Thursday, April 3, 2025

From the Highbrow Commonplace Book: notes on freedom of speech and freedom of the press

Let's begin with lines from a polemic published in 1644, entitled Areopagitica; A speech of Mr. John Milton for the Liberty of Unlicenc’d Printing, to the Parliament of England.  In the following short passage, note how freedom of expression is intrinsically linked to the concept of truth.

And though all the winds of doctrine were let loose to play upon the earth, so Truth be in the field, we do injuriously, by licensing and prohibiting, to misdoubt her strength. Let her and Falsehood grapple; who ever knew Truth put to the worse, in a free and open encounter?

Two remarks: First, Milton is saying that when ideas are presented openly, truth shall prevail. Second, the truth Milton speaks of is a concept with philosophical, scientific, and political significance.  That is, truth (and openness) is central to our modern outlook.  I will now endeavor to present a few points that dilate on the implications of Milton’s idea.

 In A Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law (1765), John Adams writes:

Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people, who have a right, from the frame of their nature, to knowledge, as their great Creator, who does nothing in vain, has given them understandings, and a desire to know; but besides this, they have a right, an indisputable, unalienable, indefeasible, divine right to that most dreaded and envied kind of knowledge, I mean, of the characters and conduct of their rulers. Rulers are no more than attorneys, agents, and trustees, of the people; and if the cause, the interest, and trust, is insidiously betrayed, or wantonly trifled away, the people have a right to revoke the authority that they themselves have deputed, and to constitute other and better agents, attorneys and trustees.

The same tenor is carried forward by Thomas Jefferson, here in the Second Inaugural Address (1805):

 …[T]he [American] experiment [in a Free Press] is noted to prove that, since truth and reason have maintained their ground against false opinions in league with false facts, the press, confined to truth, needs no other legal restraint; the public judgment will correct false reasoning and opinions on a full hearing of all parties....

 In a 16 January, 1787 letter to Colonel Edward Carrington, Jefferson writes:

The basis of our government 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 and be capable of reading them.

 

In a 28 June, 1804 letter to Judge John Tyler, Jefferson pointedly conjoins the notion of truth to free expression:

 No experiment can be more interesting than that we are now trying, and which we trust will end in establishing the fact, that man may be governed by reason and truth. Our first object should therefore be, to leave open to him all the avenues to truth. The most effectual hitherto found, is the freedom of the press. It is, therefore, the first [freedom] shut up by those who fear the investigation of their actions.
 Once more, Jefferson argues the point, here in a 6 January 1816 Letter to Colonel Charles Yancey:

 If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be. The functionaries of every government have propensities to command at will the liberty and property of their constituents. There is no safe deposit for these but with the people themselves; nor can they be safe with them without information. Where the press is free, and every man able to read, all is safe.
In a 31 October, 1823 Letter to Adamantios Koraes, Jefferson punctuates the idea, concluding with an appeal to ethics that suggests Aristotle:

I have stated that the constitutions of our several States vary more or less in some particulars. But there are certain principles in which all agree, and which all cherish as vitally essential to the protection of the life, liberty, property, and safety of the citizen [...] Freedom of the press, subject only to liability for personal injuries. This formidable censor of the public functionaries, by arraigning them at the tribunal of public opinion, produces reform peaceably, which must otherwise be done by revolution. It is also the best instrument for enlightening the mind of man, and improving him as a rational, moral, and social being.

To conclude this thread, consider these lines from John F. Kennedy’s Address before the American Newspaper Publishers Association (27 April 1961):

Without debate, without criticism, no Administration and no country can succeed — and no republic can survive. ... And that is why our press was protected by the First Amendment — the [press is the] only business in America specifically protected by the Constitution — not primarily to amuse and entertain, not to emphasize the trivial and the sentimental, not to simply “give the public what it wants” — but to inform, to arouse, to reflect, to state our dangers and our opportunities, to indicate our crises and our choices, to lead, mold, educate and sometimes even anger public opinion. This means greater coverage and analysis of international news — for it is no longer far away and foreign but close at hand and local. It means greater attention to improved understanding of the news as well as improved transmission. And it means, finally, that government at all levels, must meet its obligation to provide you with the fullest possible information outside the narrowest limits of national security. ... And so it is to the printing press — to the recorder of man’s deeds, the keeper of his conscience, the courier of his news — that we look for strength and assistance, confident that with your help man will be what he was born to be: free and independent.


Wednesday, April 2, 2025

Inveiging outcry inspired by sensational cover art, uninhibited in manner; author and source unknown


 

Ni dinosaurios de feroces dentaduras, ni leones hambrientos de carne humana, ni gorilas con locura homicida, ni hombres lobos, vampiros, frankesteines y compañía: no hay monstruo que dé más miedo que el que no tiene forma definida. Esos sí que dan pavor del de verdad, y lo demás son cuentos...

