There seems to me no practical remedy for lying by private persons. During my career as an Army criminal investigator, remedies existed under the Uniform Code of Military Justice for swearing under oath to something known to be false. I routinely administered an oath after taking a written statement from a witness, victim, or suspect. Even though lying under oath under these circumstances was chargeable and punishable, no one was ever charged or punished. (This is different from lying under oath, in court, on the witness stand. That is perjury, and the offender was sometimes charged.) Generally, the attitude seemed to prevail that suspects, particularly, had some sort of right to lie, and that they were more or less expected to lie, under oath or not. Early in my career, I routinely added the offense of false swearing or lying under oath (under the correct terminology of that era, and referring to the appropriate article of the Code). Those offenses were always stricken from my reports by my boss. As I said, there seems to be no remedy for lying by private persons, except that those private persons become know as liars and are treated as such.

In one of my recently published essays, I mentioned that there are differences between public and private persons. I mentioned that private persons possess a right to privacy, but that public persons have forfeited a great measure of that right, in return for the benefits of notoriety. I propose that, even if the prevailing view is that private persons have a right to lie with impunity, public persons have no such right. Every day, we are deluged with statements by public figures, which are patently false and known by the speakers or writers to be false, and which are intended to inflame or create anger and indignation among the gullible. (It is no defense for the perpetrators that most of the gullible constitute a willing audience that seeks more and more and more of what is being dished out.) I propose, for the purpose of discussion (knowing how unlikely would be the adoption of my proposal), that public figures who can be proved to have known that their statements of fact are false (remember that I am differentiating between representations of fact and mere expressions of opinion), be held legally to account. If there is credible evidence of intent to inflame the public through false representations of fact, that evidence should be considered an aggravating factor, raising the offense to a higher level of seriousness. Libel laws exist, and they are sometimes invoked, but what I am proposing is something beyond and apart from libel. This is the “Fire in the theater!” principle extended to the inflammation of the populace. Think about it.