph 1 of the Fairfax County Resolves means The Virginia Company of London which founded the Virginia colony during the reign of King James I (1566-1625).
The Virginia Company of London, also known as the London Company, was an English joint stock company established in 1606 by royal charter by King James I with the purpose of establishing colonial settlements in North America, and the territory granted to the London Company included the eastern coast of America from the 34th parallel (Cape Fear) north to the 41st parallel (in Long Island Sound), and as part of the Virginia Company and Colony, the London Company owned a large portion of Atlantic and Inland Canada.
But enough about them, since the real question here is was there freedom of the press in England at the time of the Fairfax Resolves, or not?
Referring the question to Wikipedia, this is what we learn: that after 1600, one hundred seventy-four (174) years before the Fairfax Resolves, the national governments in France and England began printing official newsletters.
But long before that, by the 1500s, printing was firmly in the royal jurisdiction, and printing was restricted only to English subjects with the English Crown imposing strict controls on the distribution of religious or political printed materials.
In 1538, Henry VIII of England, a noted despot in his own right remembered for his lusts and his snarling battles with the Papacy, decreed that all printed matter had to be approved by the Privy Council before publication, and by 1581, the publication of seditious material had become a capital offence.
Subsequently, Queen Mary used the trade itself to control it by granting a Royal Charter to the Company of Stationers in 1557, so that the Company became a partner with the state under Queen Elizabeth, advantaging greatly from this partnership as this restricted the number of presses, allowing them to keep their profitable business without much competition.
And this also worked in the favour of the Crown as the Company were less likely to publish material that would disturb their relationship because their privileges were directly derived from them.
Restrictions only became tighter in the printing industry as time went on, with Edward VI prohibiting ‘spoken news or rumour’ in his proclamations of 1547 to 1549, and royal permission had to be obtained before any news could be published, and all printed news was regarded as the royal prerogative.
The only form of printed news that was permitted to be circulated was the ‘relation,’ a narrative of a single event, domestic or foreign, and there were two categories of news being circulated here: items of ‘Wonderful and Strange Newes’ and government propaganda.
Then the 17th century saw the rise of political pamphleteering fuelled by the politically contentious times of bloody civil war, with each party seeking to mobilise its supporters by the widespread distribution of pamphlets, as in the coffeehouses where one copy would be passed around and read aloud.
Thereafter, in 1641, 35 years after the chartering of the London Company, the Court of High Commission and the Star Chamber in England were abolished, and copyright laws were not enforced, which meant the press in England was now free, and many people began to print their own newsbooks, free of any worry of prosecution.
A milestone was reached in England 1694, eighty (80) years before the Fairfax Resolves, with the final lapse of the Licensing Order of 1643 that had been put in place by the Stuart kings, which put an end to the heavy-handed censorship that had previously tried to suppress the flow of free speech and ideas across society, and therefore, allowed writers to criticise the government freely.
The 1640s and 1650s were a fast-paced time in the history of British journalism because of the abolition of copyright laws, and this was also a time filled with war and fragmentation of opinion.
Most newsbooks in London supported the Parliament, and these publications compelled the reader to take sides, depending on whose bias and propaganda they were reading.
The huge and absolute freedom of the press came to an end with the Restoration, however, with King Charles introducing the Printing Act of 1662, which restricted printing to the University of Oxford and Trinity College, Cambridge and to the master printers of the Stationer’s Company in London.
This act provided the highly regulated and restricted environment that had previously been abolished.
Prior to the Glorious Revolution journalism had been a risky line of work, and one such victim was the reckless Benjamin Harris, who was convicted for defaming the King’s authority.
Unable to pay the large fine that was imposed on him he was put in prison, and he eventually made his way to America where he founded one of the first newspapers here.
After the Revolution, the new monarch William III, who had been installed by Parliament, was wary of public opinion and did not try to interfere with the burgeoning press, and the growth in journalism and the increasing freedom the press enjoyed was a symptom of a more general phenomenon – the development of the party system of government.
As the concept of a parliamentary opposition became an acceptable rather than treasonable norm, newspapers and editors began to adopt critical and partisan stances and they soon became an important force in the political and social affairs of the country.
By the beginning of the eighteenth century, Britain was an increasingly stable and prosperous country with an expanding empire, and a new upper middle class consisting of merchants, traders, entrepreneurs and bankers was rapidly emerging – educated, literate and increasingly willing to enter the political discussion and participate in the governance of the country with the result being a boom in journalism, in newspapers and magazines.
Writers who had been dependent on a rich patron in the past were now able to become self-employed by hiring out their services to the newspapers, and the values expressed in this new press were overwhelmingly consistent with the bourgeois middle class – an emphasis on the importance of property rights, religious toleration and intellectual freedom in contrast to the restrictions prevalent in France and other nations.
Journalism in the first half of the 18th century produced many great writers such as Daniel Defoe, Jonathan Swift, Joseph Addison, Richard Steele, Henry Fielding, and Samuel Johnson, and men such as these edited newspapers, or wrote essays for the popular press on topical issues, and their material was met with an insatiable demand from ordinary citizens of the middle class, who were beginning to participate in the flow of ideas and news.
Jonathan Swift wrote his greatest satires for The Examiner, often in allegorical form, lampooning the controversies between the Tories and Whigs and the so-called “Cato Letters,” written by John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon under the pseudonym, “Cato”, were published in the London Journal in the 1720s, discussing such ideas as liberty, representative government, and freedom of expression.
These letters were to have a great impact in colonial America and the nascent republican movement all the way up to the signing of the Declaration of Independence.
Not surprisingly, just as we are seeing again today in this country, the increasing popularity and influence of newspapers was unappealing to the government of the day, so that a duty was imposed in 1712 that lasted a century and a half at different rates covering newspapers, pamphlets, advertisements and almanacs in the form of the stamp tax, which was a halfpenny on newspapers of half a sheet or less and a penny on newspapers that ranged from half a sheet to a single sheet in size.
Jonathan Swift expressed in his Journal to Stella on August 7, 1712, doubt in the ability of The Spectator to hold out against the tax, which doubt was proved justified in December 1712 by its discontinuance.
However, some of the existing journals continued production and their numbers soon increased, with part of this increase being attributed to corruption and political connections of its owners.
In 1753 the total number of copies of newspapers sold yearly in Britain amounted to 7,411,757.
In 1760 it had risen to 9,464,790 and in 1767 to 11,300,980.
In 1776 the number of newspapers published in London alone had increased to 53.
An important figure in the fight for increased freedom of the press in England was John Wilkes, (17 October 1727 – 26 December 1797), who was an English radical, journalist, and politician who in 1771 was instrumental in obliging the government to concede the right of printers to publish verbatim accounts of parliamentary debates.
During the American War of Independence, John Wilkes was a supporter of the American rebels, adding further to his popularity with American Whigs.
When the Scot John Stuart, 3rd Earl of Bute, came to head the government in England in 1762, Wilkes started a radical weekly publication, The North Briton, to attack him, using an anti-Scottish tone, and he was charged with seditious libel over attacks on George III’s speech endorsing the Paris Peace Treaty of 1763 at the opening of Parliament on 23 April 1763.
At his court hearing, however, the Lord Chief Justice ruled that as an MP, Wilkes was protected by privilege from arrest on a charge of libel and he was soon restored to his seat and he sued his arresters for trespass.]
As a result of this episode, his popular support surged, with people chanting, “Wilkes, Liberty and Number 45”, referring to the newspaper.
However, he was soon found guilty of libel again and he was sentenced to 22 months imprisonment and a fine of £1,000.
When he was finally released from prison in 1770 he campaigned for increased freedom of the press, and due to large and growing support, the government was forced to back down and abandoned its attempts at censorship.
So there is some much-needed background to this subject of freedom of the press in America.
Stay tuned, for more is yet to come!
So, to recap here, according to the New York Post article “Nearly half of Republicans say Trump should have power to shut down media” by Bob Fredericks published August 7, 2018, we, the people of the United States of America have before us the proposition that as United States president, Donald Trump “should have the authority to close news outlets engaged in bad behavior,” a proposition backed by 43% of Republicans in America, who are themselves only 24% of the voters in America people, with 48% of them saying they believe “the news media is the enemy of the American people,” which is an interesting reversal from the Viet Nam times, when it was the Democrats and Lyndon Baines Johnson who believed that journalists were the enemies of the American people.
Further, 23% of Republican voters think Trump should close down specific news organizations, such as CNN, The Washington Post and The New York Times, and perhaps even the Cape Charles Mirror, for that matter, just because.
Beyond that, 79% of the Republicans say they believe “the mainstream media treats President Trump unfairly,” which is as good a reason as any for Trump to shut down the media by executive order, which Republicans believe is fully in Trump’s power as president, given that the First Amendment only says “Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press;” it is entirely silent on the right of the president to shut down the media by executive order, which is true.
And additionally, it is not only Republicans who feel that way – according to the same poll, 12% of Democrats, who comprise 31% of the voters of America, and and 21% of Independents, who comprise 42% of the voters of America, agreed that “the president should have the authority to close news outlets engaged in bad behavior,” which again is defined as the media treating President Trump unfairly by lying, making up sources and knowingly reporting false information to make him look bad.
“They purposely cause great division & distrust, they can also cause War, and they are very dangerous & sick!” Trump said in a recent TWEET on TWITTER, and by God, if those aren’t reasons, especially that last one, to shut them down, there never will be any.
I mean, think about it, people – who in their right mind wants a bunch of dangerous and sick journalists in America who don’t treat Trump fairly going around causing War, while purposefully causing great division and distrust?
Why, you would have to be some kind of enemy of America yourself to want that to happen, and who wants to be an enemy of America?
So, people, what on earth could have been on the minds of the founding fathers of this country when they sowed the seeds for that by supporting freedom or liberty of the press?
Were they crazy, or were they insane?
Or is it a case where they were just simple-minded, living as they were back then in real primitive times in America, so they just did not know better?
Afterall, look what is being said here, people, in the political essay “A Republican I: To James Wilson, Esquire” on October 25, 1787, to wit:
The press is the scourge of tyrants and the grand palladium of liberty.
end quotes
Now, what kind of seditious crap is that – intimating that Donald Trump is a tyrant because the press is scourging him today?
Were these so-called founding fathers some kind of a pack of revolutionaries with this crap about the press being “the scourge of tyrants and the grand palladium of liberty?”
But wait, wait a moment – here comes Noah Webster in the “America Essay” in the Daily Advertiser, New York on December 31, 1787, and this is what he has to say on the subject of Trump shutting down the media in America by executive order, to wit:
Yes, Gentlemen, you know, that under such a general licence, a man who should publish a treatise to prove his maker a knave, must be screened from legal punishment.
I shudder at the thought!
But the truth must not be concealed.
The Constitutions of several States guarantee that very licence.
But if you attempt to define the liberty of the Press, and ascertain what cases shall fall within that privilege, during the course of centuries, where will you begin?
Or rather, where will you end?
Here, Gentlemen, you will be puzzled.
Some publications certainly may be a breach of civil law: You will not have the effrontery to deny a truth so obvious and intuitively evident.
Admit that principle; and unless you can define precisely the cases, which are, and are not a breach of law, you have no right to say, the liberty of the Press shall not be restrained; for such a license would warrant any breach of law.
Rather than hazard such an abuse of privilege, is it not better to leave the right altogether with your rulers and your posterity?
No attempts have ever been made by a Legislative body in America, to abridge that privilege; and in this free enlightened country, no attempts could succeed, unless the public should be convinced that an abuse of it would warrant the restriction.
Should this ever be the case, you have no right to say, that a future Legislature, or that posterity shall not abridge the privilege, or punish its abuses.
The Legislators thus chosen to represent the people should have all the power that the people would have, were they assembled in one body to deliberate upon public measures.
The distinction between the powers of the people and of their Representatives in the Legislature is as absurd in theory as it proved pernicious in practice.
A distinction, which has already countenanced and supported one rebellion in America; has prevented many good measures; had produced many bad; has created animosities in many States, and embarrassments in all.
It has taught the people a lesson, which, if they continue to practice, will bring laws into contempt, and frequently mark our country with blood.
You object, Gentlemen, to the powers vested in Congress.
Permit me, to ask you, where will you limit their powers?
What bounds will you prescribe?
You will reply, we will reserve certain rights which we deem invaluable, and restrain our rulers from abridging them.
But, Gentlemen, let me ask you, how will you define these rights?
Would you say the liberty of the Press shall not be restrained?
Well, what is this liberty of the Press?
Is it an unlimited licence to publish any thing and every thing with impunity?
If so, the Author, and Printer of any treatise, however obscene and blasphemous, will be screened from punishment.
You know, Gentlemen, that there are books extant, so shockingly and infamously obscene and so daringly blasphemous, that no society on earth, would be vindicable in suffering the publishers to pass unpunished.
You certainly know that such cases have happened, and may happen again—nay, you know that they are probable.
Would not that indefinite expression, the liberty of the Press, extend to the justification of every possible publication?
end quotes
Now, people, there is a man who appears to be talking more sense than “A Republican I: To James Wilson, Esquire,” is he not?
As he makes clear, the Constitution was never intended to prevent Donald Trump from shutting down CNN, The Washington Post, The New York Times, and perhaps even the Cape Charles Mirror, for that matter, just because.
Or is he really saying something entirely different?
