Throughout history, people in power or who wish to be in power, have used lies and deceit to achieve their goals. Democracy grows best in a bed of honesty and transparency.

The Honest Speech Amendment

Any person or group who, directly or through any number of subsidiaries, has a following, listeners, readers, or viewers greater than 0.5 percent of the population may be held to higher standards of speech by Acts of Congress, specifically with regards to slander, libel, and fraud with minimal evidentiary backing, as adjudicated by a court of law.

In other words, politicians and people with large followings in the media may be (and MUST be) held to a higher standard of speech and press than the First Amendment allows. Leaders who lie to us are trying to destroy our democracy, which means they’re trying to take away some, if not all, of our basic freedoms. Those who lead, whether in government or in “Big Media,” must be ‘encouraged’ to be honest with the voting public.

A democracy cannot be healthy, may not even survive, if the voters are uneducated or miseducated or misled. In recent decades, it’s become a comic book slogan, but has been well understood by philosophers for millennia: With great power comes great responsibility; To whom much was given, of him much will be required. Making statements and accusations with no evidence to back up those statements is, simply, fraud, attempting to bend (if not break) our democracy to their personal ends. We must expect, and demand, more from our leaders.

-Everett