Ramesh, you suggest that I’m overstating the founding generation’s commitment to a free press. Specifically, you write:

The Constitution was not understood to block state and local censorship, or blasphemy laws, and no one argues otherwise in the Federalist Papers.

This is true, of course. But, in my understanding at least, there were not many censors at the state level during this period either. Thomas Paine got into trouble, yes. But, as a rule, the attitude that obtained in Philadelphia also obtained locally. Indeed, that was often where it came from. Benjamin Franklin was writing about Americans’ peculiarly liberal attitude toward the press as early as the 1720s, and a look through the output of the late eighteenth century confirms his characterization.

It is notable that, when defending his preferred national policy, Madison appealed not merely to English common law and to the recent First Amendment, but to local practices. Here he is on the Alien and Sedition Acts in 1800:

In every State, probably, in the Union, the press has exerted a freedom in canvassing the merits and measures of public men of every description which has not been confined to the strict limits of the common law. On this footing the freedom of the press has stood; on this footing it yet stands. And it will not be a breach either of truth or of candour to say, that no persons or presses are in the habit of more unrestrained animadversions on the proceedings and functionaries of the State governments than the persons and presses most zealous in vindicating the act of Congress for punishing similar animadversions on the Government of the United States.
. . .
It has accordingly been decided by the practice of the States, that it is better to leave a few of its noxious branches to their luxuriant growth, than, by pruning them away, to injure the vigour of those yielding the proper fruits. And can the wisdom of this policy be doubted by any who reflect that to the press alone, chequered as it is with abuses, the world is indebted for all the triumphs which have been gained by reason and humanity over error and oppression; who reflect that to the same beneficent source the United States owe much of the lights which conducted them to the ranks of a free and independent nation, and which have improved their political system into a shape so auspicious to their happiness? Had “Sedition Acts,” forbidding every publication that might bring the constituted agents into contempt or disrepute, or that might excite the hatred of the people against the authors of unjust or pernicious measures, been uniformly enforced against the press, might not the United States have been languishing at this day under the infirmities of a sickly Confederation? Might they not, possibly, be miserable colonies, groaning under a foreign yoke?

During the pre-revolution Zenger trial in the colony of New York, even Andrew Hamilton showed a remarkable distaste for censorship. Directly taking on the royal governor, Hamilton attempted to establish more robust press protections in the legal precedents and to elevate the truth as an absolute defense within local libel law. (He failed.)

Naturally, I’m with you in acknowledging that the states could pass harsh laws in this area. But did they do so? And, if so, were the Founders involved in the violations? I’m not so sure.