Stay tuned and we will come back and examine further that very important question quite relevant to these troubled times we now find ourselves in.
And here we have to stop and consider the fact that if Donald Trump as president has the authority to unilaterally and peremptorily close down news outlets he perceives to be engaged in bad behavior such as CNN, The Washington Post, The New York Times, and perhaps even the Cape Charles Mirror, for that matter, just because, then every American president subsequent to Trump will also have that same power and authority.
Thus, if in 2020, Democratic Socialist Young Andy Cuomo of New York state were to defeat Trump, which there is a high likelihood of, and become president, then as president, he too would have the authority to unilaterally and peremptorily close down news outlets he perceives to be engaged in bad behavior such Fox, and perhaps even the Cape Charles Mirror, for that matter, just because.
Is that something we as a people really want or desire?
Consider this from the Politico article “Andrew Cuomo Could Beat Trump … If He Can Win Over the Left First – The governor of New York suddenly looks like the kind of take-no-prisoners pol his party needs. With one catch.” by David Freedlander on July 7, 2017, to wit:
“Sometimes I think there is something mentally wrong with him,” said a former aide to another official who faced Cuomo’s wrath.
“I never known anyone who was so obsessed with fighting all the time.”
Politicians in and around Albany say that if they cross Cuomo, even a stray quote in the newspaper, they can expect an almost immediate spittle-flicked phone call from his office.
end quotes
I can pretty much guarantee that if the United States president does in fact have the authority to unilaterally and peremptorily close down news outlets he perceives to be engaged in bad behavior, that if elected president, Young Andy Cuomo would use that authority to close down any media outlet that dares to question him.
Is that something we, the people, really want?
Think carefully, America, before your wish comes true.
“But the truth must not be concealed.”
The plain truth is that in writing anything, the writer picks and choose what to include and what to exclude. In large businesses, such as media outlets, this principle is magnified, via reporters’ guidelines, assignments, editing, etc. This selection, based on the biases of the writer and organization is probably not nefarious. It is probably more driven by the need to make a buck (or a few million bucks), gain the good opinion of people they care about, and maybe a desire to make the world a friendlier place for their own brand of philosophy.
So, is the press the enemy of the people? Well, not really, but neither are they a friend of the people.
The press provides a service, for a fee, and like other service providers some do it better than others. However, despite their high minded declarations, they are in the business to increase their market and make money (maybe not true for outlets like the Mirror). This is even more valid today than in the days of yellow journalism.
The editorial page is slanted, because it’s the editorial page, and the news articles are slanted because of monetary and structural bias reasons, and the network talking heads play to their existing audiences. Therefore, some attack the media, or the portion of the media that does not align with their own philosophy.
How does the reader get to the truth that must not be concealed? In a word, read. Don’t just read (or watch) your preferred or the opposition outlet. Their biases are known and predictable – you don’t learn much and get little value (truth) for your time. Readers have little chance of getting to the truth by consuming the pre-packaged biases from a single source – even a favorite source. An interesting approach is taken by the news aggregator Allsides.com which recognizes and labels news articles with their political biases. However, focusing on dueling news narrows the focus and loses the broader perspective needed to find the truth.
Instead, get some distance from the overheated arguments, expand your horizon, and take in the views of people across the globe and around the corner. In other words, don’t waste your time rolling around in the noxious mire that the US media has become. Instead read the BBC, Al Jazeera, Xinhua, Deutsche Welle, Reuters, Google News, Hindustan Times, AFP, local news (Mirror and small hometown sources) and any other source outside of the echo chambers of standard US media outlets. Also, avoid sources with Drudge or Progressive in the title or a Kardashian on the cover.
These outside sources are biased as well – but they have different biases and the advantage of being less invested in winning the next US election than the standard US media outlets. By sampling a range of sources (to include some unfriendly to the US) that are not locked into a US left/right philosophy knife fight, readers may be able to learn some truths that the current US media babble is concealing. This is a lot of work, requiring reading, sorting, thinking, and distillation, but if truth is important, it is worth it.
It breaks my heart to realize that half this country no longer appears ‘American’ to me. They no longer represent the Judeo Christian principals that this country was founded on. They appear to no longer have any respect for the flag, the nation it represents, their families, their last name, or sadly…themselves. I am told that I cannot paint these people with a broad brush, but as the far left wing extremist and the quiet old couple who have voted for the democratic party for the last 50 years, no matter who they ran….well, they both vote for the same candidate on election day. Yes, I must paint them with the same broad brush. I am not alone in this analogy, political correctness keeps most folk’s mouths shut.
https://www.apnews.com/d650f2a295d6480a9e572f2a45c28b39/Judge-sets-bail-for-adults-arrested-at-New-Mexico-compound
Liberals are as dangerous as terrorist to this nation and it’s citizens.
And aren’t you glad, Tony Price, that we live in a country with a free press like the Cape Charles Mirror where you get to express that sentiment?
I’m proud to be an American where at least I know I’m free.
And I won’t forget the men who died, who gave that right to me.
And I’d gladly stand up next to you and defend her still today.
‘Cause there ain’t no doubt I love this land …
God bless the U.S.A.
And you, as well, Lee Greenwood!
Thank you, Michael Dziubinski, for that intelligent and informative response, and I could not agree with you more about expanding one’s horizons by reading the BBC, Al Jazeera, Xinhua, Deutsche Welle, Reuters, Google News, Hindustan Times, AFP, local news (Mirror and small hometown sources) and any other source outside of the echo chambers of standard US media outlets.
And you are spot on when you say “(T)he plain truth is that in writing anything, the writer picks and choose what to include and what to exclude.”
Of course they do, and who would or could think otherwise?
You are also correct when you say “(T)his selection, based on the biases of the writer and organization is probably not nefarious.”
Even if it is, it is our DUTY, at least as I was taught when young, to know the difference and be able to pick that out, if and when it might happen.
We are supposed to think, afterall.
And yes, just as you say, and say well, “(T)his is a lot of work, requiring reading, sorting, thinking, and distillation, but if truth is important, it is worth it.”
The price of freedom is eternal vigilance by each and every citizen.
And you nail it when you say as follows: “(S)o, is the press the enemy of the people?”
“Well, not really, but neither are they a friend of the people.”
end quotes
Such a simple concept, is it not?
And again, as American citizens, that is something we should know long before we get out of high school.
The press is simply the press.
Which takes us back to 1934 and pp.268-270 of a book on the media entitled “Modern News Reporting” copyright 1934 by Carl Warren who was the Broadcast Editor of the New York Daily News at that time and a former Washington correspondent for the Chicago Tribune who was also an instructor in the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, to wit:
Chapter XXII entitled “Slanting The Policy Story”
THE QUESTION OF ETHICS
Perhaps the most mooted question in the field of journalistic practice today – an issue often debated, never settled – is this one of policy in the news.
Some argue that an impassive, strictly neutral recording of the news is the paper’s chief obligation to the public, a function betrayed by any reporter who colors or trims the facts.
Policy writing is regarded by this group as something reprehensible, deceptive and insidious.
Taking an opposite point of view, others contend that the public demands of the newspaper intelligent interpretation as well as trustworthy assembling of facts.
They hold that mere parrot-like transmission of the day’s events to busy, apathetic readers makes the newspaper a negative spectator rather than a vigorous leader in community life.
*******
So far as the reporter is concerned, these problems of policy need not bother him greatly.
He has little voice in the matter for, like any other employee, he is a salaried craftsman, receiving orders and not giving them.
Seldom, if ever, will he be asked to forfeit his self-respect.
If his paper is strong on policies he should try to conform to them, regardless of his own personal views.
He writes what his superiors instruct him to write, in the way they want it written.
If he is unwilling to do so, his only alternative is to look for another job.
end quotes
If that doesn’t sum up operative reality as it is, then nothing will.
Thank you for commenting!
For the record, to follow up on what Michael Dziubinski posted above, section 8 of the Article I of the New York State Constitution, the Bill of Rights, states as follows:
§8. Every citizen may freely speak, write and publish his or her sentiments on all subjects, being responsible for the abuse of that right; and no law shall be passed to restrain or abridge the liberty of speech or of the press.
end quotes
If one believes that, and I do, then one has to believe it fully, which means those whose views we might not like or believe in still have the same right we do to express them, and then, we have the right to tear those views to shreds, assuming they are false or unsubstantiated or unfounded, that is assuming we have equal access to do so, which often is not the case at all.
As the saying goes, at least up here to the north of you freedom of the press is free to those who own the press.
Getting back to the American history which underlies this thread, that “liberty” of the press in early America was very much a matter of public concern can readily be seen in “A Democratic Federalist” from the Pennsylvania Herald October 17, 1787, as follows:
It is said in the 2d. section of the 3d. article of the Federal Plan: “The judicial power shall extend to ALL CASES in law and equity, arising under this constitution.”
It is very clear that under this clause, the tribunal of the United States, may claim a right to the cognizance of all offences against the general government, and libels will not probably be excluded.
Nay, those offences may be by them construed, or by law declared, misprision of treason, an offence which comes literally under their express jurisdiction.
Where is then the safety of our boasted liberty of the press?
And in case of a conflict of jurisdiction between the courts of the United States, and those of the several Commonwealths, is it not easy to foresee which of the two will obtain the advantage?
Under the enormous power of the new confederation, which extends to the individuals as well as to the States of America, a thousand means may be devised to destroy effectually the liberty of the press.
There is no knowing what corrupt and wicked judges may do in process of time, when they are not restrained by express laws.
The case of John Peter Zenger of New-York, ought still to be present to our minds, to convince us how displeasing the liberty of the press is to men in high power.
end quotes
And amen to that last sentence, as we clearly can see herein from the New York Post article entitled “Nearly half of Republicans say Trump should have power to shut down media” by Bob Fredericks published August 7, 2018, which tells us that President Trump’s repeated cries of “fake news” and attacks on journalists as “enemies of the American people” have resonated with his base, with 43% of Republicans saying he “should have the authority to close news outlets engaged in bad behavior.”
Reviewing the foundation documents of this nation concerning the subject of freedom of the press, the first mention I find of it in the Federalist Papers is in Federalist No. 84, Certain General and Miscellaneous Objections to the Constitution Considered and Answered, From McLean’s Edition, New York To the People of the State of New York by Alexander Hamilton, as follows:
IN THE course of the foregoing review of the Constitution, I have taken notice of, and endeavored to answer most of the objections which have appeared against it.
There, however, remain a few which either did not fall naturally under any particular head or were forgotten in their proper places.
These shall now be discussed; but as the subject has been drawn into great length, I shall so far consult brevity as to comprise all my observations on these miscellaneous points in a single paper.
The most considerable of the remaining objections is that the plan of the convention contains no bill of rights.
Among other answers given to this, it has been upon different occasions remarked that the constitutions of several of the States are in a similar predicament.
*****
Here, in strictness, the people surrender nothing; and as they retain every thing they have no need of particular reservations.
“WE, THE PEOPLE of the United States, to secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ORDAIN and ESTABLISH this Constitution for the United States of America.”
Here is a better recognition of popular rights, than volumes of those aphorisms which make the principal figure in several of our State bills of rights, and which would sound much better in a treatise of ethics than in a constitution of government.
But a minute detail of particular rights is certainly far less applicable to a Constitution like that under consideration, which is merely intended to regulate the general political interests of the nation, than to a constitution which has the regulation of every species of personal and private concerns.
If, therefore, the loud clamors against the plan of the convention, on this score, are well founded, no epithets of reprobation will be too strong for the constitution of this State.
But the truth is, that both of them contain all which, in relation to their objects, is reasonably to be desired.
I go further, and affirm that bills of rights, in the sense and to the extent in which they are contended for, are not only unnecessary in the proposed Constitution, but would even be dangerous.
They would contain various exceptions to powers not granted; and, on this very account, would afford a colorable pretext to claim more than were granted.
For why declare that things shall not be done which there is no power to do?
Why, for instance, should it be said that the liberty of the press shall not be restrained, when no power is given by which restrictions may be imposed?
I will not contend that such a provision would confer a regulating power; but it is evident that it would furnish, to men disposed to usurp, a plausible pretense for claiming that power.
They might urge with a semblance of reason, that the Constitution ought not to be charged with the absurdity of providing against the abuse of an authority which was not given, and that the provision against restraining the liberty of the press afforded a clear implication, that a power to prescribe proper regulations concerning it was intended to be vested in the national government.
This may serve as a specimen of the numerous handles which would be given to the doctrine of constructive powers, by the indulgence of an injudicious zeal for bills of rights.
On the subject of the liberty of the press, as much as has been said, I cannot forbear adding a remark or two: in the first place, I observe, that there is not a syllable concerning it in the constitution of this State; in the next, I contend, that whatever has been said about it in that of any other State, amounts to nothing.
What signifies a declaration, that “the liberty of the press shall be inviolably preserved”?
What is the liberty of the press?
Who can give it any definition which would not leave the utmost latitude for evasion?
I hold it to be impracticable; and from this I infer, that its security, whatever fine declarations may be inserted in any constitution respecting it, must altogether depend on public opinion, and on the general spirit of the people and of the government.
end quotes
Footnote 3 to Federalist No. 84 then provided as follows:
To show that there is a power in the Constitution by which the liberty of the press may be affected, recourse has been had to the power of taxation.
It is said that duties may be laid upon the publications so high as to amount to a prohibition.
