The Ghost in the White House / Some suggestions as to how a hundred million people (who are supposed in a vague, helpless way to haunt the white house) can make themselves felt with a president, how they can back him up, express themselves to him, be expressed by him, and get what they want

by Gerald Stanley Lee

I am not undertaking in this part of my book to make an inquiry as to what the right spirit is, or what the right method is that a hundred million people ought to adopt.

I am a somewhat puzzled and determined person and I am instituting out loud a searching inquiry as to what I am going to do myself and what the principles and methods are that I should be governed by in doing my personal part, and conducting my own mind and judgment toward the movements and the men about me.

To avoid generalizing, I might as well give my idea the way it came to me—one man's idea of how one man feels he wants to act when being lied to.

I do not say in so many words, I was lied to. I do not know. A great many people every day find themselves in situations where they do not know. The question I am asking of myself is, how can a man or a public take a fair human and constructive attitude when one does not know and cannot know for the time being, all that it is to the point to know?

A stupendous amount of red-flagism, unrest and expensive unreasonableness would be swept away in this country if we all had in mind to use for ourselves when called for the following rules for being lied to.

(Not that I am going to lumber people's minds up by numbering them as rules out loud. They are all here—in what follows—the spirit of them, and people can make their own rules for themselves as they go along.)

[ ]

IV

RULES FOR BEING LIED TO

(Charles Schwab or Anybody)