Category Archives: ethics

Why Didn’t I Just say—?

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(It’s the hardest word for many of us to say and we often regret not having the courage to say it.  Failing to say it gets us into all kinds of good and bad situations.  Dr. Frank Crane suggests we think more than we do when we say—-)

NO

No is next to the shortest word in the English language.

It is the concentrated Declaration of Independence of the human soul.

It is the central citadel of character, and can remain impregnable forever.

It is the only path to reformation.

It is the steam-gauge of strength, the barometer of temperament, the electric indicator of moral force.

It is an automatic safety-first device.

It has saved more women than all the knights of chivalry.

It has kept millions or young men from going over the Niagara Falls of drunkenness, profligality, and passion.

It is the updrawn portcullis and barred gate of the castle of self-respect.

It is the dragon that guards beauty’s tower.

It is the high fence that preserves the innocence of the innocent.

It is the thick wall of the home, keeping the father from folly, the mother from indiscretion, the boys from ruin, and the girls from shame.

It is the one word you can always say when you can’t think of anything else.

It is the one answer that needs no explanation.

The mule is the surest footed and most dependable of all domestic animals. No is the mule-power of the soul.

Say it and mean it.

Say it and look your man in the eye.

Say it and don’t hesitate.

A good round No is the most effective of known shells from the human howitzer.

In the great parliament of life the Noes have it.

The value of any Yes you utter is measured by the number of Noes banked behind it.

Live your own life. Make your own resolutions. Mark out your own program. Aim at your own work. Determine your own conduct. And plant all around those an impregnable hedge of Noes, with the jaggedest, sharpest thorns that grow.

The No-man progresses under his own steam. He is not led about and pushed around by officious tugboats.

The woman who can say No carries the very best insurance against the fires, tornadoes, earthquakes, and accidents that threaten womankind.

Be soft and gentle as you please outwardly, but let the centre of your soul be a No, as hard as steel.

The Virtue of Waiting 

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(Patience seems in short supply sometimes.  We want this pandemic to be over, now. We want a new TV set, now.  Or a new video game. We want rain, now; peace, now; money, now.  We listen too seriously to those who promise to fix complicated problems with simple solutions, now.  But Dr. Frank Crane urges patience because—-)

Old Father Time knows more than anybody.

He solves more problems than all the brains in the world.

More hard knots are unloosed, more tangled questions are answered, more deadlocks are unfastened by Time than by any other agency.

In the theological disputes that once raged in Christendom neither side routed the other; Time routed them both by showing that the whole subject did not matter.

After the contemporaries had had their say, Time crowned Homer, Dante, Wagner, Shakespeare, Whitman, Emerson.

Almost any judgment can be appealed, but from the decision of Time there is no appeal.

Do not force issues with your children. Learn to wait. Be patient. Time will bring things to pass that no immediate power can accomplish.

Do not create a crisis with your husband, your wife. Wait. See what Time will do.

Time has a thousand resources, abounds in unexpected expedients.

Time brings a change in point of view, in temper, in state of mind which no contention can.

When you teach, make allowance for Time. What the child cannot possibly understand now, he can grasp easily a year from now.

When you have a difficult business affair to settle, give it Time, put it away and see how it will ferment, sleep on it, give it as many days as you can. It will often settle itself.

If you would produce a story, a play, a book, or an essay, write it out, then lay it aside and let it simmer, forget it a while, then take it out and write it over.

Time is the best critic, the shrewdest adviser, the frankest friend.

If you are positive you want to marry a certain person, let Time have his word. Nowhere is Time’s advice more needed. Today we may be sure, but listen to a few tomorrows.

You are born and you will die whenever fate decides; you have nothing to do with those fatal two things; but in marriage, the third fatality, you have Time. Take it.

Do not decide your beliefs and convictions suddenly. Hang up the reasons to cure. You come to permanent ideas not only by reasoning, but quite as much by growth.