I know not by what logic it could be maintained, that the declarations in the State constitutions, in favor of the freedom of the press, would be a constitutional impediment to the imposition of duties upon publications by the State legislatures.
It cannot certainly be pretended that any degree of duties, however low, would be an abridgment of the liberty of the press.
We know that newspapers are taxed in Great Britain, and yet it is notorious that the press nowhere enjoys greater liberty than in that country.
And if duties of any kind may be laid without a violation of that liberty, it is evident that the extent must depend on legislative discretion, respecting the liberty of the press, will give it no greater security than it will have without them.
The same invasions of it may be effected under the State constitutions which contain those declarations through the means of taxation, as under the proposed Constitution, which has nothing of the kind.
It would be quite as significant to declare that government ought to be free, that taxes ought not to be excessive, etc., as that the liberty of the press ought not to be restrained.
end quotes
That freedom of the press was a matter of concern to the early Americans subsequent to the Revolution can again be seen in “An Address to the People of the State of New-York On the Subject of the Constitution, Agreed upon at Philadelphia, The 17th of September, 1787. New-York” Printed by Samuel Loudon, Printer to the State. 1788, By John Jay, member of the New York State Convention, as follows:
Any plan forcibly carried by a slender majority, must expect numerous opponents among the people, who, especially in their present temper, would be more inclined to reject than adopt any system so made and carried.
We should in such case again see the press teeming with publications for and against it; for as the minority would take pains to justify their dissent, so would the majority be industrious to display the wisdom of their proceedings.
****
We are told, among other strange things, that the liberty of the press is left insecure by the proposed Constitution, and yet that Constitution says neither more nor less about it, than the Constitution of the State of New York does.
end quotes
Which brings us to the Ratification of the United States Constitution by the State of New York; July 26, 1788.
WE the Delegates of the People of the State of New York, duly elected and Met in Convention, having maturely considered the Constitution for the United States of America, agreed to on the seventeenth day of September, in the year One thousand Seven hundred and Eighty seven, by the Convention then assembled at Philadelphia in the Common-wealth of Pennsylvania (a Copy whereof precedes these presents) and having also seriously and deliberately considered the present situation of the United States, Do declare and make known.
That all Power is originally vested in and consequently derived from the People, and that Government is instituted by them for their common Interest Protection and Security.
That the enjoyment of Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness are essential rights which every Government ought to respect and preserve.
That the Powers of Government may be reassumed by the People, whensoever it shall become necessary to their Happiness; that every Power, Jurisdiction and right, which is not by the said Constitution clearly delegated to the Congress of the United States, or the departments of the Government thereof, remains to the People of the several States, or to their respective State Governments to whom they may have granted the same;
And that those Clauses in the said Constitution, which declare, that Congress shall not have or exercise certain Powers, do not imply that Congress is entitled to any Powers not given by the said Constitution; but such Clauses are to be construed either as exceptions to certain specified Powers, or as inserted merely for greater Caution.
****
That the Freedom of the Press ought not to be violated or restrained.
end quotes
Then we come to “Civis” by David Ramsay in the Columbian Herald, Charleston February 04, 1787:
“An Address to the Freemen of South Carolina on the Subject of the Federal Constitution”,
In a country like ours, abounding with free men all of one rank, where property is equally diffused, where estates are held in fee simple, the press free, and the means of information common; tyranny cannot readily find admission under any form of government; but its admission is next to impossible, under one where the people are the source of all power, and elect either mediately by their representatives, or immediately by themselves the whole of their rulers.
end quotes
And there is James Wilson’s State House Speech on October 6, 1787, as follows:
SUBSTANCE OF AN ADDRESS TO A MEETING OF THE CITIZENS OF PHILADELPHIA, DELIVERED, 6 OCTOBER 1787, BY THE HONORABLE JAMES WILSON, ESQUIRE, ONE OF THE DELEGATES FROM THE STATE OF PENNSYLVANIA TO THE LATE CONTINENTAL CONGRESS
Mr. Chairman and Fellow Citizens,
Having received the honour of an appointment to represent you in the late convention, it is, perhaps, my duty to comply with the request of many gentlemen, whose characters and judgments I sincerely respect, and who have urged that this would be a proper occasion to lay before you any information, which will serve to elucidate and explain the principles and arrangements of the constitution that has been submitted to the consideration of the United States.
I confess that I am unprepared for so extensive and so important a disquisition: but the insidious attempts, which are clandestinely and industriously made to pervert and destroy the new plan, induce me the more readily to engage in its defence: and the impressions of four months constant attendance to the subject, have not been so easily effaced, as to leave me without an answer to the objections which have been raised.
It will be proper, however, before I enter into the refutation of the charges that are alleged, to mark the leading discrimination between the state constitutions, and the constitution of the United States.
When the people established the powers of legislation under their separate governments, they invested their representatives with every right and authority which they did not in explicit terms reserve: and therefore upon every question, respecting the jurisdiction of the house of assembly, if the frame of government is silent, the jurisdiction is efficient and complete.
But in delegating federal powers, another criterion was necessarily introduced: and the congressional authority is to be collected, not from tacit implication, but from the positive grant, expressed in the instrument of the union.
Hence, it is evident, that in the former case, everything which is not reserved, is given: but in the latter, the reverse of the proposition prevails, and everything which is not given, is reserved.
This distinction being recognized, will furnish and answer to those who think the omission of a bill of rights, a defect in the proposed constitution: for it would have been superfluous and absurd, to have stipulated with a federal body of our own creation, that we should enjoy those privileges, of which we are not divested either by the intention of that act that has brought that body into existence.
For instance, the liberty of the press, which has been a copious subject of declamation and opposition: what controul can proceed from the federal government, to shackle or destroy that sacred palladium of national freedom?
If, indeed, a power similar to that which has been granted for the regulation of commerce, had been granted to regulate literary publications it would have been as necessary to stipulate that the liberty of the press should be preserved inviolate, as that the impost should be general in its operation.
With respect, likewise, to the particular district of ten miles, which is to be the seat of government, it will undoubtedly be proper to observe this salutary precaution, as there the legislative power will be vested in the president, senate, and house of representatives of the United States.
But this could not be an object with the convention: for it must naturally depend upon a future compact; to which the citizens immediately interested, will, and ought to be parties: and there is no reason to suspect, that so popular a privilege will in that case be neglected.
In truth, then, the proposed system possesses no influence whatever upon the press; and it would have been merely nugatory, to have introduced a formal declaration upon the subject; nay, that very declaration might have been construed to imply that some degree of power was given, since we undertook to define its extent.
end quotes
Which takes us to “One of the Four Thousand,” author Unknown, in the Independent Gazetteer, Philadelphia October 15, 1787:
The objections to the federal government are weak, false, and absurd.
The neglect of the Convention to mention the Liberty of the Press arose from a respect to the state constitutions, in each of which this palladium of liberty is secured, and which is guaranteed to them as an essential part of their republican forms of government.
But supposing this had not been done, the Liberty of the Press would have been an inherent and political right, as long as nothing was said against it.
The Convention have said nothing to secure the privilege of eating and drinking, and yet no man supposes that right of nature to be endangered by their silence about it.
end quotes
And “Lee’s Proposals” by Richard Henry Lee on October 16, 1787:
It having been found from universal experience, that the most expressed declarations and reservations are necessary to protect the just rights and liberty of mankind from the silent powerful and ever active conspiracy of those who govern; and it appearing to be the sense of the good people of America, by the various bills or declarations of rights whereon the government of the greater number of states are founded: that such precautions are necessary to restrain and regulate the exercise of the great powers given to the rulers.
In conformity with these principles, and from respect for the public sentiment on this subject, it is submitted, that the new constitution proposed for the government of the United States be bottomed upon a declaration or bill of rights, clearly and precisely stating the principles upon which this social compact is founded, to wit: (1) that the rights of conscience in matters of religion ought not to be violated, (2) that the freedom of the press shall be secured, (3) that the trial by jury in criminal and civil cases, and the modes prescribed by the common law for the safety of life in criminal prosecutions shall be held sacred, (4) that standing armies in times of peace are dangerous to liberty, and ought not to be permitted unless assented to by two-thirds of the members composing each house of the legislature under the new constitution, (5) that the elections should be free and frequent, (6) that the right administration of justice should be secured by the independence of the judges, (7) that excessive bail, excessive fines, or cruel and unusual punishments should not be demanded or inflicted, (8) that the right of the people to assemble peaceably for the purpose of petitioning the legislature shall not be prevented, (9) that the citizens shall not be exposed to unreasonable searches, seizure of their persons, houses, papers or property; (10) And it is necessary for the good of society, that the administration of government be conducted with all possible maturity of judgment, for which reason it has been the practice of civilized nations and so determined by every state in the Union, that a council of state or privy council should be appointed to advise and assist in the arduous business assigned to the executive power.
end quotes
And there is Noah Webster in “A Citizen of America: An Examination Into the Leading Principles of America” on October 17, 1787:
An equality of property, with a necessity of alienation, constantly operating to destroy combinations of powerful families, is the very soul of a republic.
While this continues, the people will inevitably possess both power and freedom; when this is lost, power departs, liberty expires, and a commonwealth will inevitably assume some other form.
The liberty of the press, trial by jury, the Habeas Corpus writ, even Magna Charta itself, although justly deemed the palladia of freedom, are all inferior considerations, when compared with a general distribution of real property among every class of people.
4. It is alleged that the liberty of the press is not guaranteed by the new constitution.
But this objection is wholly unfounded.
The liberty of the press does not come within the jurisdiction of federal government.
It is firmly established in all the states either by law, or positive declarations in bills of right; and not being mentioned in the federal constitution, is not—and cannot be abridged by Congress.
It stands on the basis of the respective state-constitutions.
Should any state resign to Congress the exclusive jurisdiction of a certain district, which should include any town where presses are already established, it is in the power of the state to reserve the liberty of the press, or any other fundamental privilege, and make it an immutable condition of the grant, that such rights shall never be violated.
All objections therefore on this score are “baseless visions.”
end quotes
And “Anti-Cincinnatus” in the Northampton Hampshire Gazette on December 19, 1787, to wit:
To illucidate the danger arising from this omission of a bill of rights, and prove “that a dangerous aristocracy springing from it (the Constitution) must necessarily swallow up the democratic rights of the union, and sacrifice the liberties of the people to the power and dominion of a few,” he refers to the liberty of the press, as an instance taken by Mr. Wilson, to shew that a bill of rights is not necessary, because this remains safe and secure without it; for this reason, viz. “there is no express power granted to regulate literary publications.”
The Constitution grants no power more nor less with respect to the liberty of the press; but leaves it just as it found it, in the hands of the several state constitutions: but to enervate this argument, my author sagely observes, “that where general powers are expressly granted, the particular ones comprehended within them must also be granted:” and with keen sagacity discovers a general power granted to Congress “to define and punish offences against the law of nations,” and after a plausible parade or inconclusive argumentation, assumes to have proved, “that the power of restraining the press is necessarily involved in the unlimited power of defining offences against the law of nations, or of making treaties, which are to be the supreme law of the land.”
To clear off the obscurity and confusion which involve the ideas and reasonings of this author, concerning the law of nations and public treaties, and set this matter in a clear convictive point of view, it is needless and would be to no purpose to pursue him through an intricate maze or winding in a pompous declamatory harangue; it is needful, to that end only to consider, that by the law of nations, is intended, those regulations and articles of agreement by which different nations, in their treaties, one with another, mutually bind themselves to regulate their conduct, one towards the other.
A violation of such articles is properly defined an offence against the law of nations: and there is and can be no other law of nations, which binds them with respect to their treatment one of another, but these articles of agreement contained in their public treaties and alliances.
These public treaties become the law of the land in that being made by constitutional authority, i.e. among us, by those whom the people themselves have authorized for that purpose, are in a proper sense their own agreements, and therefore as laws, bind the several states, as states, and their inhabitants, as individuals to take notice of and govern themselves according to the articles and rules which are defined and stipulated in them: as law of the land they bind to nothing but a performance of the engagements which they contain.
How then doth it appear “that a power to define offences against the law of nations, necessarily involves a power of restraining the liberty of the press?”
Have we the least possible ground of fear, that the United States in some future period will enter in their public treaties an article to injure the liberty of the press?
What concern have foreign nations with the liberty or restraint of the American press?
This writer seems to have been set to work with design (not his own) to yield his assistance to verify an observation, said to be made by Dr. Franklin, viz.
“That the goodness and excellency of the federal Constitution is evidenced more strongly by nothing, than the weakness and futility of the objections made against it.”
That our author had a design in the choice of a signature, to fasten a stigma on the worthy patriotic society, I can not assert.
Be assured this is by no means the wish of ANTI-CINCINNATUS.
end quotes
Reading all of that, how can one walk away with a belief that Donald Trump or any other president for that matter, has any authority, jurisdiction or discretion to unilaterally and peremptorily close down any media outlets in America?
The candid world would certainly like to know.
I would like to respond to Ms. Parker’s comment here. I believe as written, she stated, “It breaks my heart to realize that half this country no longer appears ‘American’ to me.” An apt statement, but which “half” is she speaking? The partisan politics of today’s society have divided this country directly down the ‘Center of its Soul’ to enable a corrupt and rampantly misguided governmental elite to run ram-shod over the last vestiges of wealth and world power this nation possesses. Because we now shout from our “Camps” at each other, we have taken our eyes off of the real ball in play.
