Today is July 4 and in the United States of America this day is celebrated as Independence Day, an anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence back in the late 1700s. This day is of course

filled with various fireworks and barbecues etc as is our cultural custom. But today I

want to simply share with you an essay that I hope you'll

consider and perhaps you've never heard or perhaps if you have I hope you'll be reminded with the value of using

your independence to simply speak and to speak truth. Truthfulness is for me a very high value and hope it is for you as well. It may be easy to tell a lie and to seek to

enrich yourself by telling a lie but it's always a bad bargain. Rather simply committing yourself to not tell lies

is something that will allow you to live a life of integrity

with yourself and with others.

Now this may cost you, after all the closing words of that declaration of independence was among the signers.

We mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes our sacred honor but whatever else they did

those early signers of the Declaration of Independence did indeed put themselves on the

line for what they believed. So consider this particular

essay. I hope it's encouraging to you and I hope you find it thought-provoking as you consider

how to stand and how to speak truth in our current age.

Live Not by Lies by Alexander Solzhen

Solzhen wrote this essay in 1974 1974 and it circulated among Moscow's intellectuals at the time.

It is dated February 12, which is the same day that secret police broke into his apartment and arrested him. The very next day he was exiled to West Germany.

Live not by lies by Alexander Solzhen.

At one time we dared not even to whisper. Now we write and read Samiz-Dat and sometimes

when we gather in the smoking room at the Science Institute we complain frankly to one another.

What kind of tricks are they playing on us and where are they dragging us?

Gratuitous boasting of cosmic achievements while there is poverty and destruction at home, propping up remote uncivilized regimes,

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