Never has there been an administration so disciplined in secrecy, so precisely in lockstep in keeping information from the people at large and – in defiance of the Constitution – from their representatives in Congress. Never has the so powerful a media oligopoly – the word is Barry Diller’s, not mine – been so unabashed in reaching like Caesar for still more wealth and power. Never have hand and glove fitted together so comfortably to manipulate free political debate, sow contempt for the idea of government itself, and trivialize the people’s need to know. (emphasis supplied)
My article was about the loss of a free press. I discussed the problem with permitting private corporate media entities, whose allegiance is not to democracy, to have control over our information:
There is nothing democratic about a corporation and there is nothing “American” about monopolies. No one expects a corporation to have a commitment to democracy. It is the combination of a corrupt government and the cancerous growth of corporate power which is destroying our country more profoundly than any occupation of a foreign enemy could. Left unregulated private industry has shown the ease with which it will abuse our trust and contaminate our natural resources.
And I explained that as Vice President Henry Wallace had predicted in the 1940s, now that the media has become part of the power structure, beholden to the government for its monopoly status, the forces of government and business (otherwise known as corporatism or fascism) have taken over what was our democracy:
American fascism will not be really dangerous until there is a purposeful coalition among the cartelists, the deliberate poisoners of public information--Vice President Henry WallaceThis government, more effectively than any foreign enemy could have succeeded, has seized control from within. …………..
We have lost the ability to evict our government through election; lost the ability to stop our government from illegally attacking other nations. In short we have lost the ability to be our own governors and can no longer consider ourselves a free people.
Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people. -- John Adams
If a nation expects to be ignorant and free ... it expects what never was and never will be. -- Thomas Jefferson
A popular Government without popular information or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy or perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance, and a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power knowledge gives. -- James Madison
I went back through my article of last year and bolded the excerpts above. That’s foundational roots for you – Madison, Jefferson, Adams. That’s our heritage and that is what we all need to be reminding our elected and appointed officials in New York. Our birthright can not be squandered or surrendered by them while serving ‘in our interests’.
Information is the people’s tool or weapon if you will. It is the means by which we keep ourselves a free people. If we permit it to be taken from us, we are “unfit for liberty”:
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