Emperor's New Clothes

 Have you heard the new comparison of fiction and non-fiction? I rather like it.

Instead of focusing on whether something is made-up or not, this set of definitions compares how you learn. Fiction is "learning through imagination" and non-fiction is "learning through information."

There's the folktale written by Hans Christian Andersen way back in the 1800s about a young boy attending a royal procession in which a pompous king is sporting a new outfit spun by the world's best weavers. In fact, the king has been duped; he is buck naked.

We learn from this fiction that a king can be duped. Royalty can be controlled. Rulers can act with excessive pride.

Though the sycophant community goes along with the king and pretends he is elegantly clothed, a young boy will have none of that. He blurts out what nobody else is brave enough to utter: the emperor has no clothes!

Here we are reminded of that adage attributed to both Abe Lincoln and PT Barnum about how you can fool some of the people some of the time, but not all of the people all of the time.

Here we learn that children speak the truth. We learn that even one brave person can speak out and change history. It might be a stretch, but we learn that even the most awful of regimes can be called out...eventually.

This truth wasn't created by Hans Christian Andersen. Like most fairy tale authors, he was a collector of tales and not a their creator. His Danish version of the 1800s comes from a German translation of a Spanish folktale from the 1300s. Other cultures have versions of this story that date back even farther; for example, there's a version from India from almost a thousand years ago.

What does this say? Well, society has long known that power corrupts. This is not unique to any political party. It is not unique to any culture. It is a potential within human groups and human individuals. It is something that we must be guarded against.

The writers of our Constitution knew this when they created a system of checks and balances. Right now, this system is being challenged. As Justice Jackson said in a powerful speech at a judicial conference this week, "It can sometimes take raw courage to remain steadfast in doing what the law requires." Right now, it is up to our courts to call the would-be Emperor's out on his non-existent new clothes.

But it is not the courts alone that can do this. We need our media to be honest and fair. We need our representatives to be brave and true. And we need our populace to speak out for the democratic ideals to which American children pledge allegiance every school day.

We need to show up. We need the media to publicize acts of humane resistance. We need our legislators to hear us and respond accordingly, in good faith, for the rights of all.

The Emperor's New Clothes may be fiction, but we are living a reality right now, a scary one. Let us learn from the little boy and from the centuries of authors who have told his tale.