ITS ONE OF THE things I concluded after being able to read more of Jefferson's letters online than I'd ever read in ink on paper, due to the drastically uneven quality of the thinking and writing and, comparing what I've also read about the alcohol consumption at Jefferson's Monticello that he was often doing the 18th century version of drunk dialing when he wrote his voluminous correspondence. If I had enough years left to me I might compare his production to that of other great letter writers of the period like John Adams or maybe the incredible journal of John Quincy Adams (available online, as well) to lay out what evidence there might be in those. I think Jefferson was very likely an alcoholic, believing alcoholism was far more common in the 18th and 19th centuries than it is even now. I do know that Jefferson said lots of shit along with the gems that are often embedded in it. So you can't just rely on his authority in judging nonsense such as that little bon bon full of shit about preferring newspapers to governments. That's the one I was referring to.
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.
Anyone who has lived through the tyranny that lies told with impunity by the freest of free presses in American history has gotten us, lies spread with the most money behind them and that science of lying, public relations, to gull them with, what both invented and imposed the phony Trump on us should be able to recognize the fact that Jefferson, writing from Paris BEFORE HE HAD A REAL POLITICAL CAREER was full of shit.
You can get a taste of how full of shit he was by contrasting his claims about how political disruptions in the States in 1787 were being received by Europe with the receptions of the product of that far, far freer press today Here's what he said before that stuff the media and "civil libertarians" love to quote:
The tumults in America, I expected would have produced in Europe an unfavorable opinion of our political state. But it has not. On the contrary, the small effect of those tumults seems to have given more confidence in the firmness of our governments. The interposition of the people themselves on the side of government has had a great effect on the opinion here. I am persuaded myself that the good sense of the people will always be found to be the best army. They may be led astray for a moment, but will soon correct themselves. 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.
Well, the free press and the result of "The people" being peddled lies in the Jeffersonian style free press is rightly that the United States has totally lost the confidence of European democracies and also Canada and other democracies around the world while getting the praise and support of the worst of the worst anti-democrats and dictators.
The free press has lost us any claim to stability as a democracy or an example that the world should follow or whose treaties and promises should be relied on. If Jefferson sobered up enough, he'd likely have retracted what he said while under the influence. The 'liberty' he valued in the 18th century United States was a liberty of wealthy white men to enslave Black People and murder and dispossess Native American People. So perhaps he wouldn't be too worked up about the liberty that white supremacists have been given to repeatedly thwart equality and overturn what little equality has been wrested from the Constitution as it has stood with little interruption from the start.
In real life, in the fullness of Constitutional history, his "best army" turns out to be Trump's January 6th insurrectionists. Jefferson was the kind of guy who loved the idea of blood being shed as long as he was far from the violence. Though I think if it had been an army of the enslaved he'd have changed his tune, mighty fast. I don't doubt he would have taken the actions of lynch mobs, or, as it was protected by the Second Amendments, the version of that termed "slave patrols" as fully acceptable examples of what he favored
If lies told in the mass media aren't prevented through the ability of those lied about to sue the media till it hurts enough to stop their lying, American democracy is already dead as the drunk of Monticello. I think it is among the basic rights we have that equality and democracy are protected from those who propagandize and gull the stupid(media addled) and immoral (white supremacists, male supremacists, etc) into destroying those. I'd include an egalitarian democracy having the responsibility to suppress lies and hate speech that erode and destroy it as among those basic rights which government owes all of us, including, ironically, those very opponent of equality and democracy. I value that more than I value the right of the networks, the cabloids, the online outfits and individuals the Supreme Court, First Amendment fiction of a "right to lie." Clearly Jefferson was either stupid enough or drunk enough to believe there was a right to lie, which discredits him. I have no doubt he was amoral enough to believe that.
Note: I don't have the time to justify the copied and pasted lines today.
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