Page 113 - Dragon Flood

convicted before any court of the United States having jurisdiction thereof, shall be
punished by a fine not exceeding two thousand dollars, and by imprisonment not
exceeding two years.

This law proved highly unpopular with the people. Thomas Jefferson was an outspoken
critic of the Alien and Sedition Acts. In an upswelling of popular opposition to these acts,
Thomas Jefferson was elected as President in 1800. Jefferson opposed the law on the
grounds that it was unconstitutional, and upon his election he freed those who had been
imprisoned for violations of this law.

Freedom of speech is a fundamental problem, serving as a great obstacle to any minority
group of elite men who would seek to rule over a people. An aristocracy has always found
free speech to be a bane to their continued rule. As I have been researching various sources
for this series of writings I have paid much attention to a man by the name of Edward
Bernays. Bernays was doubly a nephew of Sigmund Freud.

Edward Bernays - 1891-1995

Bernays is often called the father of public relations. Bernays preferred the word
“propaganda,” but it had developed a negative stigma. Edward Bernays came from a
wealthy family that had about a dozen servants. He was a member of an aristocratic elite.
Bernays gave much thought to the means by which an aristocracy might maintain power in
a democratic environment. He was unabashed in his advocacy of the elite using propaganda
to control the masses through acts and words of deception. In his book titled Propaganda,
published in 1928, Bernays wrote:

The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the
masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen
mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power
of our country.

We are governed, our minds molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by
men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which democratic society
is organized...

Whatever attitude one chooses toward this condition, it remains a fact that in almost
every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social
conduct or ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons -