Donald Trump used “fake news” so effectively that even some constitutional conservatives began to remain silent when the president called for reductions in free speech, or for libel trials for networks and reporters, or hand selected those reporters allowed in the press room.
President Obama put more reporters on trial or in jail than any other president since World War I. Obama targeted and even spied on members of the press, but for some reason the press mostly tolerated it from him.
Others had tried it before. Nixon had his famous enemies list, as did FDR, but in the twentieth century Woodrow Wilson was the one who scared Americans and the press the most. In fact, it was his antipress rhetoric that caused the creation of the White House press corps. To fight back, they knew that they needed to band together. However, once the president saw this, he and subsequent presidents established the White House press dinner to make the press “part of the family.” By the 1930s, Edward Bernays and others had created the Council on Foreign Relations, which in his own words was the propaganda machine that would teach the press how to shape the world the way the “leaders” saw it:
No serious sociologist any longer believes that the voice of the people expresses any divine or specially wise and lofty idea. The voice of the people expresses the mind of the people, and that mind is made up for it by the group leaders in whom it believes and by those persons who understand the manipulation of public opinion. It is composed of inherited prejudices and symbols and clichés and verbal formulas supplied to them by the leaders.
Trump would discredit the media, but the media needed very little help. They had done more damage to themselves over the preceding nine years than Donald Trump could inflict in a lifetime. For those who wanted to see the media destroyed, it was quite a Dumpster fire.
Because we were now living in a postmodern time when “there is no truth,” the media and the left decided to take their own action. They began to call for their own selection process. During an interview I did with Ted Koppel, I was horrified to actually hear him suggest and defend a new license for the press. It was fascinating for me to hear this icon justify the idea of creating a “board of some sort” to decide who was “trusted enough” to tell the American people the “truth.”
Who would be on that board? Would it be a government board—the same government whose wrongdoings you were trying to expose? Or would it be a media board that had already shown itself to be sleeping with the government? Would any “neutral” board that derived its power from a protective government actually ever be expected to side against its protector? When I suggested that perhaps those who were not in those circles and didn’t fall prey to groupthink might have a different take on what was happening in D.C. and NYC, it quickly became clear that the Internet was the problem and that just anyone could now have a voice.
I had a very similar conversation with Bill O’Reilly in July 2018. He was calling for the wiretapping of reporters’ phones to find those who were leaking information to the press and “subverting democracy.” Since when is a whistleblower not protected? I strongly disagreed with both Koppel and O’Reilly. They both agreed, and if either had been taken seriously and their proposals had been put into action, one would be in jail, wiretapped, or silenced.
As I have done my research on the Bill of Rights, I have indeed gone through the original documents, drafts, and arguments that our Founders made. The First Amendment is truly remarkable and something that I just do not think more than a handful of today’s powerful would ever consider, let alone write and pass. But our Founders were men as well. Flawed, just like the men and women of today. They may have passed the Bill of Rights in 1791, but some of those same men tried to subvert it in 1798.
THE SEDITION ACT
In the extremely handy Know Your Bill of Rights book, the authors use original sources to outline the arguments for freedom of the press. Blackstone wrote that the liberty of the press “is indeed essential to the nature of a free state.” Madison described freedom of the press as one of the “choicest” of the “great rights of mankind.”
But, as is still the case today, the question remained, what did that mean? How far does the freedom reach? Is ALL speech covered and protected? The old saw “You can’t scream ‘fire’ in a movie theater” had not yet been heard, and wouldn’t be until Edison invented the projector and movies. They were concerned with bigger ideas. Should someone be allowed to incite violence against the government? Could you knowingly spread false and damaging statements against others or the government? What speech would be protected, and what would not?
Charles Pinckney of South Carolina suggested in the Constitutional Convention that the liberty of the press needed to be “inviolably preserved.” It failed in 1787 as Roger Sherman spoke what was then “self-evident,” that it was unnecessary, as “the power of Congress does not extend to the press.”
The protection of the press then fell to the states. Some states added protections in their constitutions that reflected that people could write or publish anything they wanted, but if they defamed the government, they would be tried and criminally convicted. Chief Justice of Pennsylvania Thomas McKean felt that publishing “bad sentiments destructive of the needs of society is the crime which society corrects.”
William Livingston wrote in an essay that anyone who published “anything injurious to his country” should be convicted of “high treason against the state.” The original Sherman framing was that it would protect the right to express one’s sentiments “with decency,” which at the time was understood to exclude libels personal, obscene, blasphemous, or seditious. Jefferson wanted to prosecute only those who would publish “false facts or falsehoods.” He wanted no prosecution for accurate information. But many states upheld laws that freedom of the press allowed for the prosecution for seditious libel and that even truth was not a valid defense. While there would be NO censorship, every person would be responsible if he attacked the government in speech or writing, and that action could lead to criminal charges in a federal court.
