For those whose tastes run to this direction.
This terror swept away reputations just as the other chopped off heads. Its guillotine was slander, “infamy,” as it was then called. The term, originating with Voltaire, was used in 1775 in the provincial societies with legal precision. “To brand with infamy” was a well-defined operation, an entire procedure comprised of investigation, discussion, judgment and finally execution, which meant the public sentence of [being held in] “contempt,” another of those philosophical terms whose significance we no longer comprehend.
This powerful defense mechanism defends nothing, nothing but a void and negations. Behind all of this there is nothing to love, nothing to grasp and become attached to. This dogmatic reason is just the negation of all faith; this tyrannical liberty the negation of all rules. I shall not dwell upon this reproach so often made of the philosophers, for they themselves admitted and glorified the nihilism of their ideal.
It began in Voltaire’s time and is enduring still, as you know.
Forget the Washington Post's Pooterish "Democracy Dies in Darkness." The motto of the entire mainstream media is Voltaire's "Écrasez L'infâme!"
Imagine if Cochin had lived to witness the slander machine known as Twitter…
https://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/cochin-explains-kavanaugh/