The top position in the U.S. Navy is Chief of Naval Operations.

The 25th CNO was Michael Boorda, who served in the position from 1994 to 1996. Of all CNOs, Boorda alone rose from the enlisted ranks to command the Navy.

There, he committed suicide.

The strong suspicion is that Boorda took his own life when he learned reporters were questioning whether he actually deserved the “V” device , designating valor, which he displayed on his medals. Boorda was decorated for service in Vietnam, but he did not receive the most prestigious combat decorations and, according to his records, was not authorized to wear the “V” on the decorations he did earn.

Reportedly, Boorda wrote in a suicide note that he made an honest mistake in attaching the V-devices, according to The New York Times.

Maybe, but this is a serious mistake in the honor-bound military, where valor is the most-prized — and often most-advanced — attribute.

As a retired officer said in The Times, “you wear your history on your chest.”

That’s not the case in the water district board of Southern California, where elected member Xavier Alvarez bragged, “I’m a retired Marine of 25 years… Back in 1987 I was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor. I got wounded many times by the same guy.”

As it turns out, none of that is true. It is all blatant lies. And those lies now constitute a case before the Supreme Court, testing the Stolen Valor Act of 2005, which makes it a crime if anyone “falsely represents himself or herself, verbally or in writing, to have been awarded any decoration or medal authorized by Congress for the Armed Forces of the United States.”

Alvarez argues that his lies are protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution. That said, no one should confuse Boorda with Alvarez.

One was a dedicated patriot who made a mistake, but served his country with distinction. The other appears to be a dedicated bozo.

While his suicide is deeply regrettable, Boorda’s falsehood had actual, transactional meaning in his workplace, and so it was prohibited for servicemen and women under the Uniform Code of Military Justice long before the Stolen Valor Act came along.

Similarly, if in civilian life you lie about credentials that are necessary for your job, you can lose the job. And if you falsify a public credential or license, worse things can and should happen.

No one, not even the lawyer who represented Alvarez before the Supreme Court, tried to portray what his client did as anything other than a despicable set of lies.

But what was the harm or personal injury to others that, on balance, justifies the real threat to free speech embedded in the Stolen Valor Act?

Does anyone actually think less of the Medal of Honor, or any less of its legitimate holders, because of the liar Alvarez? Have the courageous men and women of the armed services been so demeaned that recruitment is falling off and conduct has gone to hell in a handbag? More importantly, if allowed, what other lies will Congress prohibit and, as Justice Anthony Kennedy feared, will it establish a Ministry of Truth?

If the specter of such a possibility doesn’t trump the Stolen Valor Act, nothing will.

In addressing the case, Alex Kozinski, chief judge of the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, wrote: “If the First Amendment is to mean anything at all, it must mean that people are free to speak about themselves and their country as they see fit without the heavy hand of government to keep them on the straight and narrow. The Stolen Valor Act was enacted with the noble goal of protecting the highest honors given to the men and women of our military, but the freedoms for which they fight include the freedom of speech.”