Do not hobble your whole life by the immature certainties of youth. Give yourself room to change, for you must change, if you are to develop.

“Learn to labor and—to wait!”

Making a house a home

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(It might sound a little old-fashioned, but what’s inside a house—or rather, what’s inside those inside a house—make it a home.  Dr. Frank Crane explains the values that make a house a home.)

THE HOUSEHOLD GOODS

The walls of a house are not built of wood, brick, or stone but of truth and loyalty. Unpleasant sounds, the friction of living, the clash of personalities are not deadened by Persian rugs and polished floors but conciliation, concession, and self-control.

The curtains that screen the household gods from the eyes of the vulgar and the curious are not woven of lace, but of discretion.

The food of the home is not meat and bread but thoughtfulness and unselfishness for these keep joy alive.

The real drink is not wine or water, but love itself, which is the only known thing that is at once a food and an intoxicant.

The bed is not to be of down and white linen but of “a conscience void of offense toward God and toward man.”

The lighting is not to be of the sun by day or by electric bulbs at night but by loyal affection, shining always in dear hears, burning always in true hearts.

Your home is not where you layoff your clothes but where you lay off your cares.

The cellar of your house is not be filled with apples or rare vintage but with the memory of sacred intimacies, of little heroisms unknown to the world of sufferings borne nobly.

In the attic, you do no store old trunks, letters and gowns, but you keep there the kisses, sayings and glances that cheered you when you gathered them fresh, and are now a sweet sorrow when dried by time.

The house is not a structure where bodies meet, but a hearthstone upon which flames of souls which, the more perfectly they unite, the more clearly they shine and the straighter the rise toward heaven.

Your house is a fortress in a warring world, where a woman’s hand buckles on your armor at morning and soothes your fatigue and wounds at night.

The beauty of a house is harmony.

The security of a house is loyalty.

The joy of a house is love.

The plenty of a house is in children.

The rule of a house is service.

The comfort of a house is in contented spirits.

The rats and mice in a house are envy and suspicion.

The maker of a house, of a real human house, is God himself the same who made the stars and built the world.

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Faith, Hope, and Justice

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(A friend of mine observed many years ago:

“I once read about a man

Who went about doing good.

It disturbs me that I am satisfied

Just going about.”

Dr. Frank Crane suggested years ago that faith, hope, and charity—or faith, hope, and love—have an additional component.)

JUSTICE

THERE are many earnest souls occupied in trying to do people good.

There are nine million societies, more or less, organized to improve and to ameliorate.

There are preachers, missionaries, evangelists, reformers, exhorters, viewers-with-pride, and pointers-with-alarm without number wrestling with sinners.

All forms of industry are booming these days in the U. S. A., but the uplift business is still several laps ahead.

It seems ungracious to say a word to any enthusiastic person who is engaged in so laudable an enterprise as that of rescuing the perishing, feeding the hungry, and healing the sick.

And yet, when you take time to think right through to the bottom of things, you must come to the conclusion that there is but one real, radical and effective way to help your fellow-men, and that is the way called justice.

If I want to redeem the world I can come nearer my object, and do less harm, by being just toward myself and just toward everybody else, than by “doing good” to people.

The only untainted charity is justice.

Often our ostensible charities serve but to obscure and palliate great evils.

Conventional charity drops pennies in the beggar’s cup, carries bread to the starving, distributes clothing to the naked. Real charity, which is justice, sets about removing the conditions that make beggary, starvation, and nakedness.

Conventional charity plays Lady Bountiful; justice tries to establish such laws as shall give employment to all, so that they need no bounty.

Charity makes the Old Man of the Sea feed sugar-plums to the poor devil he is riding and choking; justice would make him get off his victim’s back.

Conventional charity piously accepts things as they are, and helps the unfortunate; justice goes to the legislature and changes things.

Charity swats the fly; justice takes away the dung-heaps that breed flies.