Now, wait a minute. How did this group of people who began a revolution by first speaking out against the actions of their government put together a new Constitution that would put people in jail if they verbally attacked the new government, which was supposed to be run by the “consent of the people”? Sometimes history gives you answers that inspire, and other times it provides answers that only show us that people never really change. As fate had it, after the Bill of Rights passed and was ratified, very few in the press were prosecuted for criticisms of the government, which was just as bad if not worse than our press today. The federal and state governments knew that the people didn’t trust the government, and what little trust they had would disappear quickly for any government that would jail its critics.
When the Sedition Act was passed in 1798, it broadened the common-law understanding of freedom of the press and required that criminal intent be proven, and it gave a jury the power to decide if the accused’s statement was true, and it admitted truth as a defense. But the public had begun to be more tolerant of the press, and thus the rights began to expand to include the right to censure the government, its officials, and its policies and to publicize opinions on any matter of public concern. George Hay, James Madison, and others rejected common law, which had originated in England. Madison wrote: “It would seem a mockery to say that no laws shall be passed preventing the publications from being made, but that laws might be passed for punishing them in case they should be made.”
Hay charged that the Sedition Act “appears to be directed against falsehood and malice only; in fact . . . there are many truths, important to society which are not susceptible of that full, direct and positive evidence, which alone can be exhibited before court and a jury.” Albert Gallatin argued that if a citizen were prosecuted for his opinion, would not a jury composed of friends of the government find his criticism “ungrounded, false and scandalous, and its publication malicious? And by what kind of arg
ument or evidence, in the present temper of parties, could the accused convince them that his opinions were true?”
The truth of opinions could not be proved, and thus, it was argued, allowing truth as a defense of freedom made as much sense as allowing a jury to decide on “the best food, drink, or color.”
A citizen should have a right to “say everything which his passions suggest; he may employ all his time, and all his talents, if he is wicked enough to do so, in speaking against the government matters that are false, scandalous and malicious, and despite this, he should be safe within the sanctuary of the press” even if he “condemns the principle of republican institutions . . . censures the measures of our government, and every department and officer thereof, and ascribes the measures of the former, however salutary, and conduct of the latter, however upright, to the basest motives even if he ascribes to them measures and acts, which never had existence thus violating at one, every principle of decency and truth.” (from Sean Patrick’s The Know Your Bill of Rights Book: Don’t Lose Your Constitutional Rights—Learn Them!, p. 16)
WOW.
This was totally novel and new. No government had ever come close to such freedom for its people. It was so radical that we still are debating it. But it is the only way a government that is actually run by the consent of the people could be consistent and true to itself. John Thomson wrote that a government cannot tell a citizen, “You shall not think this or that upon certain subjects; or if you do, it is at your own peril.” This for the first time makes the citizen the master and the government the slave.
However, over time, particularly in the twentieth century and beyond, the press began to become the master itself and joined with the government to once again make the citizen its inferior and not its master. The press in this new, unspoken, progressive arrangement would become in some cases a co-conspirator or a teacher to the citizen to “educate” people about what the ruling class felt was the best option on government legislation and action. The press rarely found interest in its partnership with the average American to remain on high alert to injustice, inequalities, and infringements unless they were to expand the power of the government or destroy a political enemy or movement.
John Stuart Mill, in his book On Liberty, argued that the silencing of opinion is “a peculiar evil,” for if that opinion is correct, then we are robbed of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth; and if it is wrong, we are deprived of a deeper understanding of the truth in “its collision with error.”
PART FOUR
* * *
Reconciliation
The room is bare; it smells like excrement, blood, and sweat. Yours. You no longer even know how long you have been held here. You have long ago lost your dignity. You have wet and soiled yourself from fear. You were stripped long ago. Each day, you think, This is the day. I will make it today. I won’t give in. I won’t beg like a child. I won’t plead or show them just how worthless I am. How do others do it? How do they stand up to this? They didn’t give in. They didn’t humiliate themselves like this.
The same routine,
every time the light goes on,
the door opens and a man steps in.
What you have isn’t this important.
He must have the wrong man.
You have nothing.
He hasn’t asked you a single question.
Just the beatings.
Is this how he gets his kicks? Has he been paid to do this?
“What?!” you cry. “What do you want?”
Your eyelid is cut. Dried blood cakes your face.
It reopens. Blood flows freely, clouding your vision.
The head bleeds so much.
“I don’t know what you want from me,” you sob quietly.
But somewhere inside, you do.
The beating continues . . .
33
* * *
The Long Journey Back
The fifth step is “Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.”
