Everyone all over the world knows that we have a new
president who, among other targets, has a running battle with just about all
the news sources in our society. This is
not the forum to discuss our personal attitudes toward this new president, but
it is obvious, from all the ‘tweets’ he posts, that he believes, or at least
says he believes, that ALL the news is
fake and that ALL the news presenters are ‘enemies of the people.”
Well, the following statement is by Thomas Jefferson, yes, that
president, and what he wrote in 1787 is very, very, very true today:
“The people are the only censors of their governors: and
even their errors will tend to keep these to the true principles of their
institution. To punish these errors too severely would be to suppress the only
safeguard of the public liberty. The way to prevent these irregular
interpositions of the people is to give them full information of their affairs
thro’ the channel of the public papers, & to contrive that those papers
should penetrate the whole mass of the people. The basis of our governments being
the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we
should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government,
I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter. But I should mean that
every man should receive those papers & be capable of reading them.”
Thank you, Mr. Jefferson.
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