Charity gives quinine in the malarial tropics; justice drains the swamps.

Charity sends surgeons and ambulances and trained nurses to the war; justice struggles to secure that internationalism that will prevent war.

Charity works among slum wrecks; justice dreams and plans that there be no more slums.

Charity scrapes the soil’s surface; justice subsoils.

Charity is affected by symptoms; justice by causes.

Charity assumes evil institutions and customs to be a part of “Divine Providence,” and tearfully works away at taking care of the wreckage; justice regards injustice everywhere, custom-buttressed and respectable or not, as the work of the devil, and vigorously attacks it.

Charity is timid and is always passing the collection-box; justice is unafraid and asks no alms, no patrons, no benevolent support.

“It is presumed,” says Henry Seton Merriman, “that the majority of people are willing enough to seek the happiness of others; which desire leads the individual to interfere with his neighbor’s affairs, while it burdens society with a thousand associations for the welfare of mankind or the raising of the masses.”

The best part of the human race does not want help, nor favor, nor charity; it wants a fair chance and a square deal.

Charity is man’s kindness.

Justice is God’s

Another trip around the sun

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(We celebrated at our house a few days ago the completion of another trip around the sun, another anniversary of the birth of the compiler of these columns. Although ascending as gracefully as possible in the number of our years we shall not try to impress you with the number of these trips we have made. But it is enough that contemplating the total journey each year leads to increasing time spent reflecting on the places in life we have been and offering advice to those still early in their journeys—-as Dr. Frank Crane might have been doing when he told readers of Woman’s World in 1913:)

REMEMBER OLD AGE

In youth, one finds himself full of many forces, physical, intellectual, and emotional. He is a bundle of desires. He ought to be. It man’s life’s forces run rich in him. So he desires to make love, to get popularity, to play, to do great work, to see the marvels of the world, to amass knowledge and altogether give vent to the steam and electricity which nature has concealed in his makeup.

Hence, he gives himself to varied activities. By gratifying all these wants he becomes somewhat in the world.

But whether he is a real success or not depends not on how he give way to these desires but upon how he controls them. It is not the things he does and the things he gets that make him a great man; it is the residuary deposit that is left in his soul.

All of these pleasures of getting and doing have their place, but the real object of them is that they shall pass over into the higher values of character.

So it is pitiful to see the old man was once a sensualist, a vigorous merchant, a political leader, and how now has nothing left but regret—for his lost vitality. Had he understood the art of living he would have gained from his more active days a wealth of inner qualities of spiritual strength and beauty; and instead of old age leaving him poverty stricken of happiness, it would have left him with the harvest treasures of wisdom and joy in life.

Adopt the philosophy of Omar Khayyam, take for your gospel, “Eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow we die,”  seek only “to get all the fun you can get out of life,” and you exhaust all your inner resources, and your old age will be that of a dyspeptic and a banquet.*

But begin in youth to resolutely choose the higher pleasures, to train yourself in independence from the domination of “things” and reliance upon the pleasures of beauty, thought, and love, and old age will come as the golden privilege of life.

It is a question of nobility versus meanness; it must be an ennobling and not a gloomy and narrow religion. Neither poverty nor riches matter; it all depends upon whether you are nobly poor or nobly rich. Sickness or health do not determine the temper of your old age; that is fixed by your being nobly feeble or nobly robust.

It is in old age that all of the higher truths of life shine undimmed by any deceiving circumstances. Then, if you are petty, selfish, egotistic, proud and small souled, there is nothing to conceal it. If you are patient, loyal, and full of love, it is apparent.

—-

*Although the quotation is often attributed to Khayyam, it actually is a combination of two verses from the Bible and also is found in the Book of Mormon:

Ecclesiastes 8:15—“Then I commended mirth, because a man hath no better thing under the sun, than to eat, and to drink, and to be merry.”

Isaiah 22:13—“Let us eat and drink; for tomorrow we shall die.”

