A Commonplace Book

There's a phrase that Gandhians use a lot that translates as "speaking truth to power." I find myself very skeptical about that phrase; at the least, it's ambiguous, because certainly all of my former colleagues at RAND, or in the government, I think, would have thought of what they were doing, their professional lives, as "speaking truth to power." To be sure, they were speaking truth for power, and some of them were also writing lies for power, but they figured that that was the price they paid for the right they got, on government payroll or on government contract, to speak truth to power. And it certainly seemed to me, increasingly, that there was so much self-deception involved that I had to stand back and really think hard about it. About just what kind of truth you spoke to power when you were working for power, when you found your whole livelihood dependent on it, when you were constantly afraid of what power would do to you if you spoke the wrong truth.