Richard Nixon Quotes
The press is the enemy.
Nixon, Richard. White House Tapes.
Samuel Langhorne Clemens, 1835-1910
The American Press was actually split and there were Tory and revolutionary editors. However, like almost all politicians of all times in time of crisis, he saw the press as inaccurate and corrupt and an unfortunate “appendage of public liberty.”
Note how the second paragraph nullifies the first of the government declares an emergency. This is a trick that is very common in constitutions.
The queen was a lot more sophisticated about the newspapers than politicians in the 21st century.
Vladimir Lenin. Lenin was echoing criticisms that were made the world over and even by some in the United States. However, his solution to have the press controlled by the ruling party just changed the cast of characters who were propagandizing and distorting the truth. Lenin was not able to offer a better solution nor were others. However, with enough affluence the capitalist society produced enough different publishers all competing that one did not dominate public opinion. With technology of TV and the Internet, the bar to entry is so small that almost anyone can be a publisher and find an interested market. In a way technology has solved much of the problem for capitalistic and totalitarian societies alike. In the latter, even censorship is not easy or feasible on a large scale.
Richard Milhous Nixon was the 37th president of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974. A member of the Republican Party, Nixon previously served as the 36th vice president from 1953 to 1961, having risen to national prominence as a representative and senator from California. After five years in the White House that saw the conclusion to the U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War, détente with the Soviet Union and China, and the establishment of the Environmental Protection Agency, he became the only president to resign from the office, following the Watergate scandal.