 

Translation:

No fierce-toothed dinosaurs, no lions hungry for human flesh, no madly homicidal gorillas, no werewolves, vampires, Frankensteins and company: there is no monster more frightening than the one with no defined form. Those are scary for real, and the rest are just tales...

Tuesday, April 1, 2025

High Plains Echoes

"Then another great cry went out from the dust: 'Crazy Horse is coming. Crazy Horse is coming!' Off toward the west and north they were yelling 'Hoka hey!' like a big wind roaring, and making the tremolo; and you could hear the eagle bone whistles screaming." 

                               - Black Elk Speaks, Chapter 9

 More echoes HERE.

Monday, March 31, 2025

Thursday, March 27, 2025

Wednesday, March 26, 2025

Devils Hear the Call

Satan marches to the beach of the flaming sea and turns to view his defeated angels, still astonished after their fall from Heaven, and the poet compares their ruin to scenes of war and cataclysm as chronicled in human lore. The view is one of darkness, desolation, and tossing destruction.  His booming voice shaking the deeps of Hell, the arch deceiver admonishes his armies that their situation might allow further attack in the form of thunderbolts from above, which could chain them forever to the flaming waves, and so urges them to stir themselves and join ranks upon the shore.

Nathless he so endur'd, till on the Beach
Of that inflamed Sea, he stood and call'd
His Legions, Angel Forms, who lay intrans't
Thick as Autumnal Leaves that strow the Brooks
In Vallombrosa, where th' Etrurian shades
High overarch't imbowr; or scatterd sedge
Afloat, when with fierce Winds Orion arm'd
Hath vext the Red-Sea Coast, whose waves orethrew
Busiris and his Memphian Chivalry,
While with perfidious hatred they pursu'd
The Sojourners of Goshen, who beheld
From the safe shore thir floating Carkases
And broken Chariot Wheels, so thick bestrown
Abject and lost lay these, covering the Flood,
Under amazement of thir hideous change.
He call'd so loud, that all the hollow Deep
Of Hell resounded. "Princes, Potentates,
Warriers, the Flowr of Heav'n, once yours, now lost,
If such astonishment as this can sieze
Eternal spirits; or have ye chos'n this place
After the toyl of Battel to repose
Your wearied vertue, for the ease you find
To slumber here, as in the Vales of Heav'n?
Or in this abject posture have ye sworn
To adore the Conquerour? who now beholds
Cherube and Seraph rowling in the Flood
With scatter'd Arms and Ensigns, till anon
His swift pursuers from Heav'n Gates discern
Th' advantage, and descending tread us down
Thus drooping, or with linked Thunderbolts
Transfix us to the bottom of this Gulfe.
Awake, arise, or be for ever fall'n."

They heard, and were abasht, and up they sprung…

 

                     --Paradise  Lost, Book I, lines 299-331 

 

Boris Artzybasheff


Tuesday, March 25, 2025

Angels with Harps

In Paradise Lost Book III, Lines 344-371, God pronounces the glory of his Son, who has signaled his astonishing offer of his self as sacrifice to redeem Man. The angels respond by throwing down their circlets, described as crowns interwoven with red flowers and golden beams of light. The flowers are Amarant, which the poet describes as a blossom first found at the foot of the Tree of Life, but after Man's Fall native only to Heaven, where they grow around the Fountain of Life from which flows the amber river of Bliss, winding through heavenly fields. At the angels' feet the pavement of red crystal (Revelation 21:11) is enhanced by the beauty of the garlands, now described as purple--the admixture of blossoms and light, which contributes new beauty to their crowns. Delighting in the beauty around them, the angels retrieve their circlets, place them again around their flying hair, take up their harps and produce melodious preludes as they prepare to sing.

No sooner had th' Almighty ceas't, but all
The multitude of Angels with a shout 
Loud as from numbers without number, sweet
As from blest voices, uttering joy, Heav'n rung
With Jubilee, and loud Hosanna's filld
Th' eternal Regions: lowly reverent
Towards either Throne they bow, and to the ground
With solemn adoration down they cast
Thir Crowns inwove with Amarant and Gold,
Immortal Amarant, a Flour which once
In Paradise, fast by the Tree of Life
Began to bloom, but soon for mans offence   
To Heav'n remov'd where first it grew, there grows,
And flours aloft shading the Fount of Life,
And where the river of Bliss through midst of Heavn
Rowls o're Elisian Flours her Amber stream;
With these that never fade the Spirits elect   
Bind thir resplendent locks inwreath'd with beams,
Now in loose Garlands thick thrown off, the bright
Pavement that like a Sea of Jasper shon
Impurpl'd with Celestial Roses smil'd.
Then Crown'd again thir gold'n Harps they took,
Harps ever tun'd, that glittering by thir side
Like Quivers hung, and with Præamble sweet
Of charming symphonie they introduce
Thir sacred Song, and waken raptures high;
No voice exempt, no voice but well could joine     
Melodious part, such concord is in Heav'n.

      Paradise Lost, Book III, Lines 344-371