2 Nephi 28:7– “Yea, and there shall be many which shall say: Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die; and it shall be well with us.”

We have found a couple of quotes from Khayyam that might apply to Dr. Crane’s theme today:

“Come, fill the Cup, and in the Fire of Spring The Winter Garment of Repentance fling: The Bird of Time has but a little way To fly-and Lo! the Bird is on the Wing,” and–

“Why ponder thus the future to foresee, and jade thy brain to vain perplexity? Cast off thy care, leave Allah’s plans to him – He formed them all without consulting thee.”

(Omar Khayyam 1048-1131) was a Persian astronomer, philosopher, poet, and mathematician.)

 

Before there was Dave Ramsey—

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(There was Dr. Frank Crane who dispensed the same advice.  He did it with one column, not a series of lessons that detail how to accomplish the same goals Dr. Crane espoused.  The bottom line for both is—use common sense.  Dr. Crane wrote this in 1920.  See if it doesn’t sound like the kind of basic advice we see in Dave’s daily columns as he explores—-)

THRIFT

Thrift simply means the application of thought to money.

It doesn’t mean saving merely. It means to think every time you have to do with m

It means to make money with energy, to spend money wisely, and to save money systematically.

Some people have the idea that it denotes a superior person not to care about money. This idea is wrong. It indicates a lack of sense and a lack of morals.

Money carelessness means unhappiness by and by. It is one of the surest ways to slump into self-pity if not to crime.

The first thing needed in order to be thrifty is principle. You must make up  your mind and stick to it.

Principle number one is that a person can live on nine-tenths of what he does live on.  If you spend $1,000 a year you can get along on $900. Save the other $100.

To make $10 and spend nine means success.  To make $10 and spend $11 means ruin.  Which way are you headed?

Thrift is a general moral tonic. It develops character. It takes self-denial and hence creates self-mastery, which is the thing that every human being needs.

Fearmongering

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(Some observers of today’s socio-political climate have commented that our fears are being cultivated by those who seek political domination. The antidote is obvious.  Refuse to fear those who are different, or in Biblical terms, “Love your enemy as yourself.”  The poet Edwin Markham encouraged us to be unafraid when he wrote:

He drew a circle that shut me out-
Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout.
But love and I had the wit to win:
We drew a circle and took him In!

Dr. Frank Crane tells us, in so many word, “Be not afraid…..”)

THE CREED OF THE UNAFRAID

Whoever He may be who sits in the Heavens and rules the universe, I shall not be afraid of Him. And if it be but a force, it shall not frighten me.

Whoever created my soul intended for me to live my life.  Sickness may come to me; it can destroy all of me but not my courage.

I shall not be afraid to love to trust wholly.

I shall not fear my passions but learn to drive them like thoroughbreds.

I shall not be timid on account of my weaknesses, but learn to guard against them.

I shall make friends with Destiny, and adjust myself to events. No man shall cow me. I have a right top standing room on earth.

I shall not falter to look any human being in the face. I believe that ghosts become harmless natural objects when one walks up to them; hence if anything causes me fear I shall examine it and try to understand it.

I shall exercise due caution but shall not be afraid of my food, of microbes, of disease, nor accidents. Against all of these I am best prepared by a clear, fool mind.

I shall not be afraid that I cannot sleep.

I shall stubbornly shut my mind against all morbidity, such as suggestions of failure, insanity and suicide.

I shall treat with contempt all superstitions, warnings, and premonitions, fortune telling, prophecies, and all like humbuggery.

Is shall not fear on account of my past. The consequences of my errors I shall take like a man.

Knowing that death is due to mortals at any moment, I shall live for it now and at all times, it shall find me unafraid.

