What kind of person says he received the Medal of Honor, or any other military medal, when he hasn’t? There’s got to be a pathetic emptiness in his life for him to do such a thing. How would a real recipient of the medal feel about the fraud? Our guess is that he – or she – would feel more pity than anger.
Congress being Congress, it passed the Stolen Valor Act back in 2006. The act made it a crime to lie about receiving military medals. You know ethics are lacking in a society when laws have to take their place, and penalties are enacted in place of the kind of shame that such pathetic cases should feel.
Congress can make it a crime to lie? In that case, just imagine the indictments that could be filed against some of those who’ve filled congressional seats over the years. Happily, the U.S. Supreme Court recognized the futility – and blatant unconstitutionality – of such laws. The justices realized that this Stolen Valor Act violated the First Amendment, that the right to free speech includes having a few beers at the VFW and telling all the folks gathered around the bar how you fended off the Taliban in Vietnam (or was the Viet Cong in Afghanistan?) with only a Bowie knife, saving a herd of nuns in the process. In short, there is no liberty without license, no guarantee of free speech without opening the door to its abuse.
Not all speech, including lies, can be protected by the First Amendment. You may not yell “Fire!” in a crowded theater unless there really is a fire. You may not use inside information to buy or sell stocks. And you may not tell folks you’ll send them a million dollars posthaste from Nigeria if they’ll just supply their bank account information.
The key to deciding whether Congress can limit this kind of speech is whether it’s part of a fraud. And fraud is punishable by law, thank goodness. Or as The Hon. Anthony Kennedy put it in his majority decision declaring the Stolen Valor Act I unconstitutional: