The long gray line is not about the uniform of West Point. It is about the long history of our flirtation with the lesser evil, with white lies. That is the problem with compromise. It starts so innocently, so quietly. It hardly does anyone any harm, a little half-truth here, a just-this-once exception there. Evil takes on a lesser form, and a lie becomes white.

Curious to note that in these postmodern times, your "gray line" is what Aristotle would describe as the "Golden Mean." Or, is it perhaps your interpretation of white lies and black Filipino hair, which when combined together in a Tupperware bowl reveals the so-called "gray area?" I don't know, but I'm responding to your rambling with some of my own.

Anyway, the state of affairs in the Philippines has triggered a surge for the truth, even from those who hardly know how to spell it.

Way to put down those little unimportant illiterate people they call the "majority voting bloc." And, were you chewing on kakanin when you said "surge" when you actually meant "search?"

Even better is the sudden inclusion of integrity together with the truth as now the demands of the times from politicians towards other politicians.

I don't get this sentence. I hate it, it makes me feel stupid.

But:

In other words, our love of country comes only after our love for our own interests. And if there is a conflict of interest, then personal interests come first. To paraphrase it, a Filipino says to the Philippines, "It is not that I love you less, but I love me more."

...probably makes *you* feel stupid! So, quits lang tayo! You have "In other words," and *then* you have "To paraphrase it." We got it the first time, okay?

The easy manner by which even our moral leaders have been able to live with the lesser evil is indication enough [that] the return of truth and integrity as dominant values in Philippine society will not come without a hard struggle.

Here's something I agree with you on. How can we be the most Christian country in Asia, with a priest-to-parokyano ratio of 1:24 (I made that one up, by the way), and have such questionable scruples? I think it's time that somebody who has a public voice (like you, Jose) to speak up and say that the so-called moral bastion that is the Roman Catholic church is dated. Threatening people with Hell no longer works. We have to punish them in this life.

The long gray line must be cut. It is so much easier to be simply truthful, to know the difference between black and white, and to choose right over wrong.

Well, there you go, contradicting your thesis again. First, you give the impression that this "long gray line" (LGL) was born like the bastard son of Satan. Then, LGL is "long, indeed." Then it's agonizingly personal. Then, you say LGL "will not be easy to break." Now, you go and say it is "so much easier to be simply truthful." Like how it's so much more simple to go and fire an arrow that hits you right in the eye! You offer no solution, no hope, just a soft, twisted, choppy, ditty (with an anonymous anecdote) where you continue to show that you have no business writing (but you're good blog fodder!).