In the next four years, freedom of speech and the press in America are in for unprecedented challenges — as is the democracy. But it’s really nothing new. In fact, it’s part of the ugly heritage of authoritarianism that dates back to the beginning of the United States. Our European legacy.

The first newspaper published in America in 1690, “Public Occurrences Both Foreign and Domestic,” was a four-page pamphlet with the last page blank for people to post their own messages, an early version of Facebook or Twitter.

But people didn’t get much chance to tweet. The paper was shut down after only one day because it didn’t have permission to print what the royal governor deemed as “sundry doubtful and uncertain reports.” Wait, isn’t that what our president-elect today calls “fake news”?

Soon after, in 1722, James Franklin, Ben’s younger brother, published a feisty journal in what’s now Connecticut. America's first independent newspaper was boldly anti-establishment. After complaining about government’s ineptitude in protecting merchant ships and refusing to reveal authors of some of his articles, Franklin was sent to jail.

This surely would have made the president-elect happy. He kidded recently that the prospect of prison rape would loosen reporters' lips about sources.

"When this person realizes that he is going to be the bride of another prisoner, he will say, 'I'd very much like to tell you exactly who that was,'" Donald Trump told a rally in Texas. He was kidding.

Colonial authorities were not. In 1735 New York jailed John Peter Zenger, who had the audacity to criticize the Royal Governor for hiring relatives, something not unfamiliar to our president-elect. Zenger went to prison for defaming the government.

But in both those cases, juries of colonial citizens found the men not guilty,........

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