“If our leaders seek to conceal the truth, or we as people become accepting of alternative realities that are no long grounded in facts, then we as American citizens are on a pathway to relinquishing our freedom. A responsibility of every American citizen to each other is to preserve and protect our freedom by recognizing what truth is and is not, what a fact is and is not.
“Begin by holding ourselves accountable to truthfulness and demand our pursuit of America’s future be fact-based – not based on wishful thinking, not hoped-for outcomes made in shallow promises – but with a clear-eyed view of the facts as they are, and guided by the truth that will set us free to seek solutions to our most daunting challenges.
“When we as people, a free people, go wobbly on the truth, even on what may seem the most trivial of matters, we go wobbly on America.” – Fired-by-tweet former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, giving the commencement address today at the Virginia Military Institute.