Tales Of Our Times
By JOHN BARTLIT
Los Alamos
Free speech is an endless dilemma. Each of us wants to have it our way. That is, we speak as we see fit, but others should tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Yet, finding what is largely true is hard. It requires testing claimed evidence by some known standard, such as science or law. The glare of constant troubles caused by slivers of speech leaves us blind to the epic dividends of free speech.
Contrast how much data the law requires in commerce to that in a working democracy. As the days rumble toward next November, the time is right for a cautionary history of ads and democracy, to better fathom accuracy and opinion in speech.
Most of us have been involved in buying, say, a new dishwasher or microwave. You look at ads, and maybe consumer reports. At some point, you choose a brand you would buy. The purchase requires signing pages of fine print from the seller. This “contract” effects a mixture of rights and duties for buyer and for seller derived from years of troubling lessons and resultant laws. The fine print ranges from definitions of terms to must-nots, maintenance needs, warranties, extended warranties that cost more, disclaimers, limitations, and an arbitration process for settling new disputes.
Ads for wonder drugs face different woes from appliance ads, because people are not machines. Our histories and nature produce people with built-in quirks, for better and for worse. So the law demands more here: Along with the good effects, drug ads must name harmful side effects revealed in the elaborate testing required by law. Drug ads typically list a dozen or so possible side effects, including death. Prior disclosure goes a long way toward taming future disputes.
Contrast these commercials with the free-form ads seeking election to higher office or promoting a policy. In this case, “free-form” refers to the seeming lack of laws, or even background ethics, that would provide any sort of check on the ads’ claims. Compared with commercial ads, election ads are in the catch-as-catch-can mode. The supreme warranty is the merest, “I approve this message.”
The Nation’s Founders, and the U.S. Supreme Court after, realized that the freedom we need to generate and sort out political ideas comes at a price. That price is less accuracy. Testing truth is not an exact science. We struggle with shades of truth. Literal truths and metaphorical truths are so widespread in our lives that we forget these shades are so different. Are you sharp as a tack? In a literal sense, no practical means exists to tell “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.”
A funny thing happens when we demand the dead-bang truth. We reserve for our own kind the right to express our viewpoints in the most exotic terms. And we believe those on the other team should stop scuttling the truth, using rafts of jury-rigged descriptors and metaphors. We all have conflicting views about how much accuracy is needed—you need lots; I need little.
Informed, even-handed political debate—the working compass of a democracy—cannot be demanded in law. It must be bred into culture and into character. At the most crucial times, our Nation has chosen exemplary leaders who sorted out differences of opinion to advance better ideas. George Washington began the Nation’s first presidency by assembling a diverse Cabinet to provide him with differing viewpoints to draw on and join together. Eight years later, Washington spent much of his Farewell Address (1796) warning the Nation about the dangerous one-sidedness that festers in parties. Read George Washington’s Farewell Warning These are Washington’s words, not mine nor the media’s. Washington would strongly disagree with how both parties preach today.
Lincoln followed a similar course in picking his Cabinet with differences of opinion.
“Debaters” now practice reconstruing the other’s words for the worse. Be concerned.
