The legislators who ratified those rights within the First Amendment harbored no illusions as to what they were protecting. But they saw the press as Madison did—as an expression of the inviolable freedom of the people to publish their sentiments. They did not extend a conditional liberty, contingent on good behavior; instead, they recognized a basic right, worth preserving despite missteps, mistakes, and excesses.

The freedom of the press is an individual liberty, not the peculiar privilege of a profession or an industry. It is your right as an American to read what you will, to write what you think, and to publish what you believe. The press is neither the enemy of the people nor its ally, but rather its possession. That is why attacks on the press, one of the great bulwarks of liberty, seek to abridge or deprive the people of their rights, as Madison would have put it to his colleagues.

We know where attacks on the media can lead. When politicians have questioned the rights and legitimacy of the press, violence has frequently followed. The Alien and Sedition Acts, passed in 1798, saw editors jailed for criticizing the president. Pro-slavery mobs attacked some 20 abolitionist newspapers over the decades that followed, destroying their offices, dumping their presses into the river, and beating—or, in one case, killing—their editors.

That was the backdrop against which The Atlantic was created in 1857, in defiance of that violence, in defense of the right of a free people to criticize injustice where they see it. The Atlantic’s founders promised that it would be “the organ of no party or clique,” and that it would “deal frankly with persons and with parties”—values that we stand by today. This is why we now feel compelled to speak out—alongside hundreds of other publications—in defense of this essential freedom.

The president’s rhetoric doesn’t merely spread division and distrust; it is dangerous, and sick. Like all Americans, he has a right to critique the press. But he is also sworn to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution—and this is what he must do.