Mr. Price blames ‘Liberals’ for the release of the Moslem defendants found at the New Mexico compound. “Judge Sarah Backus set a $20,000 bond for each defendant and ordered that the two men and three women wear ankle monitors, have weekly contact with their attorneys, not consume alcohol and have no firearms.” Seems the judge, barring further investigations, has found that the child abuse is the worst of their crimes and prosecutors failed to articulate any specific threats or plans against the community. So, they were each released on a twenty thousand-dollar bond and equipped with ankle monitors. The fact that Mr. Price says that it was Liberals who are dangerous (what? In releasing them basically under house arrest and a twenty-thousand-dollar bond?) seems to either know little about the law or has an even further disregard for the law and its statutes in the country. For all we know, Judge Sarah Backus could be a conservative. But, of course, Mr. Price sees liberals around every corner and tree and points and shouts, deeply ensconced within his camp; “terrorist!”
Meanwhile, the swamp is getting swampier, all of the so-called “best” people are fleeing or getting thrown out and being “tried” for their own malfeasants and scams. Which half, Ms. Parker? That portion that was told Oxycodone was harmless by their doctors? Or the portion that has to worry that their children don’t get shot if they go to a birthday party down the street? Or that those who wonder if their seventh grader is coming home, alive from school today? Or that portion of America, that works two or three jobs just to put food on their table, clothing on their children, pay their bills and sustain a roof over their heads because they can’t live off of ten dollars an hour today? Who is less American? The brown man or the white man? Who has a deeper stake in America, the brown man whose ancestors were captured, locked in chains and forced into an ocean crossing to feed an economy that fed on his free labors. OR the white man whose grandfather came from Germany after the first World War because he could no longer sustain his lifestyle there? What about the red man living on reservations, no longer in touch with their own culture or heritage because of an American policy known as Manifest Destiny? To gain respect, you must earn respect. Our flag has flown in certain areas where some pretty despicable actions have occurred. It is difficult for some to forget. It is just as difficult for others to forgive those that don’t think they need forgiving.
You all want truth from the news feeds? Personally, I believe, if truth were to honestly rear its uncovered head and show itself, you all would be shocked beyond belief. The inhumanity that has been done in the name of humanity is as old as time itself. So, you pick at the few areas that are vulnerable. Have the networks mislead us? Of course. Do publications chose sides? Who would think they don’t? Are ratings and entertainment now a large part of our news gathering? You’d be a fool to think not. Are we being played? Hmmm…
Mr. Dziubinski and Mr. Plante are absolutely correct when they exhort you to expand your horizons. Read, read, read…everything you can get your hands on. And if you can afford it, travel as well. You’ll find as travelers, you are not so different from those you meet in other places. Unlike what “they” want to tell you. No, Ms. Parker, America is still American to me and to those I meet every day. What is Un-American and has been for a long, long time; are the lies and the blame that those who hold the reins to power want us to believe and spread. Hurt and pain are real. But so is heroism. We all have a choice. To make this a better America or to continue to push down and aside those that have no real power, no voice, no future. Don’t look to the press to assist in that. Their agenda is to keep the pot stirred. You see, there’s money to be made when there’s blood in the streets.
Truth will always be truth, regardless of lack of understanding, disbelief or ignorance. W. Clement Stone
Whoever is careless with the truth in small matters cannot be trusted with important matters. Albert Einstein
Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth. Buddha
Save your Liberal breathe to cool your soup.
You can’t fight political orthodoxy with thought, Chad. Remember 1984, where the goal of the party is to eliminate thought altogether.
The idea that Christianity cannot survive our next election is ridiculous. It survived the collapse of the Roman Empire, the Bubonic Plague, and spirituals emerged out of the slave south. American Christians are spoiled by years of cultural and political power. It certainly is not promised in the Bible. People need to read some history books and get some perspective. If you want Christianity to thrive, try being one. Love your neighbor (which includes liberals and conservatives),help the poor, resist violence, and work for the good of your community.
So, Chas Cornweller, do you think an American president, any American president, should have the power to unilaterally and peremptorily shut down any media outlet that he or she does not like?
While we are on that subject of “liberals,” dear friend and fellow American patriot Chas Cornweller, and the media, specifically CNN, being an “enemy of the American people,” do you perchance recall a CNN article entitled “Liberals want Obama to be a king, not a president” by Dean Obeidallah, Special to CNN, from June 8, 2012, which posed this following existential question, to wit:
Can liberals ever be happy?
end quotes
What are your thoughts on that, pray tell?
As to the author’s motivation for asking the question, this is his reply:
I keep asking myself this question as I hear an increasing number complaining about President Obama.
There seems to be a Greek chorus of liberal whining:
“I’m disappointed by him.”
“I expected more.”
“I thought he would be different.”
Earlier this week, singer Jackson Browne, a vocal 2008 Obama supporter, lamented that President Obama is “…just as beholden to the people who put him in office as any of the Republicans would be.”
Matt Damon, who had very publicly supported Obama in 2008, has now very publicly attacked President Obama.
Damon even went so far as to heap praise on former President Bush, saying:
“I would kiss George W. Bush on the mouth” in appreciation for his work fighting AIDS in Africa.
Although Damon did note his kiss of Bush would be limited to: “Three seconds, no tongue.”
Others turning on Obama include John Cusack, comedian/actor Jon Lovitz, and even the distinguished professor Cornel West, who called Obama:
“A black mascot of Wall Street oligarchs and a black puppet of corporate plutocrats.”
What’s clear is that the liberals speaking out don’t want a president, they want a king.
Albeit a liberal king — but still a king, who would be unrestrained by Congress as well as the checks and balances enshrined in our Constitution.
These disenchanted liberals apparently wanted Obama — upon taking office — to have instantly transformed every campaign promise into law by the simple wave of a pen.
Or maybe they would have preferred Obama to have walked out onto a White House balcony where, in a scene reminiscent of the musical “Evita,” he would be greeted by adoring throngs waiting below, and on the spot, declare that all his ideas were now the law of the land.
end quotes
Do you recall any of that, Chas Cornweller?
Might it somehow impact on how someone like Tony Price views “liberals” in America today, based on how they behaved yesterday and the day before?
Getting back to that article:
But here’s the problem.
Barack Obama is not a king, he’s the president of the United States.
For those who may have forgotten the “Schoolhouse Rock” cartoon of “How a bill becomes a law,” Congress needs to first pass the bill before it has any chance of becoming a law.
Our Founding Fathers set up a governmental structure that requires the president to engage in give and take with the legislative branch.
Of course, if the Founding Fathers could see the current state of our dysfunctional Congress, they may have instead chosen a dictatorship.
But they didn’t, instead drafting a system to guard us against tyranny.
end quotes
Isn’t a part of that system to guard us against tyranny a free press that includes such outlets as CNN?
And the Cape Charles Mirror?
Getting back to the CNN article:
To me, the liberals who are so very disappointed with President Obama either had unrealistic expectations for him, viewing him as a messianic figure who would magically solve all of our nation’s woes, or simply refuse to grasp the reality of our American political system.
In either case, the answer is:
The problem is not Obama, it’s you.
end quotes
Is that an accurate conclusion, do you think?
60 Hard Truths about “Liberals”
For those of you who do not know, especially young people, I am compelled to inform you of the generally un-known truth that the word “Liberal” has a proud heritage and was originally a word that described men who were the political opposites of modern “Liberals.”
The word “Liberal” was forcibly stolen and corrupted by evil men who intentionally perverted the use and meaning of the word. In the long forgotten past, the word “Liberal” described honorable and principled men who held to a philosophy of government that advocated Constitutional Republicanism. Constitutional Republicanism is a type of government almost unknown to most of the world. America was originally a Constitutional Republic. A Constitutional Republic defined is characterized by a very small government with limits on its powers of taxation and whose other powers are strictly limited by rigorously enforced Constitutional edicts. But modern Liberals are nothing more and nothing less than Communists, Socialists and Dictators. Modern Liberals promote, advocate and enforce the centralization of all political power into an all powerful central government. The honorable old Liberals of the 19th century must be spinning in their graves over the outrageous corruption and modern use of the word “Liberal.” Following are 60 Truisms about Liberals:
1. At the most basic level, the Liberal is anti-God. He is an intellectually dishonest, unprincipled, mentally immature, spoiled child who is forever in search of a world without moral consequence. That is why the Liberal makes “The State” his god. The Liberal worships THE STATE. The Liberal attempts to use his god (government) to eliminate all moral consequences for immoral behavior. In the name of “Justice,” the Liberal also pretends to make his god (The State) “level” all peoples so that the wise or the beautiful or the genius will have no advantage over the unwise, the ugly and the simpleton in the marketplace. The Liberal calls this tyrannical State of Government, UTOPIA.
2. The Liberal vainly imagines that freedom from moral consequence can be secured by a collectivist, totalitarian state.
3. Liberals use moralistic platitudes and catchy phrases like “social justice” and “The Brotherhood of Man” to appeal to the naive masses who are duped into believing that the ultimate goals of Liberals are genuinely benign and beneficient. However at the root, like the Prince in Machiavelli’s greatest work, the single moral principle that Liberals adhere to is the continual accumulation and centralization of all power.
4. The ideologies of Liberals must inevitably end in world-wide totalitarianism.
5. All non-sexual individual freedoms are despised by the Liberal. Why? Because those kinds of individual freedoms, (such as economic self-reliance) demand moral responsibility.
6. The fundamental power struggle of Liberals may be classified as the individual versus the collective. The Liberal supports the collective in every contest against the individual. The individual must be relieved of all power in favor of the collective. All power must be centralized.
7. Liberals hate Individualism because it demands moral responsibility. Liberals support collectivism because they hope to eliminate the need for moral responsibility.
8. The U.S. Constitution and specifically the support for rugged individualism which is evident in the Bill of Rights, is the enemy of the Liberal.
9. The Liberal despises the United States because it is the premier protector and promoter of individualism in the world.
10. In the mind of a Liberal, all institutions and concerns schools, environment, courts, etc. – serve no relevant purpose other than the promotion of collectivism.
11. In the depraved thought processes of a Liberal, abortion becomes necessary to guarantee sexual freedom and eliminate moral consequence.
12. The basis of traditional healthy psychology is to help individuals take personal responsibility for the choices they have made and to help them make better choices in the future. The basis of modern psychology as defined by the Liberals who are members of the self deluded, isolated and ill-educated Professorial Class living in their government financed socialist Ivory Towers, is the elimination of moral responsibility.
13. In order to advance their agenda, Liberals create an atmosphere of crisis and fear that is used to justify their collectivist oppression. Liberals love to go to war against other nations for it is during times of war that they are most successful in getting the most oppressive legislation passed in Congress. Check your history books and you will see that every major war America has fought in the last 100 years was started by a Liberal or a statist who philosophically supported centralized government
14. Any religion or religious person who believes or teaches that there are moral consequences for sin, is the enemy of Liberalism and must be oppressed.
15. Western nations and Western Civilization have produced more liberty and more prosperity for more people than any other culture in History. Christianity is the foundation of the culture upon which Western civilization was built. A genuinely Christian populace will reject collectivism and support individualism. A genuine Christian populace will live moral lives and thus they will support governmental policy that encourages individual, personal, moral responsibility. A genuine Christian populace will reject collectivism and centralized government. A morally debauched populace will look to the government to support them and shelter them from their bad moral choices. Thus for the collectivist Liberal bent on imposing socialism upon a nation, Christianity is the number one enemy above all other enemies. Christianity must be eliminated.
16. Despite decades of spectacular failure in nation after nation, the Liberal clings to his collectivist dream because it is far more than a theory of government. It is a religion.
17. The Liberal seeks to dominate any institution that can interfere with, weaken or destroy individual parental rights. Thus you will note that Liberals completely control and dominate public schools, child abuse agencies, pediatric associations, welfare departments, social service agencies and all NGO’s that feign concern for the welfare of children. Why? Because in order for Liberals to impose socialism upon a people, they must undermine the ability of the people to govern themselves according to God’s moral law. To accomplish this they must weaken the main support of morality. Strong families are one of the greatest threats to the final goals of Liberalism. The total disintegration of the American family in recent decades among some ethnic communities has occurred as a direct result of the design and intention of Liberals. Feel the hate. Hate is good when directed at these demonic Liberals who are the avowed enemies of God, Family Values and freedom.
18. The Liberal applauds the imprisoning of home-schooling parents who dare to raise their children outside the control of collectivist public schools.
19. Private ownership of guns is the single greatest symbol of individual power, and therefore is despised by Liberals.
20. All individual freedoms demand the responsible behavior of the individual, and therefore demand a moral code. Liberals despise freedom because they despise morality.
21. The Liberal loves Bill Clinton because of who he is, not in spite of who he is.
22. The Liberal despises national sovereignty. Why? Because the best protection of individual freedoms is found in small decentralized governments.
23. The Liberal promotes the growth of multi-national and international governments such as the European Union and the United Nations because these organizations advance the cause of socialism and seek to destroy the very individualism that is best protected by sovereign states.
24. The Liberal fears any hint of individualism in any part of the world, and is obsessed with the centralized control of all human activity and thought. Thus the Liberal constantly seeks total control over all forms of media. The Internet is driving Liberals crazy with fear that more people will start thinking for themselves and demand limited decentralized governments in nations around the world.
