Nobody Remembers Alice Addertongue
Nobody Remembers
It’s said, Sam Adams started the Revolution, and he did it with the mighty pen. And since he really didn’t want his name on all his ranting against the crown…he made up all kinds of names for his penname:
Philo Patriae and Paces, Vindex the Avenger, Determinatus, Decant Ara Togae, (weapons are under my cloak!) Principiis Obsta: (principle obstacle) , Valerius Poplicola, Candidus, and Populus. He was also: An American, A Tory, Alfred, A Son of Liberty, A Puritan, and A Religious Politician– among many.
And Sam wasn’t the only one who wanted to remain anonymous.
Alexander Hamilton pens names included Publius, Pacificus, Catallus, Americanus, Metellus, Horatius, Philo Camillus, Tully, Monitor, Phocion, The Continentalist, and H.G.
Benjamin Franklin was Silence Dogood, and Polly Baker and Richard Saunders and Anthony Afterwit, Martha Careful, Alice Addertongue, Celia Shortface, Harry Meanwell, Fanny Mournful, Obadiah Plainman, Busy Body, and Sidi Mehemt Ibrahim.
John Adams was Sui Juris, U, Davila, and Humphrey Ploughjogger…and my personal favorite: Novanglus. (which means New England.)
James Madison was Helvidius and Cato…
After Thomas Paine wrote an anonymous pamphlet criticizing President George Washington‘s policies, John Quincy Adams (John’s son) wrote a series of anonymous articles called “Publicola”, defending the president. They were so well done people assumed his father wrote them.
And I even write under a pen name…Joyanna is a combination of my first name and my grandmother’s name…and Adams is not my married name, but I picked it out of respect to the founding Adams, as I am a direct descendant of that family on my mother’s side. 
I really didn’t want anyone to know my married name.
In this country, writing under a pen name, thus remaining anonymous, has been protected by the Supreme Court.
In its 1960 decision in Talley v. California, the Supreme Court ruled that a law forbidding individuals from distributing handbills without identifying their identity unconstitutionally infringed on the First Amendment’s guarantee to free speech. The Court declared:
Anonymous pamphlets, leaflets, brochures and even books have played an important role in the progress of mankind. Persecuted groups and sects from time to time throughout history have been able to criticize oppressive practices and laws either anonymously or not at all. . . . Before the Revolutionary War colonial patriots frequently had to conceal their authorship or distribution of literature that easily could have brought down on them prosecutions by English-controlled courts. . . . It is plain that anonymity has sometimes been assumed for the most constructive purposes.
SO…what in the world is this new bill being proposed in the Illinois Senate all about?
A new bill proposed in the Illinois State Senate looks to completely wipe out any form of anonymity on the internet by requiring that the operators of basically any website on the entire internet take down any comment that isn’t attached to an IP, address, and real name-verified poster.
It’s called the Internet Posting Removal Act and was introduced on February 13th by Illinois General Assembly veteran Ira I. Silverstein [D]. Not wanting to leave any bases uncovered, Silverstein includes that an “Anonymous Poster” means “any individual who posts a message on a web site including social networks, blogs, forums, message boards, or any other discussion site where people can hold conversations in the form of posted messages.”
If James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay were alive and publishing under the false name “Publius” today, they would be prime candidates for prosecution under Virginia’s anti-spam law, and the Internet Posting Removal Act. They would most likely be using the Internet to get their message out to as many fellow citizens as possible. They could be arrested for speaking their minds on important issues of the day.
Clearly, Obama’s government wants to know WHO is writing the essays and blogs against them. Sure, there are some bad people out there spamming, but making it a crime to not sign your real name is not how are country was founded.
It is a right, given to us by our founders. If not for them, we wouldn’t be here.
And I’m sure Alice Addertongue would agree with me 100 percent!
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About
I am a nobody. If the different classes of America were color-coded, I would be in the yucky brown, one rung up from the bottom. I grew up in Naples, Florida and live near the Mississippi River now with my husband and two dogs. I am part of the slowly disappearing middle-class. I was a musician most of my life: drummer/singer/keyboards—but I retired before the plastic surgery flu hit. I have no degrees, which could be a good thing…depending on how you view our educational system. I do have three patents…but that really doesn’t make me a somebody. The one thing that is constant in my life is my OPINIONS, which i have more than perhaps even Carl Sagan could have imagined…mostly political. (yes…my ancestors were crabby buggers)
Hopefully other nobody’s will put their opinions on my site. But, if you happen to be a somebody, you’re more than welcomed to help out.
It’s my Nobody Opinion that Nobody’s Perfect, and Nobody Cares, that Nobody Knows why Nobody Wins, and when that happens, Nobody Wonders, why Nobody Flashes, why Nobody’s Fooled, but then Nobody remembers that Nobody ALWAYS Reports the truth.
You can email me at joyanna_adams@yahoo.com
Joyanna Adams
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Mrs. O on Nobody’s Fool: Jordan Pe… Mrs. O on Live in Michigan? My Cond… Mrs. O on And so…It Begins Joyanna Adams on Nobody Goes to the Art Museum… Anonymous on Nobody Goes to the Art Museum…
Joyanna Adams 
Great post!
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I feel and think I have to add to my comment.
You know very well my view of the American Revolution. I believe it to have been a distasterous event with enormous ramifications that we have and are experiencing. But …. and this is what I need to add…. it was born from a long history of exactly the same sort of disaterous decisions made throughout British history, and of course, the American colonists making those quite selfish and traitorous decisions were British in their roots.
