Opus 2018-289: Allowing the Adolescent to Grow Up

One mark of maturity is the responsible exercise of liberty.  You have seen this if you raised children.  Some young people are worthy of access to the family car and the freedom to do things with their friends.  Others require early curfews and constant monitoring.  I remember that I never had a deadline to be home and had a car if one was available.  I had those things because I was responsible.  I was so responsible that I was boring.  Parents would call my parents to see if I was home.  If I was still out running around they assumed there children were not in trouble.

The First Amendment is a mark of liberty that was given to the press among others.  They were given the right to say anything they wanted about the government without fear of censorship or reprisal.  They did so.  If you think today is extreme you can find even more in the historic press.  At one point we had the idea of “yellow journalism” which was an early code word for Fake News.  The difference in those days was that you had two ideologies pushing fake news and if you read both sides you had some chance at arriving at a bit of truth.

That has changed.  Since the right has retreated from the public square the MSM has become a single voice declaring Fake News from just about every outlet.  If you are paying attention even Fox has succumbed to the Siren call and for the most part can no longer be trusted.  They have taken the freedom enshrined in the Constitution and turned it into a license to destroy.  When a teen ager misuses freedom there are penalties.  I am not sure what kind of penalties we can levy on the press because we still believe in non-censorship.  We need to find something but it needs to be a something that keeps freedom of the press enshrined.

One easy method is to carefully pick who has access to the president.  Another is to go to court immediately in cases of libel and slander.  Another is to put on trial reporters and editors who obviously have betrayed national security.  And, as I have said before, we can stop subscribing and buying.

A more difficult method would be to start some newspapers.  I know about how no one reads newspapers.  I hear the same thing about books but the publishing industry is doing quite well, thank you.  The reason people don’t read the newspapers is they are not worth reading.  Twenty years ago I heard people saying they would not take the L.A. Times if it was not for Jim Murray in the sports section.  Notice how the Weekly Standard has gone from success to failure in a few short years of turning on Trump.  Did they expect a subsidy from the Clinton Foundation?

I hope the media grow up.  I have felt the same way for a lot of teen agers.  I am still waiting on both.

homo unius libri