Tom Paine 1949
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Back in the days when the internet was new and serious people believed it could transform and revitalize democracy, Wired Magazine wrote a long article arguing that the true spiritual father of the internet was Thomas Paine. If ever there was a man of the people who embodied the revolutionary Enlightenment spirit of “Free Speech” and “Freedom of the Press” in a way applicable to today’s wide open social media, it would be Thomas Paine.
Were he alive today Paine would be an internet polemicist, not an Establishment journalist. Though he died in 1809, with little public influence and less money, he was almost until the end still writing and being published in a few small newspapers, with valuable things to say.
This little piece, written against unscrupulous attacks on Thomas Jefferson by many Federalist newspapers, shows clear thinking in that early era, when already shameless hacks hid behind the term “Liberty of the Press” to poison and derail honest discussion of differences among citizens:
The writer of this remembers a remark made to him by Mr. Jefferson concerning the English newspapers, which at that time, 1787, while Mr. Jefferson was Minister at Paris, were most vulgarly abusive. The remark applies with equal force to the Federal papers of America.
The remark was, that “the licentiousness of the press produces the same effect as the restraint of the press was intended to do, if the restraint was to prevent things being told, and the licentiousness of the press prevents things being believed when they are told."…
Whoever has made observation on the characters of nations will find it generally true that the manners of a nation, or of a party, can be better ascertained from the character of its press than from any other public circumstance. If its press is licentious, its manners are not good. Nobody believes a common liar, or a common defamer.
Nothing is more common with printers, especially of newspapers, than the continual cry of the Liberty of the Press, as if because they are printers they are to have more privileges than other people. As the term Liberty of the Press is adopted in this country without being understood, I will state the origin of it, and show what it means. The term comes from England, and the case was as follows:
Prior to what is in England called the Revolution, which was in 1688, no work could be published in that country without first obtaining the permission of an officer appointed by the government for inspecting works intended for publication. The same was the case in France, except that in France there were forty who were called Censors, and in England there was but one, called Imprimateur.
At the Revolution, the office of Imprimateur was abolished, and as works could then be published without first obtaining the permission of the government officer, the press was, in consequence of that abolition, said to be free, and it was from this circumstance that the term Liberty of the Press arose. The press, which is a tongue to the eye, was then put exactly in the case of the human tongue.
A man does not ask liberty before hand to say something he has a mind to say, but he becomes answerable afterwards for the atrocities he may utter. In like manner, if a man makes the press utter atrocious things, he becomes as answerable for them as if he had uttered them by word of mouth. Mr. Jefferson has said in his inaugural speech, that “error of opinion might be tolerated, when reason was left free to combat it.” This is sound philosophy in cases of error. But there is a difference between error and licentiousness….
THOMAS PAINE. October 19, 1806, writing in The American Citizen
Were he alive today Paine would be an internet polemicist, not an Establishment journalist. Though he died in 1809, with little public influence and less money, he was almost until the end still writing and being published in a few small newspapers, with valuable things to say.
This little piece, written against unscrupulous attacks on Thomas Jefferson by many Federalist newspapers, shows clear thinking in that early era, when already shameless hacks hid behind the term “Liberty of the Press” to poison and derail honest discussion of differences among citizens:
The writer of this remembers a remark made to him by Mr. Jefferson concerning the English newspapers, which at that time, 1787, while Mr. Jefferson was Minister at Paris, were most vulgarly abusive. The remark applies with equal force to the Federal papers of America.
The remark was, that “the licentiousness of the press produces the same effect as the restraint of the press was intended to do, if the restraint was to prevent things being told, and the licentiousness of the press prevents things being believed when they are told."…
Whoever has made observation on the characters of nations will find it generally true that the manners of a nation, or of a party, can be better ascertained from the character of its press than from any other public circumstance. If its press is licentious, its manners are not good. Nobody believes a common liar, or a common defamer.
Nothing is more common with printers, especially of newspapers, than the continual cry of the Liberty of the Press, as if because they are printers they are to have more privileges than other people. As the term Liberty of the Press is adopted in this country without being understood, I will state the origin of it, and show what it means. The term comes from England, and the case was as follows:
Prior to what is in England called the Revolution, which was in 1688, no work could be published in that country without first obtaining the permission of an officer appointed by the government for inspecting works intended for publication. The same was the case in France, except that in France there were forty who were called Censors, and in England there was but one, called Imprimateur.
At the Revolution, the office of Imprimateur was abolished, and as works could then be published without first obtaining the permission of the government officer, the press was, in consequence of that abolition, said to be free, and it was from this circumstance that the term Liberty of the Press arose. The press, which is a tongue to the eye, was then put exactly in the case of the human tongue.
A man does not ask liberty before hand to say something he has a mind to say, but he becomes answerable afterwards for the atrocities he may utter. In like manner, if a man makes the press utter atrocious things, he becomes as answerable for them as if he had uttered them by word of mouth. Mr. Jefferson has said in his inaugural speech, that “error of opinion might be tolerated, when reason was left free to combat it.” This is sound philosophy in cases of error. But there is a difference between error and licentiousness….
THOMAS PAINE. October 19, 1806, writing in The American Citizen
