Honesty
It counts.
Like if you want using the keys below; only I can see who you are.
This is a riff on a 2025 Hoover Institution paper of the same name by William Damon.
Although some deceit is inevitable in human affairs, any decent society requires a basic commitment to truthfulness and a belief in the trustworthiness of most people. No civilization can tolerate a constant expectation of dishonest communication without falling apart from a breakdown in trust. That said, the fundamental commitment to truthfulness required for social trust has weakened in recent years. We need to stop our downhill cycle of deceit by adhering more rigorously to the truth, even when this may seem painful.
For many reasons—some justifiable—people do not always stick to the truth when they speak. A justifiable reason people are less than brutally honest is tact. Reassuring an ungainly teenager that he or she looks great can be a sensitive and responsible embroidery of the truth. Misinforming storm troopers about the whereabouts of a hidden Jewish family during the fascist occupation of Europe was an honorable and courageous deception. Honesty is not a wholly detached moral virtue, demanding strict allegiance. Compassion, diplomacy, and life-threatening circumstances sometimes require a departure from the unadulterated truth. Also, people are far from perfect. Even those who aim for a life of personal integrity may find themselves tempted to distort the truth occasionally to cover up or explain away an embarrassing mistake.
For whoever habitually suppresses truth in the interests of tact will produce a deformity from the womb of his thought.
BH Liddell Hart
Politicians and their partisans are especially hard-pressed to toe the truth-telling line consistently. The very function of political speech, as Orwell observed, is to hide, soften, or misrepresent hard truths. Orwell was uncompromising in his skepticism about any expectation to the contrary.
Political language—and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists—is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.
George Orwell
It is naïve or cynical for anyone in today’s world to act shocked! shocked! whenever a politician tries to hide the truth from the public. For the ordinary citizen, keeping up with the daily news means subjecting oneself to a constant process of trying to figure out what the politicians really meant by what they said and speculating about why they said it. It certainly does not mean taking what any of them say at face value…though not doing so may be safer.
Context: The magic word that turns facts into lies and lies into facts. See also spin, narrative.
Understanding that honesty is not a strict requirement in every life situation does not mean that we can overlook the importance of honesty without facing consequences. All sustained civilized dealings require a basic intent to be truthful. We usually take people at their word. Yet, we expect a certain level of deceit, even from respected public figures, for security or legal reasons. No civilization can tolerate a fixed expectation of dishonest communications without a breakdown of mutual trust, but we break down some communications for good reasons.
Devotion to the truth is the hallmark of morality; there is no greater, nobler, more heroic form of devotion than the act of a man who assumes the responsibility of thinking.
Ayn Rand
All human relations rely on trusting that those in the relations will usually tell the truth. Honesty seals a relationship with trust, and too many breaches of honesty can corrode any relationship beyond repair. Friendships, family, work, and civic relations all suffer whenever dishonesty comes to light.
Truth is the only safe ground to stand upon.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
We have observed and celebrated honesty’s vital role in human society for all of recorded history. The ancient Greeks considered the goddess Veritas to be the “mother of virtue.” Confucius considered honesty to be the essential source of love, communication, and fairness. The Ten Commandments prohibit bearing false witness, no matter what Bible version you read. We acclaim our two most heralded US presidents—George Washington and Abraham Lincoln—for their trustworthiness.
Where there is honesty, other virtues will follow.
Gordon Hinckley
In pursuit of other priorities, we often abandon truthfulness, even though it is essential for good human relationships and personal integrity. There may be a perception in many key areas of contemporary life—law, business, politics, among others—that expecting honesty regularly is a “loser’s” way of operating. Such a perception is practically a mandate for personal dishonesty and a concession to interpersonal distrust. When we no longer assume that those who communicate with us are at least trying to tell the truth, we give up on them as trust-worthy persons and deal with them only instrumentally. The bounds of mutual moral obligation dissolve, and the law of the jungle reemerges.
Truthiness: the belief that something is true because of preexisting biases, even when it is directly contradicted by the facts
We are in a dysfunctional period of social change—commitment to truthfulness is no longer assumed. The danger is that the bonds of trust that are important in any society, and essential for a free one, will dissolve to the point where the kinds of discourse required to self-govern will become impossible.
Now all we need is to continue to speak the truth fearlessly, and we shall add to our number those who will turn the scale to the side of equal and full justice in all things.
Lucy Stone
In professional and business circles, the now-familiar complaint is that “it used to be your word was good, but those days are gone.” In the educational world, cheating and misrepresenting credentials have become rife. Journalism has lost credibility with much of the public for its “spinning” facts into fairy tales. We now assume that civic leaders make statements merely to posture for effect rather than to engage in a discussion and debate. In this environment, people manipulate (or fabricate) facts to serve a predetermined narrative, rather than accurately presenting them and examining them in good faith. This is especially troubling because civic leaders set the tone for communications throughout the public sphere.
Truth is incontrovertible. Panic may resent it. Ignorance may deride it. Malice may distort it. But there it is.
Winston Churchill
In bygone days, there was no hesitancy about using a moral language to teach children essential virtues such as honesty. Just leaf through old editions of the McGuffey Readers, used everywhere in schools throughout the country until the mid–20th Century, to see how readily educators once dispensed unambiguous moral lessons to students. Some teachers now view cheating as a social activity. Even antisocial acts, such as stealing, are mere topics of discussion. This kind of discourse can only lead to moral numbness and character miseducation for our young and a lethal decline of honesty (as well as other essential virtues) throughout our society.
In a time of deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.
Attributed to George Orwell
Although it certainly is the case that similar breaches of honesty and trust have occurred in every historical epoch, we are reaching an ethical tipping point, when people’s assumed commitment to honesty and basic expectations of trust are in danger of being surrendered to a reflexive and dispiriting cynicism. If not corrected, this is a recipe for a truly Orwellian future.
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.
Winston Smith, 1984
Insisting on the truth is freedom. Peddling lies is oppression.
This Redhead: The Dialogues
Now, this is a novel—so it’s fiction—but at one time there was a redhead renting my spare room, and she drove a bus when I met her, then she worked in a saloon…so that much is true. And Kelly was beautiful. As for the rest…
And Finally...
On 20 September:
1797: Frigate Constitution is launched in Boston, Massachusetts. Dubbed “Old Ironsides” by crewmen during the War of 1812 for her resilience, the moniker gained traction from an 1830 poem about her by that name penned by Oliver Wendell Homes.
1860: Prince of Wales pops into Detroit, Michigan while on a tour of Canada. Edward Albert, the future King Edward VI, was the first member of British royalty to visit the United States.
And today is NATIONAL GIBBERISH DAY in the US. Given today’s topic, I think sometimes I prefer gibberish to the bilge I hear coming from politicians and the MSM machine.
"And today is NATIONAL GIBBERISH DAY in the US."
In politics, every day is national gibberish day.