25. “Multi-culturalism” is the code word for a single, oppressive, collectivist culture. The root word of “culture,” is the word “cult,” meaning religion. Christianity is the only religion that finds a perfect balance between allowing mankind maximum liberty within the guidelines of clearly delineated moral absolutes, without the need for an oppressive State. Because a genuine Christian populace will be self governing in the matter of moral issues there is no need for an all-powerful government to police an unruly populace. The Eighth Commandment, “Thou Shalt Not Steal,” presupposes the right of individuals to own private property. The Eighth Commandment is therefore the foundation of Western Capitalism and the engine of our prosperity. This is another reason why Liberals hate the Bible. If Liberals are successful at transforming America into a totally multi-cultural, i.e., multi-religious, non-Christian society, we will lose our freedom.
26. Liberals speak often of tolerance, but they only tolerate Liberals and Liberal ideas. For instance, Liberals hate Christianity and conservative Bible believing Christians are persona non grata in any gathering of Liberals. Liberals are extremely intolerant concerning Christianity because of its insistence upon personal responsibility and moral absolutes. Liberals know that a society without moral absolutes and a society without strong emphasis upon personal responsibility will fall like a ripe apple into their greedy socialist clutches because self reliance and rugged individualism are traits that are only found amongst moral peoples who come from strong families.
27. The Liberal seeks to criminalize any speech that promotes morality or individualism as “hate speech.” Thus we see Liberal Judges and Liberal Courts outlawing the Bible and gutting the free speech provisions of the first amendment of the constitution. Liberal Judges are now declaring that the Bible’s proscriptions against homosexuality are illegal “hate speech” and scripture is now in the process of being outlawed from any appearance in public discourse or the public square. If one speaks in favor of individualism and against affirmative action in a public forum at work, Liberal Judges and Liberal Courts are now saying that such speech amounts to intimidation of minorities and is prohibited by law.
28. Environmentalists lie as a matter of course. Why? Because environmentalists have a false god too. Whereas the god of the Liberal is “The State,” the god of the environmental extremist worships is “the creation,” rather than the Creator. This warps their thinking and as a result they become anti-human. They fall into all kinds of error such as elevating the rights of animals above those of mankind. Whereas the Christian world-view teaches men that they are to be “Good Stewards” of the earth and all it’s creatures. The Christian world-view instructs men that they are to be kind to animals, but that they are not to elevate anything above the value of human life. Why? Because the Bible teaches that mankind is the crown of God’s entire Creation. The Bible teaches that “Man was created in the image of God.” Thus human life is profoundly sacred and highly valued far above that of any animal or wilderness or wetland (swamp). Thus genuine Christians who hold to a Biblical world-view will know that private property rights trump the claims of the EPA “nature nazi’s” to regulate how a farmer may use his private property. Genuine Christians who hold to a Biblical world-view will know that these “Watermelon” Environmental Extremists have no right to tell a man how to use his own private property unless it can be proven that the owner is doing damage to his neighbors property. (PS A “Watermelon Environmentalist” is a person who is GREEN on the outside (i.e., they claim to care about the environment) but they are truthfully COMMUNIST RED on the inside (i.e., they do not really care about the environment. They are just using the moral cause of preserving the environment as a means of consolidating their power and advancing the cause of Socialism and One World Government.)
29. The Liberal’s only method of debate is to appeal to the emotions of mis-educated and illogical persons. Liberals seek to insult and discredit anyone who dares to disagree with them, especially in the college class-room. Why? Because the facts of logic and history do not support the agenda they are seeking to advance.
30. When possible, Liberals oppress anyone who questions their beliefs. Is that “Liberal?”
31. Liberals despise all innocence – especially the innocence of a child. Thus Hollywood Liberals seek to steal the innocence of our children as early as possible and the public schools assist them in this goal.
32. Liberals seek to sexualize our children, eliminate age of consent laws and promote the normalization of pedophilia, all in the pursuit of sexual freedom.
33. In the Liberal mind, your freedom is their oppression.
34. Private property and individual wealth is integral to individualism, and the enemy of the Liberal.
35. The Liberal hates you.
36. The Liberal seeks to replace a moral world-view with an emotional world-view. For instance: If you protest that it is wrong for them to steal your money (via confiscatory taxes, forcibly collected to support welfare programs) against your will and give it to persons that you do not know and do not care about, Liberals will counter your argument with an appeal to the emotions of the listeners. They will drone on about how we are the wealthiest nation in the world and surely we can afford to make sure that THE CHILDREN in the ghettos of America are afforded free dental care.
37. The Liberal typically chooses a career in a field that produces nothing of value. A Liberal will look for employment in field such as public education, an employee of local, county, state or federal government, an “activist,” a lawyer, or a bureaucrat in a tax free foundation or an NGO devoted to advancing Liberal goals, etc. Then the Liberal will use government to extract wealth from others by force via the power to tax.
38. Liberal do-gooder programs enrich Liberals and do little to actually help the poor.
39. The Liberal despises masculinity as a symbol of individual power.
40. Feminists groups are about lesbianism, socialism and hatred of men, not equal rights for women.
41. Liberals are perfectly willing to destroy you financially, remove your children, and imprison you for what you believe. They are not open-minded and tolerant. They are viciously intolerant of any divergence from the dogma of left-wing ideology. They are perfectly willing to subject you to a Liberal version of an Inquisition and the penalties of this “modern” Inquisition are no less severe than the penalties doled out by the original inquisitors. These modern Inquisitors will use the full powers of the government, the police state powers, without hesitation, in order to enforce the decrees of their priestly class, the justices in black robes. Who are the justice’s in black robes? They are the federal judges who have been highly exalted and lifted up, by Liberals, far above all other men as final arbiters of what is right and wrong, thus taking the place of God. And that is the real goal, the ultimate goal of all Liberals. They want to dis-
place and dethrone Almighty God. Liberal emulate their father the devil, in as much as they likewise, want to be god. Just as Satan promised Eve in the garden, “Ye shall be as God, knowing good and evil,” so is the Liberals lust for power is driven by their desire to determine good and evil for all mankind, apart from and without respect to Almighty God.
42. Liberals fear technology and change – because neither can be centrally controlled.
43. Liberals are not obsessed with sex, but with promiscuity. Promoting promiscuity among the masses is the primary mission of the Liberals who control the Hollywood, Television and print media monopoly. Why? Because Liberals know that the twin pillars that support conservatism are family values and faith in God. By promoting promiscuity Liberals know that they are simultaneously attacking both of the main support pillars of rugged individualism. Liberals know that a man of sterling character and discipline who is a moral, God fearing family man has no need of state support in the form of welfare programs. Liberals know that such a man is a dedicated and formidable enemy of those who are determined to foist socialism upon the nations of the world.
44. Liberals despise the suburbs as a manifestation of individual prosperity, private property ownership, and the independent family.
45. Liberals say that they despise marriage and family because they are “patriarchal institutions” that 6op press women and children. But the real reason they despise marriage and family values is because these institutions oppose, disapprove and limit promiscuity thus undermining one of the principal supports for Liberalism.
46. Liberals are never satisfied with the current level of power they have gained over the lives of individuals. They are compelled, internally driven to control every thought and detail of human activity and they will never stop until they have condemned the entire world to live in a hellish slave camp, under the heel of a socialist bureaucratic boot otherwise known as One World Government.
47. Liberals seek to control public schools, and force all children into them, in order to foster promiscuity and instill collectivist ideology into the minds and hearts of our children.
48. Other diseases kill many millions more people, but Liberals are obsessed with Aids because it is a moral consequence of promiscuity.
49. Liberals are more committed than conservatives because their politics is also their religion.
50. Liberals are obsessed with demonstrating their putative “moral superiority.” Thus even though they live their lives without really helping anyone, the political activism they engage in is dedicated to convincing themselves that they are truly good people. Liberals are driven by the need to validate the unspoken assertion that “I care more than you do,” which is ironic in the extreme since none of the government programs liberals have designed can be shown to have an overall positive influence in our society.
51. Mark this! Whenever a Liberal expresses concern “for the children,” invariably they are using and targeting children to expand their own power, promote promiscuity, advance collectivism and enlarge their personal income at the expense of the taxpayer.
52. Because collectivist politics is their only morality, Liberals have no problem with deceit, oppression, or violence in their pursuit of collectivism.
53. Liberals are elitists who exempt themselves from the oppressive rules they impose on the general population.
54. Liberals howl if a homosexual transvestite or convicted felon is even slightly offended, but they openly bash Christians.
55. Liberals dream of a return to a centralized, 1940’s urban environment. They would have us all ride a bus from a small, dirty, big city apartment to an 8-5 union job as it was in the old USSR. Perhaps now you will understand why Liberals support every form of “public transportation” whether buses or subways.
56. Liberals believe that wealth is static. Liberals believe that anyone who makes money must be stealing it from someone else. Liberals do not understand that in a free market, wealth is created and is constantly expanding. Liberals do not understand the simple dictum that “A rising tide lifts all boats.” Liberals do not understand that the free market lifts the economic conditions of all men. Liberals do not understand that it is the creativity, ingenuity and hard work of the self-made millionaire’s who creates better products or a better service and thus a better life for all mankind. A rising tide does indeed, lift all boats.
57. Liberals claim to be against violence, but make excuses for Liberals like Lenin, Stalin, Mao and Castro who murder and torture political dissidents. Liberals claim to be against violence, but they seek to disarm individuals and render them powerless before the thugs, thieves and murderer’s who rule the inner cities. Liberals claim to be against violence, but they are liars. Liberals only oppose violence when it fits their agenda, but they are perfectly willing to use violence to advance their agenda.
58. Liberals have enormous compassion for criminal predators, but little for the victims.
59. In the Liberal world, all problems stem from individualism, and all solutions are collective.
60. Liberals believe that passing religious values to children is a form of child abuse.
Note: Ludwig, great to see you and the Austrian school are still alive and kicking.
For another perspective on this existential question of whether or not the press or media is an enemy of the American people, we have an article from the New York Post entitled “Nearly 60% of voters don’t like Trump as a person, poll finds” by Bob Fredericks published Aug, 14, 2018, as follows:
Overall, just 31% of voters said they liked the commander-in-chief, who has been on a summer-long Twitter rant attacking Attorney General Jeff Sessions, the FBI, special counsel Robert Mueller, Hillary Clinton and the “fake news” media, among others.
“Not the kind of numbers that gets you a date to the prom — or helps your party as the midterm elections approach,” said Tim Malloy, assistant director of the Quinnipiac poll.
And despite the president’s continued bashing of media he doesn’t like as “fake news,” 65% of American voters said the media was an important part of U.S. democracy compared to 26% who agreed with Trump’s assessment that the media is the enemy of the people.
A majority of Republicans — 51% — agreed with the president’s statement while 36% did not.
“The media, so frequently excoriated by the White House, is not considered an enemy of the people.”
“Far from it,” Malloy said.
end quotes
Interestingly, by way of historical background, the New York Post was founded by none other Alexander Hamilton, a co-author of the Federalist Papers along with Virginia’s Jemmy Madison, and Secretary of the Treasury, with about US$10,000 collected from a group of investors in the autumn of 1801 as the New-York Evening Post, a broadsheet.
Not surprisingly, given the intense partisan politics of those times, Hamilton’s co-investors included other New York members of the Federalist Party, such as Robert Troup and Oliver Wolcott, who were dismayed by the election of Thomas Jefferson as U.S. President and the rise in popularity of the Democratic-Republican Party.
The meeting at which Hamilton first recruited investors for the new paper took place in the then-country weekend villa that is now Gracie Mansion, and Hamilton chose William Coleman as his first editor.
Prior to becoming editor of the predecessor to the New York Post, Coleman, who was born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1766, ten years before the Declaration of Independence, studied law with Joshua Atherton of Amherst, New Hampshire, where his fellow students included William Plumer, who remained a lifelong friend.
Thereafter, Coleman was admitted to the bar, and moved to Greenfield, Massachusetts.
After that, he moved to New York City around 1794 and practiced law at one point with Aaron Burr, who is known to history as the man who shot and mortally wounded Alexander Hamilton in a duel circa July 12, 1804.
Earlier in 1804, Coleman killed New York harbormaster Captain Jeremiah Thompson in a duel, with the duel taking place at “Love Lane”, the path of which is now Twenty-First Street in Manhattan between Sixth and Eighth Avenues.
Talk about “newspaper wars” and toxic politics much as we still have in this country to this day, the duel between Coleman and Thompson arose from a dispute between Coleman and James Cheetham (1772–1810), editor of the rival New York paper American Citizen.
As to American Citizen, it was an influential newspaper in New York City in the early 19th century, and in 1804, it advocated against Aaron Burr in his 1804 run for governor of New York.
That paper started in 1800 as the American citizen and general daily advertiser, though it was effectively a continuation of Greenleaf’s New Daily Advertiser (1796–1800) and The Argus, or, Greenleaf’s New Daily Adverstiser (1795–96).
The title was shortened to American Citizen in 1802.
James Cheetham, born 1772, was the leading editor of the paper, first becoming involved in 1801, and becoming sole publisher by April 1803.
For his troubles, Cheetham was frequently sued for libel, although many of the suits ended in mistrial, dismissal, or deadlock.
Getting back to the Coleman duel, when Cheetham claimed that Coleman was the father of a mulatto child, Coleman challenged Cheetham to a duel, which duel did not occur because others intervened to stop it including Judge Brockholst Livingston.