Personally, for me, it was the hardest step other than the first, admitting that I had a problem I could not conquer alone. To admit I was an alcoholic for some reason was perhaps the hardest thing I have ever done. Maybe it was because of the societal shame, but I don’t think so; nor was it that I had associated alcoholics with winos and bums, although that is what confused me and slowed me down in asking for help for so long. Too long.
Two years after I had first tried to stop, my doctor told me, “Look, I don’t know what you are drinking or putting into your body, but it is shutting down. You can either talk to me and we can get you help, or you can continue on this path; but if you are dead in six months, it wouldn’t shock me.”
His talk wasn’t enough. I could stop drinking. I was in control. I wasn’t weak and pathetic, even though that is what I told myself every morning in the mirror, before I stopped looking in the mirror. “You promised that you wouldn’t drink yesterday. And yet you found a reason, an excuse. It was a hard day, you didn’t feel well enough to start, someone put their burdens on your back and you needed the escape just one last time.
“You are weak and pathetic.
“No, today I am going to do it. I will prove that I am strong and not addicted to anything. Today, I am not going to drink.”
Wash, rinse, repeat. Over and over the same words, same promise, same failure, every day of my life for four years. I wouldn’t crack. I wouldn’t give in. Every morning begging for mercy. Every night betraying myself and on my knees, lost in its gentle numbness.
I believe what was so terrifying was the fact that I was stripped naked, with no control and no idea what would happen next. But this is why AA works. Unless ordered by a judge or spouse, no one admits this lightly. You not only have to join, to want to join. You are so desperate to end the pain that death is your only option. Your addiction has taken everything that was truly and authentically yours away and made a mockery of it. You have been ground almost to a pulp. You literally have nothing left. Even if you still have money, a job, family, and a home, it is all worthless, because you have no control. You are worthless. All of what you have built is gone or meaningless. Everyone’s bottom is different. Kitty Dukakis, I will never forget, was, in the end, drinking hair spray for the alcohol it contained. You are ashamed at what you have become. In hopes of some release, you have tried everything else: sex, money, fame—all of it empty, all of it a bigger lie than the demon before. And yet for so long, you refused to do the only thing really required to stop. “No, not that. Anything but that.”
All you have to do is surrender.
For me, I imagine it feels the same as the moment you give in to torture.
“Okay, okay,” you whimper, “I will give you whatever you want. Please . . . please . . . just make it stop.”
My mother was an alcoholic. She committed suicide. I almost did. I guess I was more of a coward. That is the way I used to look at it. I was too afraid to kill myself.
And for that, I thank God.
Our nation is addicted to a destructive way of life. What is our bottom? We always had the respect of the world. They looked at us as leaders. They counted on us.
“Well, maybe they shouldn’t have. When did I become the one who had to carry the load? When did I decide that I couldn’t have fun and lie on the beach, drink a little, be a little irresponsible, and have fun?”
Respect? From them? What’s that worth? They are more screwed up than I am. They are just getting away with it. Most of them are judgmental frauds. You know they are hiding their dirty little secrets, too.
But it isn’t “them,” and you know it. Not them. But others are there in that crowd. I have been there, in both roles. It is why at some point you double down. You are ashamed. You see the way your friends, the people you truly respect, look at you now. The ones who were counting on you, the ones who have always been there for you. You have let them down. You have lied—but they know. They haven’
t said anything except to ask if you were okay. It isn’t that they don’t have problems. It just seems that they can handle theirs, and you were supposed to be the tough one. They are the ones whom you love, because they love you. They see in you what you no longer can—someone better than what you have allowed yourself to become. This is the one that you hopefully haven’t snapped at when they quietly came to you after you publicly embarrassed yourself, helped you back up to your feet, and compassionately said, “Maybe you should go home. I can drive you.”
The disappointment in their eyes . . .
You will need to drink away those eyes, for a long time.
You have read enough of this book or listened to me long enough to know that my job exposes me to some dark and terrifying things. It is my job to read, listen, learn, and then warn when I must. I had to watch the video that had been smuggled out of Syria that showed a child, maybe five or six, screaming in a hallway for his mother and father. Being led forward by an ISIS member. When they entered the next room, the floor was covered with blood and bodies. There, just beyond his reach, lay his parents, dead, bloodied, and stacked like cordwood. The boy began to scream as he was lifted up onto a metal table that had been shoved up against the outer wall. So filthy, so bloody. The walls were chipped, almost an old mint green, and the flickering of an old fluorescent overhead office light. As they laid the boy down, another man put out what could almost be a shallow turkey-roasting pan. They shoved it under the boy’s back and opened his shirt and held him still as his screams for Mommy and Daddy went unanswered. It was then that I realized what they were going to do and who these people were. As that was running through my head, almost simultaneously, I gasped as I realized . . . there is no anesthesia coming.