Policy Of Truth

I did not believe it at first, but this wonderful song uses a quote from a military officer, individualist, unitarian, anarchist in the 1800's.

Don't shoot me, I am only the messenger. The incredibly talented Depeche Mode wrote policy of truth and -- as so often happens -- the best art is open to many different interpretations.....

Here is the quote:

Hide what you have to hide, And tell what you have to tell. You'll see your problems multiplied If you continually decide To faithfully pursue The policy of truth.

-- William Batchelder Greene

Now, I think many of the modern interpretations are SPOT ON especially about "coming out of the closet". But, one of the meanings could come from further writings of William Batchelder Greene, who was a proponent of mutual banking (free banking).

Here he describes the consequences of our financial systems of fiat and debt.

The existing organization of credit is the daughter of hard money, begotten upon it incestuously by that insufficiency of circulating medium which results from laws making specie the sole legal tender. The immediate consequences of confused credit are want of confidence, loss of time, commercial frauds, fruitless and repeated applications for payment, complicated with irregular and ruinous expanses. The ultimate consequences are compositions, bad debts, expensive accommodation-loans, law-suits, insolvency, bankruptcy, separation of classes, hostility, hunger, extravagance, distress, riots, civil war, and, finally, revolution. The natural consequences of mutual banking are, first of all, the creation of order, and the definitive establishment of due organization in the social body, and, ultimately, the cure of all the evils. which flow from the present incoherence and disruption in the relations of production and commerce. (The Radical Deficiency of the Existing Circulating Medium 1857).

Deep thoughts. libertarian thoughts. People who seek more government regulations for a system bought and paid for by bankers.... well, they must not realized that the bankers and politicians are in it together. Chaos is what they prefer. Further government regulations simply compound the confusion.

I read only a little bit more about him. And this is one of his other quotes I like:

“Life is a waste of woes, And Death a river deep, That ever onward flows, Troubled, yet asleep.”

— William Batchelder Greene