William James Ghent
WILLIAM JAMES GHENT   Macroknow Library
   

   
Our Benevolent Feudalism
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"'Every age,' writes Professor Sumner, 'is befooled by the notions which are in fashion in it. Our age is befooled by 'democracy.''"1a*

"It was a savage, and in some respects extravagant, picture of the function of the hired newspaper worker which a brilliant journalist . . . gave to the world a few years ago:--
'There is no such thing in America as an independent press, unless it is out in the country towns. I am paid for keeping honest opinions out of the paper I am connected with. Other editors are paid similar salaries for doing similar things. If I should allow honest opinions to be printed in one issue of my paper, before twenty-four hours my occupation, like Othello's, would be gone. The man who would be so foolish as to write honest opinions would be out on the street hunting for another job. The business of a New York journalist is to distort the truth, lie outright, to pervert, to vilify, to fawn at the feet of mammon, and to sell his country and his race for his daily bread, or for about the same thing, his salary. We are the tools of vassals of the rich men behind the scenes. We are jumping-jacks. They pull the strings, and we dance. Our time, our talents, our lives, our possibilities, are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes.'"1b*
GNOSTICS HEGEL HITLER GINGRICH


     
   

* Original spelling retained.

1 William James Ghent. Our Benevolent Feudalism. New York, NY: THE MACMILLAN COMPANY, 1902.
a Chapter VII: Our Moulders of Opinion, at 133.
b Ibid., at 146.

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