The United States will not necessarily follow the same path [to an unfree press]; it has stronger constitutional guarantees of freedom of the press and speech, as well as robust legislative and judicial systems that can check executive power. Though these institutions may be tested, there is ample reason to hope that U.S. press freedom will remain vibrant in the years ahead.  From Freedom House, Freedom of the Press 2017, Press Freedom’s Dark Horizon.

Freedom House, part of whose claimed mission is to evaluate freedom of the press in each of the nearly 200 countries in the world, continues to live in the past, continues to evaluate threats to press freedom using criteria not materially updated since the framing of the American Constitution in the late 18th century.  Despite the publication more than 30 years ago of Manufacturing Consent, 1988 (Edward Herman, Noam Chomsky) in which non-governmental threats to freedom of the press were explicated, and the subsequent publication of many more books by other authors developing the ideas presented by Herman and Chomsky, Freedom House does not seem to be aware of the existence of Manufacturing Consent and its progeny. [Certainly it is aware.]

It is a little suspicious that Freedom House does not look deeper, does not, despite presenting itself as an authoritative monitor of freedom of the press, seem to want to know, or want anyone else to know, that the reality of the American press in its mass media form has been largely captured by the propaganda model described by Herman and Chomsky, but then it is not so surprising that Freedom House has declined to go there; it is itself an appendage of the plutocratic oligarchy; it is funded largely by the US State Department, which is itself dominated by the global interests of the American plutocratic oligarchy, and in part by right-wing plutocratic foundations like the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, the Carthage Foundation, the Scaife Foundation, etc., and by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), an American government-funded non-governmental organization that claims to promote democracy around the world, but helps to disrupt and suppress democracy where it is not seen by NED to be in the American national interest.

The Constitution protects the press (the meaning of this word press now comprises modern mass news media) from government control of what the press says and does not say.  Giving an example of this kind of threat to press freedom, Freedom House noted in 2017, “U.S. president Donald Trump’s use of threatening rhetoric—including declarations that the media are ‘the enemy of the American people’—and his repeated disparagements of specific journalists and outlets have undermined public trust in fact-based journalism.”

Yet Freedom House takes practically no note of non-governmental threats that could restrict freedom of the press to the peril of democracy. Whence the idea that government was the sole danger to freedom of the press? [Or, if it was not the sole danger, it was nevertheless, because of concerns about “liberty,” the only danger that government was answerable for.]

Probably from about that period in the Enlightenment when technology had developed sufficiently for there to be a “press,” and states were already well-known to be repressive to its freedom.  Let us not fetishize the press, but focus on what is important--and what the Framers were concerned about when they wrote the words freedom of the press into the First Amendment: that wide and prominent dissemination of unregulated contesting perspectives would preserve the people’s liberty to determine the truth for themselves.  This is a strange idea--by the standards of today’s American plutocratic oligarchy--but the Framers, since they had recently experienced British suppression of free press in the American colonies, really thought of themselves as “the people,” thought the people should apprehend the truth by considering a variety of opinions and sources of information and freely choosing which among them appeared most likely to be true.  

But, unlike Freedom House, the Framers had good reason not to perceive the particular, pervasive dangers to the truth in America that are now painfully apparent to observant Americans living outside think tanks: The dangers present now had simply not sufficiently materialized to be observable to the Founders. [A lot of water has passed under the bridge since then.]

A Lot of Water Has Passed Under the Bridge Since Then

Alexander Hamilton was a realist, a skeptical man for his time but that was before Marx, further unfolding of capitalism’s predaceous logic; the subconscious, the unconscious, the id; the Great War; Nazi totalitarianism; Soviet totalitarianism; Hiroshima, Nagasaki; the military industrial complex; etc., etc., etc..  That was before everything that has happened since Hamilton was killed in a duel with Benedict Arnold on July 12, 1804.  That was before capitalism gathered its strength, dispatched its enemies, and thoroughly globalized, enabling oligarchies of wealth within economically developed states to begin to internally colonize their own citizens while practicing neocolonialism (under the guise of globalization) abroad.  


Hamilton’s Failed Prediction That the Constitution Would Ensure a Consistently High Quality of American Presidents

Hamilton believed, or at least claimed to believe, that the American Constitution’s provisions for the election of the president would ensure a consistently high quality of the individuals occupying the American office of president.  But he did not envision our current extra-constitutional, de facto system of selecting the president, wherein every four years the two major political parties present American voters with choice A and choice B from a menu of two candidates pre-screened for acceptability to the plutocracy:  The plutocratic oligarchy’s “Heads we win, Tails you lose,” scheme for selecting presidents, not mentioned anywhere in the Constitution, is nevertheless prized by the wealthy masters of the Republican and Democratic parties.  

The process of election affords a moral certainty that the office of President will never fall to the lot of any man who is not in an eminent degree endowed with the requisite qualifications. [Underline added for emphasis].  Talents for low intrigue, and the little arts of popularity, may alone suffice to elevate a man to the first honors in a single State; but it will require other talents, and a different kind of merit, to establish him in the esteem and confidence of the whole Union, or of so considerable a portion of it as would be necessary to make him a successful candidate for the distinguished office of President of the United States. It will not be too strong to say that there will be a constant probability of seeing the station filled by characters pre-eminent for ability and virtue.

