I suffer from an affliction: being a teacher. Accuracy has always mattered to me. In my history and religion classes, I expected students to identify names, places, and events correctly. As I've written before, I believe that all of us are entitled to our own opinions and should not be punished for them short of hatefulness and sedition. Yet none of us should be proprietary about facts. We can't just make stuff up and get away with it.

I've encountered another illness that seems far more pronounced and generalized than ever in my nearly eight decades of life: false equivalencies, or what might be identified as lying light. We hear it regularly. If so-and-so does something wrong, and then another individual errs, the two behaviors are somehow identified as equivalent in degree.. It seems that far too often apples, oranges, and pears (metaphorically speaking) are conflated to support my thesis.

Many of us remember being told the story of George Washington saying he couldn't tell a lie, a charming and outdated take on American morals and ethics. Whether President Washington said the phrase is immaterial. What seems overwhelmingly vital is that generations........

© Arkansas Online