Excavations


... nothing is more essential to public interest than the preservation of public liberty.

- David Hume



Tuesday, August 22, 2017

Fake News

I know the press only too well.  Almost all editors hide away in spider-dens, men without thoughts of Family or Public Interest or the humble delights of jaunts out-of-doors, plotting how they can put over their lies, and advance their own positions and fill their greedy pocketbooks by calumniating Statesmen who have given their all for the common good and who are vulnerable because they stand out in the fierce Light that beats around the Throne.
          Zero Hour, Berzelius Windrip.

-        Sinclair Lewis, It Can’t Happen Here (1935)[1]





[1] Sinclair Lewis, It Can’t Happen Here, preface by Robert Bothwell (Oakville, ON: Rock’s Mill Press, 2016), p. 60.  Zero Hour is the fictitious work written by the imaginary populist and demagogue, Buzz Windrip (somewhat resembling Huey Long), in the book written by Sinclair Lewis, in 1935, where he suggests that fascism might even reach the highest office of the United States, as it already did in Germany and Italy at the time.  Of particular note here is Windrip’s attack on freedom of the so-called establishment press.

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