Thereafter, Thompson, a friend of Cheetham, claimed that the duel had only been stopped because Coleman had revealed it publicly before it had occurred, because he was a coward.
Coleman thereupon challenged Thompson to a duel.
On the appointed evening it was quite dark, and the parties reportedly had to approach a few steps closer after taking initial shots, in order to see each other.
At that point, Thompson was shot and was claimed to have exclaimed “I’ve got it” as he fell into the snow.
A physician who had been brought to the scene confirmed it was a mortal wound, and Thompson was left at the entrance of his sister’s residence, and those involved rang the bell and quickly left.
Thompson refused to reveal Coleman’s name or any other details, and simply said that he had been treated fairly.
The details of the duel were not revealed for many years.
After the event however, Cheetham was more careful in his editorial treatment of Coleman.
Getting back to the New York Post, the most famous 19th-century New-York Evening Post editor was the poet and abolitionist William Cullen Bryant, and so well respected was New-York Evening Post under Bryant’s editorship that it received praise from the English philosopher John Stuart Mill, in 1864.
In the summer of 1829, Bryant invited William Leggett, the Locofoco Democrat, to write for the paper.
For those who don’t remember them, the Locofocos were a faction of the United States Democratic Party that existed from 1835 until the mid-1840s.
The Locofoco faction was originally named the Equal Rights Party, and was created in New York City as a protest against that city’s regular Democratic organization, the infamous Tammany Hall of “Boss” Tweed fame.
The Locofocos contained a mixture of anti-Tammany Democrats and labor union veterans of the Working Men’s Party, the latter of which had existed from 1828 to 1830.
The Locofoco Democrats were vigorous advocates of laissez-faire and opponents of monopoly, and their leading intellectual was editorial writer William Leggett, who began writing for the New York Post in 1829.
As to the name “Locofoco,” it was derived from “locofoco,” which was a kind of friction match.
The name came about as a label for this faction of the Democrat party when a group of New York Jacksonians used such matches to light candles to continue a political meeting after Tammany men tried to break up the meeting by turning off the gaslights.
The Locofocos were involved in the Flour Riot of 1837, which was a food riot that broke out in New York City in February 1837, and lasted less than a day.
This violent civil disturbance grew out of a public meeting called by the Locofocos to protest runaway prices, as hungry workers plundered private storerooms filled with sacks of hoarded flour.
By way of background, back then commodity prices had skyrocketed over the winter of 1836–37, due to an inflationary boom fueled by foreign investment and two successive years of wheat crop failures.
Hence the Flour Riot, which was also a sign of the impending financial crisis known as the Panic of 1837, that hit the American economy the following month..
The Panic of 1837, of course, was a financial crisis in the United States that touched off a major recession that lasted until the mid-1840s.
Profits, prices, and wages went down while unemployment went up and pessimism abounded during the time.
Not surprisingly, the panic had both domestic and foreign origins.
Speculative lending practices in western states, a sharp decline in cotton prices, a collapsing land bubble, international specie flows, and restrictive lending policies in Great Britain were all to blame.
On May 10, 1837, banks in New York City suspended specie payments, meaning that they would no longer redeem commercial paper in specie at full face value.
Despite a brief recovery in 1838, the recession persisted for approximately seven years.
Banks collapsed, businesses failed, prices declined, and thousands of workers lost their jobs.
Unemployment may have been as high as 25% in some locales.
The years 1837 to 1844 were, generally speaking, years of deflation in wages and prices.
Getting back to the Locofocos, they reached their peak in 1840, when President Martin Van Buren and Congress passed the Independent Treasury Act, which fulfilled a primary Locofoco aim: complete separation of the federal government from banking.
In the 1840 election, the term “Locofoco” was applied to the entire Democratic Party by its Whig opponents, both because Democratic President Martin Van Buren had incorporated many Locofoco ideas into his economic policy, and because Whigs considered the term to be derogatory.
In general, Locofocos supported Andrew Jackson and Van Buren, and were for free trade, greater circulation of specie, legal protections for labor unions and against paper money, financial speculation, and state banks.
Among the prominent members of the faction were William Leggett, William Cullen Bryant, Alexander Ming Jr., John Commerford, Levi D. Slamm, Abram D. Smith, Henry K. Smith, Isaac S. Smith, Moses Jacques, Gorham Parks, and Walt Whitman (then a newspaper editor).
Ralph Waldo Emerson said of the Locofocos: “The new race is stiff, heady, and rebellious; they are fanatics in freedom; they hate tolls, taxes, turnpikes, banks, hierarchies, governors, yea, almost all laws.”
Getting back to the New York Post, in addition to literary and drama reviews, Leggett began to write political editorials, and his classical liberal philosophy entailed a fierce opposition to central banking, a support for voluntary labor unions, and a dedication to laissez-faire economics.
Leggett was a member of the Equal Rights Party and became a co-owner and editor at the Post in 1831, eventually working as sole editor of the newspaper while Bryant traveled in Europe in 1834 through 1835.
Another co-owner of the paper was John Bigelow, who was born in Malden-on-Hudson, New York.
John Bigelow graduated in 1835 from Union College in Schenectady, New York, where he was a member of the Sigma Phi Society and the Philomathean Society, and was admitted to the bar in 1838.
From 1849 to 1861, he was one of the editors and co-owners of New York Evening Post.
In 1881 Henry Villard took control of New-York Evening Post, as well as The Nation, which became the Post’s weekly edition.
With this acquisition, the paper was managed by the triumvirate of Carl Schurz, Horace White, and Edwin L. Godkin, and when Schurz left the paper in 1883, Godkin became editor-in-chief.
White became editor-in-chief in 1899, and remained in that role until his retirement in 1903.
In 1897, both publications passed to the management of Villard’s son, Oswald Garrison Villard, a founding member of both the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the American Civil Liberties Union.
Villard sold the paper in 1918, after widespread allegations of pro-German sympathies during World War I hurt its circulation.
The new owner was Thomas Lamont, a senior partner in the Wall Street firm of J.P. Morgan & Co.
Unable to stem the paper’s financial losses, he sold it to a consortium of 34 financial and reform political leaders, headed by Edwin Francis Gay, dean of the Harvard Business School, whose members included Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
Conservative Cyrus H. K. Curtis — publisher of the Ladies Home Journal — purchased New-York Evening Post in 1924 and briefly turned it into a non-sensational tabloid in 1933.
Reading that, it is clear that there is no scalpel sharp enough to separate the media from politics in the country, because like Siamese twins, the media and politics are inextricably intertwined.
So, is the press really the enemy of the American people?
Or is Donald Trump talking out of his *** when he says it is?
Life intrudes every now and then, so I have been away from this thread for a couple of days, during which the “press” has “stood up,” at least after a fashion, to proclaim itself, not surprising, as not an enemy of the American people, as we can see in the article “US newspapers to Trump: We’re not enemies of the people” by David Bauder, Ap Media Writer, published Friday, August 17, 2018, as follows:
Newspapers from Maine to Hawaii pushed back against President Donald Trump’s attacks on “fake news” with a coordinated series of editorials in defense of a free press on Thursday — and, not surprisingly, Trump didn’t take it silently.
end quotes
Now, notice what appears to be some incongruity there – Trump is attacking “fake news,” and the editors are defending a “free press.”
Why didn’t they simply say, “who is he kidding, we don’t print fake news?”
Ah, because they can’t say they don’t print fake news, when it is so easy to put forth examples of what in fact could be “fake news,” which is an unsubstantiated or totally unverifiable narrative put forth as “news.”
So they fall back on “well, we’re the free press so we can print whatever we want and call it news,” which is entirely true.
As an aside, to me at least, getting upset about “fake news” in America is like getting all freaked out because there are mosquitos in the summer – it is wasted emotion over something that is part of nature.
Said another way, newspapers and the media and editors can and do lie through their teeth, as was the case with Henry Luce and Time magazine during the Chiang Kai Shek meltdown in China and then during the VEET NAM war.
At p.111 of “The Best and The Brightest” by David Halberstam, we have this insight, to wit:
By late 1944 and early 1945 it had become clear to some people high in the government and a few people in China that a major struggle was going to take place.
Theodore H. White, then a young Time reporter, experienced both in American politics and Chinese affairs, had a dark and foreboding sense of the future (as well he might; his own excellent reporting on China would drive him from the Luce publications; White might have his China, bur Mr. Luce had his China and he was not going to accept White’s version).
end quotes
The narrative oftentimes replaces reality.
Getting back to the article:
The campaign was set in motion by an editor at the Boston Globe, which argued in its own editorial that Trump’s label of the media as the enemy of the people “is as un-American as it is dangerous to the civic compact we have shared for more than two centuries.”
end quotes
To which I respond BULL****, but hey, newspaper editors, including those at the Boston Globe, have as much right to engage in hyperbole, defined as “exaggerated statements or claims not meant to be taken literally,” as well as exaggeration, overstatement, magnification, embroidery, or embellishment as does any politician in America, including Trump, himself.
We are all equal, afterall, although it is also true that in America, some are more equal than others.
In those cases where the media is perceived to be “the enemy of the people,” and yes, they most certainly do exist, it is hardly “un-American” to call them out on it.
And what is this spew of horsecrap about it being “dangerous to the civic compact we have shared for more than two centuries?”
Which “civic compact” is that, pray tell?
How about the Questia Journalism History article “When a Newspaper Was Accused of Killing a President: How Five New York City Papers Reacted” by Brian Thornton, as follows:
“One of the greatest and … best presidents that this country ever saw has been shot by a dastardly human beast.”
“Isn’t it a fact that sheets like the New York Journal are in large measure responsible for this miserable act?”
Letter to the editor, Joseph Kestler, Passaic, New Jersey. New York Sun, Sept. 13, 1901.
end quotes
Where is the “civic compact” we all have supposedly shared for more than two centuries in any of that?
And here is the other side of that argument, to wit:
“Any person who has the nerve to accuse the New York Journal of inciting the assassination of President McKinley is evidently not of sound mind, and is otherwise savagely opposed to the principles of right, education, Christianity and everything that has a tendency to the upbuilding and enlightenment of mankind.”
Letter to the editor, G.W. P. Garrison, New York City. New York Journal, Sept. 27, 1901.
end quotes
So who is right?
By way of background, after the shooting death of President William McKinley in September 1901, the New York Journal and a rival newspaper, the New York Sun, promptly engaged in a letters to the editor war over who inspired the assassin.
The seeds of that war were planted April 10, 1901, when William Randolph Hearst’s Journal attacked McKinley in an editorial that ended with the following words: “Institutions, like men, will last until they die; and if bad institutions and bad men can be got rid of only by killing, then the killing must be done.”
In June Hearst published another editorial that suggested “assassination can be a good thing.”
Hearst gave an example: “The murder of Lincoln, uniting in sympathy and regret all good people in the North and South, hastened the era of American good feeling.”
Three months later, Leon Czolgosz, 28, a self– described “socialist anarchist” shot McKinley in the stomach in Buffalo, New York.
The president lingered for a week before dying.
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So, was Hearst an enemy of the American people?
Or wasn’t he?
Getting back to the article on the media not being an enemy of the American people, it continues as follows:
Trump denounced the effort on Twitter, saying the Globe was in collusion with other newspapers.
“There is nothing that I would want more for our country than true FREEDOM OF THE PRESS,” the president typed.
“The fact is that the press is FREE to write and say anything it wants, but much of what it says is FAKE NEWS, pushing a political agenda or just plain trying to hurt people.”
end quotes
Wow, Donald, are you just now realizing that?
Where have you been for the last fifty years or so?
Living in an ivory tower somewhere?
And meanwhile, according to the article, the U.S. Senate on Thursday passed a resolution with no objections stating that “the press is not the enemy of the people.”
Cognizant of heated feelings on the issue, the Globe hired extra security on Thursday, said Jane Bowman, newspaper spokeswoman.
“Journalistic outlets have had threats throughout time but it’s the president’s rhetoric that gives us the most concern,” Bowman said.
end quotes
Oh, the drama, oh, the suspense, and KA CHING, in the meantime, the money flows in from all the newspaper sales, which is what it is all about, given we are a capitalist country, afterall.
And here comes the interesting part of the article:
It was not clear how many newspapers participated.
Marjorie Pritchard, the editor who launched the campaign, said earlier in the week that some 350 news organizations indicated they would, but she did not immediately return messages on Thursday.
Even with the coordinated effort, there was some significant blowback from newspapers that wrote to say they would not participate.
The Radio Television Digital News Association called on broadcasters and web sites to express support.
Since Monday, there have been 2,240 mentions of either “First Amendment” or “free press” by broadcasters across the country, said Dan Shelley, the group’s executive director.
One TV station, WPSD in Paducah, Kentucky, showed a copy of the First Amendment guaranteeing freedom of the press on its screen before every commercial during newscasts, he said.
“It has been a big source of conversation all across the country,” Shelley said.
“Just because people are talking about it, it’s a victory in my book.”
Editorial boards at the Portland (Maine) Press-Herald and the Honolulu Star-Advertiser and many places in between weighed in to support the effort.
“The true enemies of the people — and democracy — are those who try to suffocate truth by vilifying and demonizing the messenger,” wrote the Des Moines Register in Iowa.
In St. Louis, the Post-Dispatch called journalists “the truest of patriots.”
