HONESTY--AMERICA’S FAVORITE HUMAN TRAIT

By Edwin Cooney

About a week ago, one of my readers sent me a most thought-provoking observation about that most desirable human trait, honesty.

As an essential part of our individual character, honesty is hard to equal as a virtue. Honesty is, after all, the characteristic of truthfulness and for many people truthfulness about almost any aspect of modern day life is what is sorely lacking.

My question is: but is it? Are we looking for “straight talk” from our leadership or personal reinforcement?

Like all human virtues, honesty -- powerful as it is -- has limited value to our numerous personal and social responsibilities.

Take the parent: is it honest to tell our children of the existence of Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, or the Easter Bunny? Surely not, although there is virtue for a child’s emotional development in each of these characters. Santa Claus invites the young mind to feel, during a vulnerable time of emotional and spiritual growth, as though it is the beneficiary of universal love. The Tooth Fairy gives a youngster something to look forward to following a painful period during which his or her teeth are falling out. As for the Easter Bunny, like Santa Claus, the Bunny Trail is a universal path for giving, but even more, it connects children to the magic of the animal kingdom. True, these three characters aren’t the only worthwhile avenues for experiencing these benefits, but they’re valuable even if they’re absent of the virtue of honesty.

Take the teacher: fictional literature is an essential part of a young person’s education from nursery school through the university. However, fiction often, although not always, gives honesty a wide birth.

As for the preacher: though honesty and integrity force preachers to walk a tighter rope professionally, they may be sinners in their daily lives. Like their parishioners, many have also been caught cheating at cards or checkers, lying in traffic court, and in these days of “promiscuity,” may be divorced while still atop their altars.

As for everybody’s favorite, take the politician: as I see it, it’s we their constituents who run them neck and neck in the race to avoid honesty.

Someone sent me, not long ago, an appeal for “straight talk” from our politicians, but this demand was accompanied, as most demands are, with a laundry list of conditions. They wanted politicians to stop redistributing wealth, to lower taxes, increase military spending, and so on. In other words, it wasn’t a demand for straight talk as much as a demand to all of our leaders to be true to a specific political agenda.

History is full of crimes that have a lot to do with mischievousness and poor character, but little to do with honesty.

Benedict Arnold was devious when he switched sides during the American Revolution. Yet there wasn’t anything particularly dishonest about it since he’d publicly married Peggy Shippen, the daughter of Edward Shippen, a loyalist Philadelphia judge, right in the middle of the Revolutionary War.

Neither Aaron Burr nor John Wilkes Booth’s crimes had much to do with honesty. Burr, who indeed could be devious, was no less honest than his dueling victim Alexander Hamilton who, although forgiven by his wife, was guilty of marital infidelity. Booth would have told anybody who asked him that he hated Abraham Lincoln: he was bitter for the Confederacy’s loss of the Civil War.

More to the point, in politics even non-politician constituents view honesty with contempt. In 1976, Jimmy Carter twice told the truth when in late August he informed the American Legion that he’d offer amnesty to Vietnam War draft dodgers. Later, he told Playboy Magazine that he had “lusted in his heart”. Those two instances of honesty nearly cost Carter the 1976 election.

No one was interested in the fact that Gerald Ford “honestly” thought he was serving the nation by pardoning Richard Nixon of all crimes and misdemeanors that had occurred during Nixon’s seemingly corrupt presidency.

Former Vice President Walter Mondale was ridiculed as “a fool” when, during his acceptance speech at the 1984 Democratic convention, he was honest enough to tell the American people that if elected he’d raise taxes.

The truth is that we, the people of the United States, have put a spin on the significance of honesty. Commercial advertising is a vital tool in the “free market,” but few expect radio, television or internet commercials to be honest. “Truth in advertising” legislation is regarded in business and commerce circles as “liberal government snoopervision.”

Too often honesty is what we want to hear when we want to hear it. Hence, when I received the following observation recently sent me by one of you, I was much moved. “Honesty without compassion,” it read, “is brutality.”

Too many of us, especially when angered, use honesty as our excuse for humiliating a political opponent, a spouse, or even our parents and siblings.

So, honesty is what you prefer, hey? Okay, be honest now! Who would you rather cuddle up with on a cold winter night — the Easter Bunny or Aaron Burr?

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY