Re: News & Truth

["Vladimir Z. Nuri" <vznuri@netcom.com>]

Jefferson:
>At a very early period in my life I determined never to put a sentence into
>any newspaper. I have religously adhered to the resolution through my life
>and have great reason to be contented with it. Were I to undertake to answer
>the calumnies of the newspapers it would be more than my time and twenty
>aids could effect. For, while I should be answering one, twenty new ones
>would be invented. I have thought it better to trust to the justice of my
>countrymen  that they would judge me by what they see of my conduct on the
>stage where they have placed me.

a friend of mine is studying Hamilton vs. Jefferson. it turns out
Hamilton loved newspapers and would write frequently under his own
name, or under a variety of pseudonyms. one biographer states he
assumed the personality of each as he wrote under them.  I think
Jefferson was at ill advantage in the face of Hamilton's tactics.


>No Government ought to be without censors; and when the press is free, no
>one ever will. Nature has given to man no other means of sifting out the
>truth either in religion, law or politics. I think it as honorable to the
>government neither to know nor notice its sycophants or censors as it would
>be undignified and criminal to pamper the former and persecute the latter.

this is pretty hard to parse until one understands that an old 
form of the word "censor", as I understand it, meant "to criticize".
so "censor" as a noun and verb should be replaced with "critic" and
"criticize" for the modern translation.