It is hindsight that shows these turning points in history. Some people will not recognise them in their lifetimes or even after several generations because they are wedded to what they have been taught, by their education, society and indeed their own stories of family. But none of those guarantee truth. It just makes a person blinkered and unable to discern the truth.
Just as it took a civil war in Britain to ‘shake’ old beliefs in ‘supremacy’ of this King or that or this ‘parliament’ or that, steps forward are often accompanied by steps back. What remains is human falibility, gullibility and the propensity of psychopaths to sway the generally fine and good people.
America was born from Sociopaths conspiring to delude the people and stealing their heritage. Those sociopaths used the quite usual propensities of ordinary, fine, good folk who also preserve their privacy and protect themselves from cruel oppressors when they wish to tell a truth. But the sociopath lies. They lied.
Many who became known as the ‘Founding Fathers’, lied. They hid their lies and persuaded the gullible half of the population who followed them. (the other half did not, of course, and tried to defend that heritage and patrimony). That those ‘Founding Fathers produced a working scheme for a sound society is admirable, but was doomed. The Constitution was and remains the finest document regarding human and population freedom from oppressive Government that anyone has produced, but the test is history. How’s it going for you? That which is built on a lie is bound to be faulty, no matter how well expressed.
But, that said, History occasionally throws up good intent born out of greed and chicanery. It is also littered with good intent so easily diverted to bad ends. It is the human condition.
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Doctor says: Take two aspirins and go lay down. (LOL!)
Joyanna Adams
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Well you teach us new things every day, Jo. 🙂
So, what you are telling us here is that the mass call for breaking relations with England and formenting revolutionary sentiments amongst the masses of colonists actually came from a very small group of people who wanted all that investment of blood and treasure by English farmers, shopkeepers, cobblers, carpenters, roofers, blacksmiths, saddlemakers, ship-builders, fishermen, washer-women and maids, for themselves. They just pretended, deceived, dissembled and tricked history with the false impression of ‘many’. And would not put their own name to it.
Never before had so much been taken from so many by so few.
They would be Bankers now. Whoops. Some were. Of course, that set a standard which has been frequently improved upon.
Whilst I am fully in agreement with you about anonymity and privacy, even the avoidance of harm from disgruntled others, and the use of ‘Avatar’ names on the internet ( I use one too, albeit one of immense distinction), nevertless that is conflated here with your linking anonymity with deception on a grand scale rather than privacy and I cannot agree with that.
For instance, hypothetically, what if you found out that the demand for Obamacare actually came from half a dozen people pretending to be ten thousand? What if a petition with 50 million names on it demanding gun abolition was put forward, but years later you found that it was a concerted effort by 14 people in an office behind the White House garden shed?
Have I not read posts by your very gorgeous self decrying the vote-fixing efforts? You know, where people do not have to identify themselves but can go from booth to booth from breakfast time to supper, voting multiple times. Do newspapers already not stack partisan letters into their ‘Letters’ to the Editor’? What if 90% were produced by an intern in the Editor’s office, using ficticious names? Would that be OK? Even if that unpaid intern was promised his/her own desk and a full-time job when some politician was elected to a life’s pay and perks far exceeding anything he might expect?
No. It was not anonymity that the eminent fellows listed above sought. It was Treasure from Treason.
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You said yourself Amfortas, that you learned from your bias history books, and we learned from ours. and THAT’s why I read their own written letters, written in their own words. Tell me what books you base your opinions on…because neither you nor I …were there. Where do you get that the founders were NOT representing the common man? At least in Boston, Sam Adams was much closer to the commoner than the British govs were. It was the people against the established and APPOINTED British poltician who, by the way, had GREAT estates. Sam Adams, was pretty poor. The country was already in a depression, as I have written about it before. Those bankers were Bristish bankers. They were inflating the money, and the poor farmer was having a hard time making it.I have never read that George Washington everdid what he did so he could ROB the people,or the British. It wasn’t only the RICH merchants that were upset. While we had a French and Indian war, Britain was also at the same time going bankrupt with the wars in France. (Must like we are doing now.) These people saw an opportunity to be free of the King of England, and they TOOK it. How did this hurt Britain? Britain told them they couldn’t do trade with different countries, and they had been doing trade with those countries for a long time. You know, I was watching some stuff on the Civil War, and looking back, I think the South was just as upset about the North telling them how to run their lives as telling them they couldn’t have slaves. There is something that is universal when a few “elites’ tell the poor what they can and CAN’t do. America’s farmers had been living in a free society, ruled by local town electives for over 100 years before the war started. They got spoiled…freedom was intoxicating. As for America, I just read that there are more Asians livingin London than actaul white Brits. And I suppose that is OUR fault? As for the spamming issure, they could take care of that without censoring whole masses of someones who does one email. And they write the legislation to INCLUDE that one individual. That is in the anti-spam law in Virginia. It’s obsurd. Go after the criminals. They do the same with guns. All guns banned because of “criminals.”
It’s BS. The rest that you say does not pertain to the internet. Sure, we all know that stuff exists, but they do not censore it. You won’t ever get rid of the propaganda, but do they prosecute them? No, and THEY WON’T. To say they can’t take care of ONE problem without destroying everybody else’s rights, is just crazy. It’s much like they do in the schools. Both students are punished if there is a fight, even if the innocent was attacked. In the army, if ONE man screws up, they punish the whole bunch. It…makes…no…sense, and is an excusefor laziness andpower…and most of all CONTROL.
Joyanna Adams
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