The Chicago Sun-Times said it believed most Americans know that Trump is talking nonsense.
The Fayetteville (North Carolina) Observer said it hoped Trump would stop, “but we’re not holding our breath.”
The Morning News of Savannah, Georgia, said it was a confidant of the people.
“Like any true friend, we don’t always tell you what you want to hear,” the Morning News said.
“Our news team presents the happenings and issues in this community through the lens of objectivity.”
“And like any true friend, we refuse to mislead you.”
“Our reporters and editors strive for fairness.”
The New York Times encouraged readers to subscribe to a local newspaper.
“We’re all in this together,” the Times said.
That last sentiment made some journalists skittish.
Some newspapers, including the Wall Street Journal, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Times-Picayune in New Orleans, the Rome (N.Y.) Daily Sentinel and the Richmond (Virginia) Times-Dispatch, contained editorials or columns explaining why they weren’t joining the Globe’s effort.
Some worried that it played into the hands of Trump and his supporters who think the media is out to get him.
The idea of a coordinated campaign simply left others cold, with one newspaper referencing a longtime rivalry.
“We prize our independence, both from government and from other media outlets,” the New York Daily News wrote.
“Coordination, especially with Boston, isn’t in our nature.”
There was also some scolding of the press — from the press — for letting distaste for Trump show up where it shouldn’t in news stories.
“Just as his lack of restraint has often been the president’s self-inflicted wound, the bias of some of the press has hurt journalism, at the very moment when it is most needed to save itself,” said the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
It remains unclear how much sway the effort will have.
Newspaper editorial boards overwhelmingly opposed Trump’s election in 2016.
Polls show Republicans have grown more negative toward the news media in recent years: Pew Research Center said 85 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents said in June 2017 that the news media has a negative effect on the country, up from 68 percent in 2010.
end quotes
So, are journalists “the truest of patriots?”
Personally, having had dealings with many of them over the years, I would call many of them liars, scumbags, slimeballs and fabricators, and that includes some at the top of the game like Christine Kapostacy Jansing, known as Chris Jansing, the American television news correspondent who works for NBC News as senior national correspondent for the network’s cable division, MSNBC and, alongside Brian Williams, as a breaking news anchor for the channel, formerly working as NBC News senior white house correspondent from 2014 to January 20, 2017, who made her break into the big time by covering up public corruption in New York state and by doing what is known in the trade as a “splice job,” where she created a “news story” from out of whole cloth by splicing together snippets of videotape out of the order in which they actually occurred to protect the corrupt politicians whose favor she was courting, thus proving her political reliability as a team player.
But certainly, that is not all of them, and who knows, maybe some of them are even patriots.
One could always hope, anyway.
For a prime example of the political biases and prejudices of the media coloring how they report on the “news,” we have the Washington Post story “‘Do that on your own time‘: Official‘s decision to kneel during pledge divides her small town” by Kristine Phillips on 3 August 2018, as follows:
The crowd stood up, but Melissa Schlag didn’t.
Scattered boos drowned out the Pledge of Allegiance, and as they reached the last phrase of the oath, “with liberty and justice for all,” they raised their voices, nearly screaming the words as they looked down at the silent protester kneeling in front of them.
Schlag has been both vilified and admired in the small Connecticut town of Haddam since she began kneeling during the recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance last month.
The Democratic town official said she’s kneeling to protest President Trump, and for as long as he is in office, she will keep kneeling.
In Haddam, where 51 percent voted for Trump and 43 percent for Hillary Clinton, the issue seemed just as polarizing, as evidenced by events of the past two weeks.
Connecticut state Sen. Art Linares, a Republican, called for Schlag’s resignation and demanded that she apologize.
Schlag’s supporters, meanwhile, also rallied, holding signs defending freedom of speech.
And the Hartford Courant published an editorial calling Schlag’s silent protest an act of bravery.
end quotes
So, according to the Washington Post article, in Haddam, Connecticut, 51 percent voted for Trump and 43 percent voted for Hillary Clinton, and as is clear from the story, Democrat Melissa Schlag was one of the losers to the “basket of deplorables” in that town who voted for Trump, which animus came across and stirred more controversy after a video taken during the town meeting captured Schlag saying, “This town is fascist and racist,” which is a standard line these days for the Democrats to use in reference to the American citizens they don’t like.
Why she was kneeling was explained in a lengthy letter she posted on Facebook last month, as follows:
“I knelt out of extreme sorrow for our country, that the leader of our great nation, rejected the advice and findings of all American intelligence agencies and would rather support the lies of a murderous dictator.”
end quotes
And for that, the Hartford Courant published an editorial calling Schlag’s silent protest an act of bravery.
Why?
How is kneeling during the Pledge of Allegiance an “act of bravery?”
Think about it for a moment,
First off, Melissa Schlag, who the Hartford Courant calls “brave,” seems to be showing off her ignorance when she calls Trump, or any president for that matter, the “leader of our great nation,” because that is precisely what they are not.
Does the Hartford Courant then equate “acts of bravery” with elected public officials showing off their ignorance in print and in public?
Seems so to me, anyway, because as any schoolchild would know, Trump is not the “leader” of America.
To the contrary, he is merely the president, and that for four years only.
This is not South America or some other third-world ****hole or banana republic, afterall, where the people have caudillos as their “leaders.”
So why would the Hartford Courant think that a public official in Haddam, Connecticut, where 51 percent voted for Trump and 43 percent voted for Hillary Clinton, was somehow “brave” for showing off her ignorance in public?
And the likely answer is demographics.
Looking up the voting records for the 2016 presidential election for Hartford, Connecticut, the capital city of the U.S. state of Connecticut which is nicknamed the “Insurance Capital of the World”, as it hosts many insurance company headquarters, which are the region’s major industry, what one finds is that in Hartford, 90.2% voted for Hillary Clinton, while only 7.5% voted for Trump, as opposed to Haddam, where 51 percent voted for Trump and 43 percent voted for Clinton.
Thus, it is not at all surprising that the Hartford Courant would find a public official in Haddam opposed to Trump would consider that to be an act of bravery.
And such is the way it is with the press in America today, just as the case was back at the beginning of this nation’s history.
The press might not lie, but the truth they tell is colored by who they are trying to tell that truth to.
As for me, it would have been a real act of bravery if the Hartford Courant had the courage to call out Melissa Schlag for being ignorant about our form of government in America.
But that would not have sold as many papers in Hartford as calling her brave would, and people, if anyone is surprised at that, look in the mirror and the person you see in there staring back at you is naïve.
As to that “splice job” that set news reporter and TV star Christine Kapostacy Jansing, known as Chris Jansing, the American television news correspondent who works for NBC News as senior national correspondent for the network’s cable division, MSNBC, onto the path to greatness, I personally am very familiar with it, and in fact gave detailed sworn testimony concerning the “splice job” in a proceeding where ABC, NBC and CBS television stations were present, along with print reporters from the Hearst publication, the Albany, New York Times Union, and the now-largely defunct Troy, New York Record.
In that proceeding, the records of which should still exist in the files of the Rensselaer County Clerk in Troy, New York, the Kapostacy-Jansing “splice job” tape, which was broadcast as “breaking news” on TV channel 13 out of Albany, New York, was actually entered as evidence, as if what was portrayed in the “splice job” was “factual,” when in fact it was a fabrication, which brings to mind the word “treacherous” to describe both Kapostacy-Jansing, who rode that horse to the big time, as it proved her political reliability, and TV channel 13, as well, where “treacherous” is defined as “guilty of or involving betrayal or deception,” as in “a treacherous TV news anchor” with synonyms to include faithless, duplicitous, deceitful, deceptive, false, weaselly, untrustworthy, and unreliable.
Does that mean that Kapostacy-Jansing was not “patriotic?”
Does that make Kapostacy-Jansing an “enemy of the American people?”
Think about it, and please, stay tuned, as we develop that subject a bit further, and thank you for your interest.
And again, thanks to the Cape Charles Mirror for having the courage to host this subject of importance to each and every one of us in America, regardless of your political affiliation or lack thereof.
From my own dealings with the media and with the press while a public official charged with cleaning up endemic public corruption in a corrupt state and county in New York state, another word besides “treacherous” to describe them would be “craven,” defined as “contemptibly lacking in courage; cowardly,” as in “a craven abdication of their moral duty,” with synonyms of lily-livered, faint-hearted, chicken-hearted, spineless, timid, timorous, fearful, pusillanimous, weak-kneed, gutless, yellow-bellied, and wimpish.
In a word, contemptible, and I say that because when the Kapostacy-Jansing “splice job was dissected in a public hearing where ABC, NBC and CBS television stations were present, along with print reporters from the Hearst publication, the Albany, New York Times Union, and the now-largely defunct Troy, New York Record, and was clearly shown to be a prime case of the media, Channel 13 and Kapostacy-Jansing, being free to write and say anything they wanted, with all of what it said in this case being totally FAKE NEWS while pushing a political agenda and at the same time intentionally trying to hurt people for partisan political purposes, only one member of the media, as I recall, a young female reporter from Channel 10, made any effort to speak out about the fake news previously put forth by Channel 13 and Kapostacy-Jansing with the “splice-job,” that in a weak and squeaky voice on the evening news on Channel 10, and that weak protest went nowhere and died, with her getting the cold shoulder from the news anchors who clearly did not like her trying to blow the whistle on a fellow member of the media.
The rest of the media simply accepted creating fake news as the way business is done in the world of modern media in America today, as has been witnessed in Kapstacy-Jansing’s rise to media greatness, which takes us to the article in The Hill entitled “Trump accuses Boston Globe of ‘collusion with other papers’ amid coordinated pushback to his rhetoric” by Brett Samuels on 16 August 2018, where we have the New York Times, itself know to be a purveyor of fake news for political purposes, as we see from, for example, p.96 of “This Kind of War” by T.R. Fehrenbach, telling us as follows:
“Insisting that truths you don’t like are ‘fake news’ is dangerous to the lifeblood of democracy.”
“And calling journalists the ‘enemy of the people’ is dangerous, period,” The New York Times editorial board wrote.
end quotes
What is more dangerous to the lifeblood of democracy, however, is insisting that the fake news we don’t like is the truth, and failing to call out members of the press and media who are in fact liars and fabricators, and instead, simply because they call themselves “journalists,” treating them as if they really are “the truest of patriots.”
Should, however, members of the press and media who are liars and fabricators be called “‘enemies of the people?”
If we were in fact truly a “people,” then yes, that might be the case, and the label would be apt, but the truth is, we are not at all one people – we are divided, so the members of the media or press who are liars and fabricators, like news reporter and TV star Christine Kapostacy Jansing, known as Chris Jansing, the American television news correspondent who works for NBC News as senior national correspondent for the network’s cable division, MSNBC, and whose lies while at TV Channel 13 in Albany, New York put her onto the path to TV greatness in America, are in fact heroes and heroines to the audience they cater to and attract, and thus, they are only enemies to some of us, generally the “some of us” without political power as was this case under discussion above here.
So, people, in all seriousness, should anyone in America with even the most minimal of a high school education, including Donald Trump, be at all surprised that there is a good chance that newspapers and the media in the United States of America are going to be found to be biased, politically partisan, untruthful and oftentimes downright treacherous and vicious, as well as being merely organs of dissemination of government propaganda?
Isn’t that why we were taught about such people as Thurlow Weed (November 15, 1797 – November 22, 1882), who Wikipedia tells us was a New York newspaper publisher and Whig and Republican politician who was generally seen as the “boss” of New York’s Whig Party, using the same tactics as the Albany Regency — patronage and political favors — to attract supporters and keep order in the ranks, efforts he was able to reinforce through the Evening Journal, so that under Weed’s leadership, the Whigs became the dominant force in state politics for several years, and Weed was arguably the most powerful politician in New York?
So we would know better?
Isn’t that was the teaching was for?
Thurlow Weed used his newspaper as a whip and goad and club to inflict a form of blunt force trauma on those who dared to oppose him so he could hold political power, which is really no different from what Kapostacy-Jansing did with her splice job, and it is no different today with these media attacks on Trump.
In America, that is what the newspapers and media do, because they can, and they have been able to do that since there has been a United States of America.
As to the Hearst publication, the Albany Times Union, on the article “A paper you had to buy – Under John Henry Farrell the then-hyphenated Times-Union became indispensable” by Paul Grondahl, a Times Union staff writer, we learn as follows concerning the partisan nature of newspapers in this country:
John Henry Farrell was a publisher who learned to balance marketing a newspaper with reporting the news.
Farrell switched the Times-Union to an afternoon newspaper shortly after the end of the Civil War.
He was attempting to make his paper stand out in a glut of morning dailies and trying to lure shift workers into buying fresh news on their way home from factory jobs.
Farrell also wanted to make peace, not war, in the growing schism between the classes at the turn of the century.
“Capital and labor should be allies, not enemies,” he declared in a Times-Union editorial.
The Times-Union under Farrell was an evening paper that competed against the powerful Evening Journal, built up by legendary publisher and political power broker Thurlow Weed and later run by his grandson, Republican political boss Billy Barnes.
end quotes
In the Times Union article “Thurlow Weed (1797-1882): Republican boss, Lincoln adviser, newspaper publisher” by Paul Grondahl on Thursday, December 5, 2013, we are told as follows about Thurlow Weed, to wit:
He was a political power broker in Albany and Washington, a close friend of William Seward and adviser to President Abraham Lincoln.
