Is there any real truth in the comment “Speech is free, but you have to pay for your lies,” by attorney Kyle Farrar from the trial of Alex Jones, who denied the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre was real?
We know that some have had to pay for telling the truth and in [slain Washington Post reporter] Jamal Khashoggi’s case, it was at the cost of his life—but what of telling lies? If you lie in court, the cost might be your freedom, but how often does that happen? If you lie as a politician, people are so used to it that it is often ignored. If you lie in business, you might be sued, but the costs of doing so probably preclude it from happening often. “The big lie” led to the Jan. 6 riots and deaths at the U.S. Capitol.
What happened to the days before conspiracy theories became widespread and accepted by so many? Sorry, but Elvis is dead. There was a time when a person’s handshake and word were all that was needed and that was because people told the truth.
We need to all tell the actual truth, not alternative facts, and we need to be proud of telling the truth. Maybe then the world would start to heal.