Our contentious era

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(Twenty years ago or more, when party control of the Missouri legislature changed, one of the leaders of the new minority theorized that his party could reclaim its former position if it just made the new majority look bad enough.  Pretty obviously, that was a wrong-headed idea.  But it pervades the thinking of our state and national politics today worse than ever and a public tired of the many who would rather fight than to work for the people’s best interests might utter, as Shakespeare’s Mercutio did, “A plague on both your houses.”   Dr. Frank Crane could have been speaking of our contentious times a century ago when he wrote about—-)

THE ETHICS OF CONTROVERSY

Everything is disputable. I am willing to entertain arguments in support of any proposition whatsoever.

If you want to defend theft, mayhem, adultery, or murder, state your case, bring on your reasons; for in endeavoring to prove an indefensible thing you discover for yourself how foolish is your thesis.

But it is essential to any controversy, if it is to be of any use, first, that the issue be clearly understood by both sides.

Most contentions amount merely to a difference of definition. Agree, therefore, exactly upon what it is you are discussing. If possible, set down your statements in writing.

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Most argument is a wandering from the subject, a confusion of the question, an increasing divergence from the point. Stick to the matter in hand.

When your adversary brings in subjects not relevant, do not attempt to answer them. Ignore them, lest you both go astray and drift into empty vituperation.

For instance, President Wilson, in the “Lusitania” incident, called Germany’s attention to the fact that her submarines had destroyed a merchant ship upon the high seas, the whole point being that this had been done without challenge or search and without giving non-combatant citizens of a neutral country a chance for their lives. Germany’s reply discussed points that had no bearing upon this issue, such as various acts of England. Mr. Wilson, in his reply, wisely refused to discuss these irrelevant 128things, an example of intelligent controversy.

Keep cool. The worse your case, the louder your voice.

Be courteous. Avoid epithets. Do not use language calculated to anger or offend your opponent. Such terms weaken the strength of your position.

A controversy is a conflict of reasons, not of passions. The more heat the less sense.

Keep down your ego. Do not boast. Do not emphasize what you think, what you believe, and what you feel; but try to put forth such statements as will induce your opponent to think, believe, and feel rationally.

Wait. Give your adversary all the time he wants to vent his views. Let him talk himself out. Wait your turn, and begin only when he is through.

Agree with him as far as you can. Give 129due weight, and a little more, to his opinions. It was the art of Socrates, the greatest of controversialists, to let a man run the length of his rope, that is, to talk until he had himself seen the absurdity of his contention.

Most men argue simply to air their convictions. Give them room. Often when they have fully exhausted their notions they will come gently back to where you want them. They are best convinced when they convince themselves.

Avoid tricks, catches, and the like. Do not take advantage of your opponent’s slip of the tongue. Let him have the impression that you are treating him fairly.

Do not get into any discussion unless you can make it a sincere effort to discover the truth, and not to overcome, out-talk, or humiliate your opponent.

Do not discuss at all with one who has his 130mind made up beforehand. It is usually profitless to argue upon religion, because as a rule men’s opinions here are reached not by reason but by feeling or by custom. Nothing is more interesting and profitable, however, than to discuss religion with an open-minded person, yet such a one is a very rare bird.

If you meet a man full of egotism or prejudices, do not argue with him. Let him have his say, agree with him as you can, and for the rest—smile.

Controversy may be made a most friendly and helpful exercise, if it be undertaken by two well-tempered and courteous minds.

Vain contention, on the contrary, is of no use except to deepen enmity.

Controversy is a game for strong minds; contention is a game for the weak and undisciplined.

 

To a friend thinking of public office;

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It’s been a while since we’ve talked about this topic with you.  Or perhaps we never have. This note is addressed to no one in particular in this season of domino-candidacies triggered by the pending retirement of Senator Roy Blunt.

You’ve thought about running for public office someday.  Your business has been successful enough that you can step away from the fulltime obligations. You are motivated to help other people.  You see problems that you think you can help solve.  You’ve been discussed by people in the political party with which you seem to be identified.

