Editor’s Opinion ❘ By BOBBY HALTON
When I was a kid growing up, one of my favorite TV shows was “To Tell the Truth.” The premise was simple enough: The show consisted of a host, a celebrity panel, and three guests. One of the guests had a cool job or story, and the other two guests were pretending to be that person. The panel of celebrities, like in an assessment center, would ask them questions and try to figure out who was lying and who the real person with the cool job was. It was a great show, and if you were a somewhat rambunctious kid, it gave you a lot of solid tips about how to lie. If you were a “wannabe” firefighter, it was a great show to watch for an idea of how a chief’s interview board was going to look.
The title of the show was also interesting and somewhat misleading. The only one on the show who told the truth was the person with the cool job or cool story; everyone else was lying. Much like our current political class, the liar-to-honest-person ratio was 2 to 1.
I thought about the show when my friend and the bravest man I know, Frank Ricci, asked me to write a chapter in his new book on principles. Now, to be straightforward, Frank is arguably the most principled man I know. Writing for a person like Frank is not something one approaches lightly or casually.
It struck me as I obsessed over Frank’s request that principles and virtue were inexorably connected—simply that all virtue or virtuous action must have a principle behind it. The absence of principle makes “virtuous” actions nothing more than the modern vice of “virtue signaling.” For example, consider when people put flags or symbols on their social media sites as if that means anything or involves any courage. Most of these hollow actions are nothing more than vanity symbols and vapid and empty gestures. If push came to shove, most “signalers” would not be willing to risk anything for some of the things they claim to support. To echo Nassim Taleb, they have no skin in the game.
So, as we always do in questions of significance, we look to ancient wisdom. We go there because to do otherwise is immature and pointless. Ancient wisdom is the gold standard for wisdom because it has stood the test of time. This wisdom has survived centuries of inquiry, contest, and challenge; this wisdom is proven, durable, and worthy, which is in stark contrast to the past century of gibberish and nonsense spawned from the progressive postmodernists whose words and thoughts have led to the most brutal and authoritarian regimes in history. The movements and political evil born of this intellectual assault on natural law, freedom, spirituality, and the inalienable rights of the individual are lacking and the polar opposites of virtue and principled life. So, we go to Aristotle, who said, “Courage is the mother of all virtues because without it, you cannot consistently perform the others.”
So, if courage is virtue one, what lies foremost as the principle of courage is truth, the unfaltering connection to objective truth. As has happened before during times of rising authoritarianism, truth that is uninfluenced by coercion and threat is what is most important in all matters of principled conduct, conduct to which all firefighters are forever bound. To be otherwise negates trust, which is what validates us and our mission and binds us to those we serve.
As kids, we were told our heroes George Washington never told a lie and Abraham Lincoln was nicknamed “Old Honest Abe.” We know as adults those weren’t true; simply the fact that they both died happily married proves so. We know that to get through the struggles they surmounted, they used duplicity and guile and they openly lied. But, in matters of honor and consequence, in matters of character, they spoke the truth, irrespective of the possible outcomes.
As kids, we also were told the fable (ancient wisdom for children) of The Emperor’s New Clothes. Duped by unsavory characters that only intelligent people could see the incredibly beautiful fabric of his new clothes, the gullible emperor paraded about in his underwear. Adults, not wanting to seem ignorant or insult the big guy, all admired what was clearly not there until a child, unimpeded by the threat of social pressures and collective fear, pointed out the obvious: The dude had no clothes on.
Unsavory characters, authoritarian monsters, bullies, ideologues, and HR people all use the same tool. They try to get you to say something that you know to be untrue because then having violated the most important of principles, you will no longer respect yourself. When you no longer respect yourself, you are very easy to abuse, control, and dominate.
Firefighters can never and will never allow themselves to be compromised in this way. Once we lose our self-respect, we lose the trust of our fellow firefighters and the public we serve. It is far more worthy to be wedded to vintage virtue and ancient wisdom and be out of step with the ever-changing whims of social fads and politically motivated constructs. One has but to look to eugenics, fascism, and communalism in all its political structures to see the gross injustice and pain that can result. Firefighters stand firm in our reliance on objective truth and the Golden Rule.
I don’t know if any firefighters were ever on “To Tell the Truth,” but if they were, I hope one of the celebrities asked them what the most important thing was that every firefighter must have. I hope they would have said courage—of course, physical courage but also the unfaltering ability to say and do whatever they had to, to defend what they knew to be true. Oh, and I hope they won all the money.