Weed was given several nicknames, including “The Dictator” and “The Wizard of the Lobby.”
He was a Whig and an architect of the Republican Party who later edited and published an influential GOP mouthpiece, the Albany Evening Journal.
He was one of the first to exploit the nexus of journalism and politics.
end quotes
Now truly, people, isn’t that basic high school civics?
Getting back to Thurlow Weed:
After military service in the War of 1812, he settled in Albany and plied his printer trade at local shops and newspapers and in 1817, at age 20, he became press foreman at the Albany Register.
He filled in writing editorials and was good at it.
The next year, he married Catherine Ostrander of Cooperstown and failed in his attempts to start a newspaper in Chenango County.
He backed candidates DeWitt Clinton and John Quincy Adams and was rewarded for his support.
He parlayed those connections into a seat in the state Assembly in 1825.
After re-election to a second term, he established the Albany Evening Journal in 1830.
Weed had a disarming charm and was a skilled manipulator behind the scenes.
He established his GOP bona fides by battling Martin Van Buren’s Democratic machine, the Albany Regency, and relished a tussle with the Democratic paper, the Albany Argus.
end quotes
As I was taught when young, the connection between politics and newspapers in this country is such that the sharpest scalpel cannot sever it.
As to William “Billy” Barnes who inherited the Albany Evening Journal from Thurlow Weed, he was the boss of a Republican political machine in Albany, New York that was unseated by the Democratic O’Connell-Corning organization in 1921.
His fortune crashed and he sold the paper in 1924.
end quotes
So really, people, can Trump actually be ignorant of all this history, most especially as he himself is from New York?
And where the press is so intimately connected with politics in America, as it is, then how can it be called “the enemy of the American people?”
Because it is our politics themselves that are really the true enem6y of the American people, along with our politicians?
The candid world would like to know.
Mention of the word “propaganda” above here brings to mind the name Edward Bernays.
So who then is Edward Bernays, and why should anyone in America care?
A fair question, so let’s take a look and see what we can see.
Referring to Wikipedia, which is a quick and handy reference, Edward Louis Bernays (November 22, 1891 − March 9, 1995) was an Austrian-American pioneer in the field of public relations and propaganda, referred to in his obituary as “the father of public relations”.
Bernays was named one of the 100 most influential Americans of the 20th century by Life, and he was the subject of a full length biography by Larry Tye called The Father of Spin (1999) and later an award-winning 2002 documentary for the BBC by Adam Curtis called The Century of the Self.
His best-known campaigns include a 1929 effort to promote female smoking by branding cigarettes as feminist “Torches of Freedom” and his work for the United Fruit Company connected with the CIA-orchestrated overthrow of the democratically elected Guatemalan government in 1954.
He worked for dozens of major American corporations including Procter & Gamble and General Electric, and for government agencies, politicians, and non-profit organizations.
Of his many books, Crystallizing Public Opinion (1923) and Propaganda (1928) gained special attention as early efforts to define and theorize the field of public relations.
Citing works of writers such as Gustave Le Bon, Wilfred Trotter, Walter Lippmann, and his own double uncle Sigmund Freud, he described the masses as irrational and subject to herd instinct—and outlined how skilled practitioners could use crowd psychology and psychoanalysis to control them in desirable ways.
end quotes
If anyone is wondering, he is talking about us there, we, the American people who apparently are still as irrational and subject to herd instinct as ever, if not even more so today, so that skilled practitioners, including our own politicians and the Russians, can still use crowd psychology and psychoanalysis to control some or most of us in desirable ways to them.
The art of successful propaganda is an applied science, afterall.
In 1912, Bernays graduated from Cornell University with a degree in agriculture, but chose journalism as his first career.
After the U.S. entered World War I, the Committee on Public Information hired Bernays to work for its Bureau of Latin-American Affairs, based in an office in New York, where Bernays, along with Lieutenant F. E. Ackerman, focused on building support for war, domestically and abroad, focusing especially on businesses operating in Latin America.
According to Wikipedia, Bernays referred to this work as “psychological warfare,” which of course it was, and that concept of “psychological warfare” remains with us right on up to this present day, which is why Bernays is relevant to this conversation about whether or not the press and media in America are the enemies of the American people.
Staying with that subject, after fighting of WWI ended, Bernays was part of a sixteen-person publicity group working for the CPI at the Paris Peace Conference, and a scandal arose from his reference to propaganda in a press release.
As reported by the New York World, the “announced object of the expedition is ‘to interpret the work of the Peace Conference by keeping up a worldwide propaganda to disseminate American accomplishments and ideals.'”
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Has that effort to keep up a worldwide propaganda to disseminate American accomplishments and ideals ever ceased since then?
Think about it carefully before you say yes, it has, keeping in mind what Bernays himself had to say on the subject, to wit:
“There was one basic lesson I learned in the CPI—that efforts comparable to those applied by the CPI to affect the attitudes of the enemy, of neutrals, and people of this country could be applied with equal facility to peacetime pursuits.”
“In other words, what could be done for a nation at war could be done for organizations and people in a nation at peace.”
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And my goodness, people, of course that is so, which is one very good reason why we in this country are not supposed to blindly accept what we read in a newspaper or hear on the television as truth or fact, or at least that is what I was taught when young.
“Believe none of what you hear and half of what you think you see, and then you won’t be going off half-cocked or totally misled!”
After returning to New York, Bernays opened a public relations business and in 1923 he published a book, “Crystallizing Public Opinion”, outlining his profession, and taught a course at New York University.
Bernays, who pursued his calling in New York City from 1919 to 1963, styled himself a “public relations counsel” and he had very pronounced views on the differences between what he did and what people in advertising did, and he is among those listed in the acknowledgments section of the seminal government social science study “Recent Social Trends in the United States” (1933).
As to his influence on American politics, in 1924 Bernays set up a vaudeville “pancake breakfast” for Calvin Coolidge to change his stuffy image before the 1924 election, and entertainers including Al Jolson, John Drew, Raymond Hitchcock, and the Dolly Sisters performed on the White House lawn, while newspapers reported enthusiastically that Coolidge had laughed.
Thereafter, a desperate Herbert Hoover consulted with Bernays a month before the 1932 presidential election and Bernays, perhaps an earlier version of a Roger Stone or Steve Bannon, advised Hoover to create disunity within his opposition and to present an image of himself as an invincible leader.
Establishing or perhaps polishing a methodology still employed by politicians to day like New York state’s governor progressive Democrat Young Andy Cuomo, who can talk out of every side of his mouth depending on who is audience is, Bernays advised William O’Dwyer, in his candidacy for Mayor of New York City, on how to appear in front of different demographics. For example, he should tell Irish voters about his actions against the Italian mafia—and Italian voters about his plans to reform the police department.
To Jews he should appear as a committed opponent of the Nazis.
During World War II, Bernays advised the United States Information Agency as well as the Army and Navy.
Successful as he was as a propagandist, Bernays was in great demand; however, he also reported turning down the Nazis, Nicaragua under the Somoza family, Francisco Franco, and Richard Nixon.
And here I will end for the moment to let all of that sink in.
But please, stay tuned, because the story of Bernays and his influence on media campaigns and the political propaganda employed by both the Democrats and Republicans does not end there.
That we, the American people, are believed to be formless putty to be constantly shaped and reshaped by the media today can be seen from a review of pp.9-10 of Bernay’s 1928 book Propaganda, to wit:
The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society.
Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country.
We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of.
This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized.
Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society.
In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons…who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses.
It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind.
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As I say, formless putty, and the media that exploits us and manipulates us and plays us like a Stradivarius knows that very well, as do our most successful politicians, which list has to include our present president, Donald Trump, and his likely 2020 challenger, New York state’s Young Andy Cuomo.
As Wikipedia tells us, Bernays’ vision was of a utopian society in which individuals’ dangerous libidinal energies, the psychic and emotional energy associated with instinctual biological drives that Bernays viewed as inherently dangerous, could be harnessed and channeled by a corporate elite for economic benefit.
Through the use of mass production, big business could fulfill the cravings of what Bernays saw as the inherently irrational and desire-driven masses, simultaneously securing the niche of a mass-production economy (even in peacetime), as well as sating what he considered to be dangerous animal urges that threatened to tear society apart if left unquelled.
Bernays touted the idea that the “masses” are driven by factors outside their conscious understanding, and therefore that their minds can and should be manipulated by the capable few.
“Intelligent men must realize that propaganda is the modern instrument by which they can fight for productive ends and help to bring order out of chaos.”
One way Bernays reconciled manipulation with liberalism was his claim that the human masses would inevitably succumb to manipulation—and therefore the good propagandists could compete with the evil, without incurring any marginal moral cost.
In his view, “the minority which uses this power is increasingly intelligent, and works more and more on behalf of ideas that are socially constructive.”
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So, is the media that manipulates us every day and plays us like a fiddle the enemy of the American people?
Or are the American people in their ignorance their own worst enemy?
The enemy is secrets like the secrets the Cheriton oficials keeps.
They done fired the town cop and the ladies in the offie.
Why? They don’t do no harm.
Din Du Nuffins…
I agree with you, Antwann, that corrupt and inept and incompetent public officials are a decided threat to our liberty in this country, but wouldn’t you agree that the biggest threat to the American people and our liberty is people in this country, and here I mean people actually born here as citizens, who are totally ignorant of what being an American citizen requires from each and every citizen in terms of citizenship responsibilities?
Staying with the subject of corporate manipulation of thought here in the United States of America, which is now on-going in what I call the blog-o-sphere section of Cyberspace, where independent bloggers have been challenging the bull**** being handed to us each and everyday by the media and hack politicians in this country, that thanks in some large part to a foreign national named Huang Dongri, aka Winter Wong, born in Hong Kong, and holding a B.S. in Computer Science from the University of Toronto, and a former software engineer at IBM and HP, who is now the CEO of a corporate entity named Tapatalk, Inc., with corporate headquarters located 2051 Colorado Avenue, Santa Monica, California 90404, who according to Wikipedia, in 2016 acquired Yuku, and in July 2017 migrated the contents of that service to their own bulletin board platform, and in July 2017, also acquired Zetaboards and zIFBoards (formerly Invisionfree), the forum services operated by Zathyus Networks, I would like to stay with Edward Bernays and his 1928 book “Propaganda,” for the moment.
According to Wikipedia, “Propaganda,” which was an influential book written by Edward L. Bernays in 1928, incorporated the literature from social science and psychological manipulation into an examination of the techniques of public communication.
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Consider the date, 1928, which is when Hitler in Germany was coming into his power, and the term “psychological manipulation,” which is a type of social influence that aims to change the behavior or perception of others through abusive, deceptive, or underhanded tactics.
By advancing the interests of the manipulator, often at another’s expense, such methods could be considered exploitative, abusive, devious, and deceptive.
With respect to our times today, “Propaganda” by Bernays explored the psychology behind manipulating masses and the ability to use symbolic action and propaganda to influence politics, effect social change, and lobby for gender and racial equality, and foolish people today think that is all new, but hardly so, having been around for some 90 years now.
Chapters one through six of Bernay’s “Propaganda” address the complex relationship between human psychology, democracy, and corporations such as this Tapatalk. Inc., which appears to be trying to take over and monopolize the blog-o-sphere.
Bernays’ thesis is that “invisible” people who create knowledge and propaganda rule over the masses, with a monopoly on the power to shape thoughts, values, and citizen response, and how right he is, especially today here in the United States of America.
“Engineering consent” of the masses would be vital for the survival of democracy, Bernays explains:
“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society.”
“Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country.”
“We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of.”
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Those men we have never heard of would have to include a foreign national named Huang Dongri, aka Winter Wong, born in Hong Kong, and holding a B.S. in Computer Science from the University of Toronto, and a former software engineer at IBM and HP, who is now the CEO of a corporate entity named Tapatalk, Inc., with corporate headquarters located 2051 Colorado Avenue, Santa Monica, California 90404, who in 2016 acquired Yuku, and in July 2017 migrated the contents of that service to their own bulletin board platform, and in July 2017, also acquired Zetaboards and zIFBoards (formerly Invisionfree), the forum services operated by Zathyus Networks,
In the book, Bernays suggested that propaganda may become increasingly effective and influential through the discovery of audiences’ hidden motives, asserting that the emotional response inherently present in propaganda limits the audience’s choices by creating a binary mentality, which can result in quicker, more enthused responses.
According to Wikipedia, public relations scholar Curt Olsen argued that the public largely accepted Bernays’ “sunny” view of propaganda, an acceptance eroded by fascism in the World War II era.
Olsen also argued that Bernays’s skill with language allowed terms such as “education” to subtly replace darker concepts such as “indoctrination.”
Finally, Olsen criticized Bernays for advocating “psychic ease” for the average person to have no burden to answer for his or her own actions in the face of powerful messages.
On the other hand, writers such as Marvin Olasky justify Bernays as killing democracy in order to save it.
In this way, the presence of an elite, faceless persuasion constituted the only plausible way to prevent authoritarian control, which itself is just another form of authoritarian control.
As to our politics in America today, Bernay’s techniques are now staples for public image creation and political campaigns, which clearly includes the use of “psychological manipulation,” that type of social influence that aims to change the behavior or perception of others through abusive, deceptive, or underhanded tactics.
So who really is the enemy of the American people?
Stay tuned, more on that thought is yet to come.