Your member of Congress has decided not to seek re-election next year, perhaps to run for Blunt’s seat in the U.S. Senate. Perhaps your state representative or state senator has decided to run for Congress. This is the perfect time to become a member of the U. S. House of Representatives and you have the name recognition and would have party identification on your side to compete, too.  And once you’re in the House, there might be doors to greater opportunities.

If you don’t go now, you’ll have to challenge the new incumbent or wait several years for that person to step aside.

You will be courted, cajoled, urged, and begged to get into a race.  But it won’t be because of what you might bring to the House; it’s because you’re well-known, can attract campaign donations, can pass the litmus test(s) of the party.  Your ideas are secondary.

Be wary of becoming a figurehead, and an empty one, because your party thinks your name is all it needs in its search for power.  Consider if the party’s quest for power is more important than your desire for service.  If service is secondary, have the integrity to say, “No.”

And what are your ideas?  Are they yours or are they ideas—-and you are intelligent enough to know the ones that are flawed and sometimes dishonest ideas—advocated by a figure who seems to have—or claims to have—life or death power over potential candidates?

Do you really know the issues you will face or are you just willing to go with the party flow?

Frankly, we don’t need people like you if that’s the kind of candidate and Congress-person you will be.

What we need in these troubled times is candidates who know themselves, who trust themselves, and who have the courage to BE themselves in working through the problems of our state and nation.  Cookie-cutter candidates incapable of seeing beyond party orthodoxy, dictates, and dogma cannot be servants to the public—the general public rather than the narrower public that you hope will cast the most votes for you.

Are you ready to think your own thoughts? Have you studied issues from a variety of viewpoints so you understand that answers to major problems are seldom simple because problems affect people and people come in more varieties than you can count?  Will you have backbone enough to reject the narrow, the prejudicial, the inhumane solutions you will be asked by party and well-oiled interests to support.

Remember you are not alone if you undertake this candidacy.  Remember your family because your family comes with you, spiritually if not in person.  Remember that anything you stand for, anything you say, anything you do can bring questions to your school-age children from classmates, or comments to your spouse from some stranger standing in line at a check-out counter.

What makes you think you can go from private citizen to Congress is one big leap?  Or from private citizen to the state legislature in one smaller leap?

What do you know about representing large numbers of people, each person with his or her own morals, ethics, social and economic needs, hopes, dreams, and fears?  What do you know about high-stakes discussions with others that result in policies you and all of those other people will have to follow?  How can you interact with them, take their pulse, act in their best interests if you’ve never held a public position of any kind?

I’m not saying, ‘Stay out of it.”  But I am saying, “Know what your responsibilities will be and know to whom you REALLY are responsible and respect them.  There will be dozens, maybe hundreds of people between you and your constituents if you are elected.  How prepared are you to deal with those in-between people while keeping in mind the people at home?”

What do you really know about the Constitution?  If you think reading it and doing what it says is the answer to the nation’s problems, you are woefully ignorant.  If you think the Bill of Rights is absolute, you don’t know your own rights.

Study. Study. Study.  Read and talk to people outside your partisan circle.  You are allowed to agree with them.  Not on everything, but it’s not a sin (despite the apparent political climate) to understand the other side and see that sometimes it has a better ideas.

Know history.  Not just the cleansed history this or that segment finds most beneficial to itself.  Understand that our history has warts.  Recognize them but do not tolerate them no matter how they are disguised. Think of George Santayana’s comment, “We respect the past; it was all that was humanly possible.” But that past might not be “humanly possible” or “humanly human” today. You will not erase the past by correcting its flaws that remain with us. Your public service must be focused on a future that abandons those flaws.

Congress?   The Missouri General Assembly?  The U. S. Senate?  Give serious thought to whether it’s right for you, your neighbors, and your family to go from zero to 100 mph all at once.

