Reality Amuck™

From New York Times Co. v. United States, 403 U.S. 713 (1971):

To hold that the publication of news may sometimes be enjoined . . . would make a shambles of the First Amendment.

Our Government was launched in 1789 with the adoption of the Constitution. Now, for the first time in the 182 years since the founding of the Republic, the federal courts are asked to hold that the First Amendment does not mean what it says, but rather means that the Government can prevent the publication of information.

The Executive Branch seems to have forgotten the essential purpose and history of the First Amendment. When the Constitution was adopted, many people strongly opposed it because the document contained no Bill of Rights to safeguard certain basic freedoms. They especially feared that the new powers granted to a central government might be interpreted to permit the government to curtail freedom of religion, press, assembly, and speech. In response to an overwhelming public clamor,James Madison offered a series of amendments to satisfy citizens that these great liberties would remain safe and beyond the power of government to infringe. Madison proposed what later became the First Amendment. The Bill of Rights changed the original Constitution into a new charter under which no branch of government could abridge the people's freedoms of press... Yet the government has argued...that the Constitution should be interpreted to limit the specific and emphatic guarantees of the Bill of Rights.

We can imagine no greater perversion of history. Madison and the other Framers of the First Amendment wrote in language they earnestly believed could never be misunderstood: "Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom . . . of the press . . . ." Both the history and language of the First Amendment support the view that the press must be left free to publish news, whatever the source, without censorship.

The Founding Fathers gave a free press the protection it must have to fulfill its essential role in our democracy. The press was to serve the people, not the government.

The Government's power to censor the press was abolished so that the press would remain forever free to censure the Government. The press was protected so that it could lay bare the secrets of government and inform the people. Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government.

And paramount among the responsibilities of a free press is the duty to prevent any part of the government from deceiving the people and sending them off to distant lands to die of foreign fevers and foreign shot and shell. Far from deserving condemnation for their courageous reporting, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and other newspapers should be commended for serving the purpose that the Founding Fathers saw so clearly. In revealing the workings of government that led to the Vietnam war, the newspapers nobly did precisely that which the Founders hoped and trusted they would do.

The words "National Security" are a broad, vague generality whose contours may not be invoked to abrogate the fundamental law embodied in our First Amendment. The guarding of military and diplomatic secrets at the expense of informed representative government provides no real security for our Republic, and we will not allow it.

And this concludes today's Civics lesson. If you'd like to learn more about The Pentagon Papers and New York Times Co. v. United States, take a voyage down to your public library. It's all in books!