Alexander Hamilton, writing under the pseudonym Publius, Federalist 68, March 12, 1788.

Nothwithstanding Alexander Hamilton’s claim in Federalist 68, Americans who have been paying attention know that the constitutional scheme for the election of the president has never afforded “a moral certainty” that the individuals who attain to the American presidency are to “an eminent degree endowed with the requisite qualifications.”  But as history has moved down its path, the constitutional intention that such should be the case, that the individuals who become president will be eminently qualified for that job, serves mostly now as a bitter reminder (to those who have been paying attention) of how far we have fallen.  Within the last two decades, as the plutocracy has gathered de facto political power commandeered from the de jure American democracy, the de facto, off-the-books American method for selecting presidents has established a trend toward producing runts of the presidential litter.  Since 2000 the system has selected two of the worst presidents in American history: George W. Bush and Donald J. Trump, both of whom have seriously and deeply damaged their own country.  The coming presidential election appears certain to either re-select the most recent of these runts, or yet a third runt in the last 20 years, this one plainly already manifesting an ominous mental decline.

Madison’s Failed Prediction That Under the Terms of the Constitution the American Military Would Never Be Strong Enough to Pose a Real Threat To the States

Hamilton’s associate James Madison believed that an American military controlled by the federal government could never be a danger to the freedom of the states because the aggregate of the state militias would remain militarily superior to any federal military produced under the terms of the Constitution.

But, as extravagant as the supposition is, let it be made. Let a regular army [controlled by the federal government], fully equal to the resources of the country, be formed, and let it be entirely at the devotion of the federal government. Still, it would not be going too far to say that the State governments, with the people on their side, would be able to repel the danger. [Underline added for emphasis]  According to the best computation, the highest number of troops that a standing army can support does not exceed one hundredth part of the whole number of souls in any country—or one twenty-fifth of the number able to bear arms. In the United States, this proportion would not yield an army of more than twenty-five or thirty thousand men. To these would be opposed a militia amounting to nearly a half million citizens with arms in their hands, officered by men chosen from among themselves, fighting for their common liberties, and united and conducted by governments possessing their affections and confidence. It may well be doubted whether a militia thus circumstanced could ever be conquered by such a proportion of regular troops.

James Madison, writing under the pseudonym Publius, Federalist 46, January 29, 1788.

What James Madison probably did not know, but what we Americans who have been paying attention know, is that the exigencies of the military industrial complex now require the United States to be on a permanent war footing.  Such a requirement means that the military controlled by the federal government has become bloated, powerful and dangerous beyond belief.  Should the federal government become a military enemy of the States, there would be no ensuing military conflict, primarily because State military resistance to federal military aggression would be manifestly futile.

Alexander Hamilton’s Failed Prediction That Of the Three Branches of the American Government, the Judiciary Would Always Be the Least Dangerous To the American Democracy

Whoever attentively considers the different departments of power must perceive that, in a government in which the departments are separated from one another, the judiciary will always be the least dangerous to the political rights of the Constitution [Underline added for emphasis]; due to the nature of its functions, it will be the least capable to annoy or injure those rights.

Alexander Hamilton, writing under the pseudonym Publius, Federalist 78, May 28, 1788    

What Alexander Hamilton should not be expected to have known, but what we who have been paying attention now know, is that one day, the wealthiest Americans as a class would fancy that they had grown tired of dragging out their long struggle to do away with democracy in America, and, seeking the means to a coup de grace, would methodically game the system for selecting Supreme Court justices, just as they had already gamed the system for selecting the president and members of the federal legislative branch.  

The Federalist Society, founded in 1982 to “reform the current legal order,” and working on behalf of its wealthy masters in concert with the Republican party, devised a “pipeline to the Supreme Court,” through which would travel ambitious young Republican lawyers (For example, the young Clarence Thomas, the young John Roberts, the young Samuel Alito, the young Neil Gorsuch and the young Brett Kavanaugh.)  But the ambitious young Republican attorney’s ticket to the Supreme Court would take him or her nowhere unless it had been punched to certify that once on the Court his or her opinions would reliably support whatever it was the plutocratic oligarchy required.  

Thus has the unfolding of history proved Hamilton wrong about the dangers the judiciary could pose to the Constitution, the American form of government, and the American people, as it now evidently does.  However, Hamilton’s skeptical eyes never seem to have completely closed although he squinted at times in his efforts to sell the Constitution to his fellow New Yorkers.  He slipped in a disclaimer regarding his faith in the innocuousness of the judiciary:

It equally proves that, although individual oppression may now and then proceed from the courts of justice, the general liberty of the people can never be endangered from that quarter, provided that the judiciary remains truly distinct from both the legislature and the Executive (underline added for emphasis). I agree with the statement that “there is no liberty, if the power of judging be not separated from the legislative and executive powers.”

Alexander Hamilton, writing under the pseudonym Publius, Federalist 78, May 28, 1788

Sometimes I wonder if the Federalist Society has chosen that name for itself because it has followed the Federalist papers as an instruction manual for the dismantlement of the American republic.