Maybe at your age you don’t think you can afford to wait. But there is virtue in patience and in learning.  There is a reason many of those in the offices being dangled in front of you started as members of a city council, a school board, a county commission.  They learned whether they liked to campaign.  They learned how to relate to constituents not just during the campaign but later while service those constituents in elective office.  They learned how to support and oppose ideas on their merits, how to argue with an opponent today who they need as an ally tomorrow, how to support something that is for a greater good rather than carry out the wishes of their particular constituency.  They felt the pressures of those who expected favorable votes, sometimes on unfavorable issues. They learned that personal community visibility has nothing to do with the gritty business of establishing broad community policy.

For some, the city council is satisfaction enough. For others, it just whets their desire to greater service—because they have learned how a system can work and how to make it work well.

If you have a young family, think of local office before you think of something higher.  You’ll learn politics and public service and you’ll spend you nights with your family in your own home. As you grow in understanding how things work, your family will grow in understanding them too, and will grow in understanding how your public service affects their daily lives.

Jump into the shark tank if you wish. Just don’t kid yourself or let others flatter you into thinking the jump is easy or can be painless.

Perhaps you might refresh your memory with the first eight verses of the Bible’s book of Ecclesiastes, one of the Old Testament’s “Wisdom Books,” which it says, in part:

For everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose under heaven… 6 a time to seek, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away; 7 a time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak…

Be wise in making your decision.  Better yet, should you win, be wise in your actions—

—-for wisdom, now so profoundly lacking in our national dialogue, is critical to our future.

 

Tell the truth, pay a fine

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We never say, “Well, I’ve seen it all now” because there’s always somebody in the wings just waiting with something more outrageous than what we’ve seen.

And one of the latest in an increasingly growing number of outrageous characters in our political system is this bird:

Michigan State Representative Matt Maddock has introduced a bill requiring all of those who check politicians’ statements for truthfulness to register with the state and file proof of a $1,000,000 fidelity bond.  The Detroit News reports fact checkers who don’t register could be fined $1,000 per day they are not registered. The bill also says an “affected person” could file a civil action claiming the bond for “any wrongful conduct that is a violation of the laws of the state.”  Maddock says a judge could order the bond forfeited “for demonstrable harm” stemming from something the fact-checker wrote and said.

The Washington Post says Maddock, a Republican, is married to the co-chair of the Michigan Republican Party.

Maddock was one of those last year who tried to impeach Governor Gretchen Whitmer because of her restrictions intended to control the coronavirus.  He joined a federal lawsuit in December challenging President Biden’s election.

Even more outlandish is that he has eight co-sponsors.

Maddock seems to resent people such as CNN’s Daniel Dale and organizations such as Politifact, Factcheck.org, Snopes, NPR Fact-Check, and the Washington Post and its famed system of awarding Pinocchios to those telling who have a problem with the truth.

Dale told colleagues Brianna Keilar and John Berman that Maddock is “scoring points with the conservative base by going after the media.”   He said it also shows “the growing disrespect for the principle of a free press, for the First Amendment, throughout certain segments of the Republican party, not just the base but elected officials.”

We note that fact-checkers have pounced on some of the things President Biden has said although his record for mendacity is miniscule compared to that of his predecessor.

The scary thing about Maddock is that there is a segment of the population that is cheering him on.  Truth be damned.  The public has no right to know when someone in government lies.

While Maddock wants to target people such as Dale and others, his legislation could apply to every reporter for every news organization because it’s the job of every reporter to challenge lies and misstatements.  People such as Maddock don’t want their “alternate facts” exposed for what they are.

Thank God for the First Amendment.  Maddock and his ilk prefer to ignore it; we won’t hazard a guess whether they’d like to cancel it.

In times like these, when truth is so blatantly ignored by those who seek power and control over our freedoms, when those who speak the truth are punished by their own political party that seems afraid to challenge its greatest liar, fact-checkers are ever more crucial.

And legislation such as that proposed by Maddock should be seen as a threat to the freedoms of all of us. His kind cannot prevail.