Freedom of the Press Quotes
After being criticized for printing a ship captain's advertisement that excluded clergymen as passengers, local clergy threatened to boycott the Gazette and take no printing jobs to Franklin. Due to the resulting clamor, Franklin published this "apology," i.e. apologetics, a statement of his philosophy as a printer, and concludes by explaining how and why he printed the offending handbill and why he should not be censured for the act.
President Lincoln reversed this order. Most Northerners however sided with Burnside on this point. They saw little point to protecting traitors who were helping to kill their neighbors by encouraging the Southerners.
Two decades later Jefferson, after his Presidency, had developed a different attitude towards the press. See {585116}.
Vladimir Lenin
Note the language used to describe the American government at the time. To the founders, it was an EXPERIMENT. Nothing like that had ever been tried before. And none of them were sure it would work. After defeating the British, they could have chosen for their new independent nation any one of dozens of well-established forms of government. But these were all flawed. So they risked the new nation on a form that had little or no precedent and might or might not survive. Centuries later many national leaders and legislators were fearful to try anything that they were not highly certain would be effective. Experiments were rare until there were crises so great that none of the orthodox solutions would be sufficient, and even then the innovators were criticized such as with Lincoln and Franklin Delano Roosevelt. They were candid enough to admit that they were experimenting. FDR in particular announced experimentation as a policy with rapid change for the experiments that did not work out of which there were several.
As long as the bigotry took for form of speech, writing, and voting he was a defender even of anti-Semites. However, when that leads to violence or an infringement on other people’s rights, then the bigotry becomes criminal.
Samuel Langhorne Clemens, 1835-1910. Twain was a much sought after public speaker in an era before TV and radio. Some speeches like this he delivered many times in many places.
He was condemning a practice whereby some nations would have freedoms guaranteed by their constitutions or laws, but the totalitarian government would “suspend” the constitutional guarantees in times of “national emergencies.” Yew was in opposition at the time he made this famous statement. 30 years later when he was the Prime Minister, he had a different view. See {585201}.
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.
Ingersoll was considered to be the greatest orator and political thinker of his day, but his overt atheistic views curtailed his elected political career.
Note how the second paragraph nullifies the first of the government declares an emergency. This is a trick that is very common in constitutions.
