Barely 50 years ago, it was an unpopular truth that there was absolutely nothing unnatural about the love that went by the horrible name of “miscegenation.” Other unpopular truths one could mention include gay rights, women’s suffrage, and evolution. These truths could only have made their debut in the public square, and eventually gained broad acceptance, under the armed guard, so to speak, of the First Amendment.

But not just the First Amendment. In addition to a legal sanction, free speech has flourished in the United States because we have had a longstanding cultural bias in favor of the gadfly, the muckraker, the contrarian, the social nuisance. For over a century, editors and publishers and producers — at least the more enlightened ones — have gone out of their way to make allowances for opposing points of view.

They do so not because they have no strong convictions of their own, but rather out of a profound understanding that the astute presentation of divergent views makes us more thoughtful, not less; and that we cannot disagree intelligently unless we first understand profoundly. They do so because they believe that social progress depends on occasionally airing outrageous ideas that, on close reflection, aren’t outrageous at all. They hold firm to the conviction that moving readers out of their political or moral comfort zones, even at the risk of causing upset, is good for mind and soul. Ultimately, they do so because we will not be able to preserve the culture and institutions of a liberal republic unless we are prepared to accept, as Judge Learned Hand put it in 1944, that the “spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure that it is right” — and must therefore have the willingness to listen to the other side.

This was what Adolph Ochs knew in 1896, when he promised that under his stewardship The New York Times would “invite intelligent discussion from all shades of opinion.” The Times, like other papers, may not have always lived up to that promise as well as it might have done. But as some of you may have noticed, it most emphatically is now, to the loud consternation of many of our readers.

* * * * * *

I do my best to appreciate the concerns of these readers. I understand that many of them — many of us — believe the 2016 election marked a political watershed in which liberties we have long taken for granted are being attacked and possibly jeopardized by a president whose open contempt for a free press has few precedents in American history. I understand the justifiable fear these readers have for a White House in which the truth is merely optional, and in which normal standards of courtesy or decency have lost the purchase they previously had under Democratic and Republican administrations alike.

I also understand that these readers see The New York Times as a citadel, if not the citadel, in standing up to this relentless assault by the president and his minions. I think they are right. The country needs at least one great news organization that understands that the truth is neither relative nor illusory nor a function of the prevailing structure of power — but also that the truth is many-sided; that none of us has a lock on it; and that we can best approach it through the patient accumulation of facts and a vigorous and fair contest of ideas.