Barack Obama has told many
lies. The most well known are about how
people could keep their doctors and health insurance polices under
ObamaCare. Nonetheless, he was treated
with kid gloves. Instead of branding him
a liar, he was often described as misleading or being ill-informed.
But he was president and we
want to be respectful of our presidents.
Hillary Clinton is not nearly as well liked. As importantly, she is only a candidate for
the nation’s highest office. What is
more, she is in the midst of a bruising political campaign.
And so Secretary Clinton has
repeatedly been called a liar—sometimes to her face. She is accused of lying, and lying about her
lies, and lying about lying about her lies.
Few, including her most loyal supporters, doubt that this is true. She is so blatant and so persistent that it
is difficult to deny the obvious.
Nonetheless, her devotees
are unconcerned about her penchant for dishonesty. The way they see it is, “So what if she
lies?” As one of my colleagues
explained, he favors her political agenda, therefore, he does not care about
whether she is truthful.
Many of television’s talking
heads have even begun commending Democrats for closing ranks around one of
their own. Whatever goes wrong, they remain
loyal to their candidates. This,
however, reminds me of the O.J. Simpson affair.
You remember the Simpson
affair. O.J. was accused of murdering
his ex-wife Nicole and Ron Goldman. He
slashed their throats. Virtually everyone
who watched the trial knew he was guilty.
This included African-Americans.
Still, when Simpson was
found not guilty, blacks around the country erupted in gleeful celebration. One of their number had escaped the dreaded
legal system. Whatever O.J. had done,
the hated police had been discredited.
Edmund Burke is alleged to
have said that all that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good people to
do nothing. He might have added that all
that in needed for evil to prevail is for good people to endorse evil. We saw this in the Simpson fiasco; we are currently
witnessing it in the Hillary scandal.
Ronald Reagan promised the
American people that he would give them a government as good as they were. But perhaps the American people are not all that
good. If a majority is not outraged by uninterrupted
dishonesty and corruption, how good can they be?
Let me be as plain: Habitual
lying is immoral!
Let me repeat: Consistently
lying to the American people is grossly immoral!
When I see Hillary, or her
people, telling another whopper, I am infuriated. Then, when I witness her supporters rationalizing
this by pronouncing it “old news,” I cringe.
Don’t they realize that they are promoting unethical behavior?
Nowadays dishonesty has been
institutionalized. It has become the routine
way that many organizations do business.
The media lie, the White House lies, the State Department lies, the IRS
lies, the VA Administration lies, college professors lie, military briefers
lie, the ObamaCare flacks lie, and the candidates lie.
Why do they lie? Partly because they can get away with
it. More importantly, because liberalism
is a fraud. Almost everything that
liberals touch turns to dross. Virtually
all of their promises have not been kept because they cannot be kept.
Whether the issue is health,
education, crime, poverty, family, peace or national security, their programs
have been a disaster. So how can they get
reelected? The answers is that they
lie! And then they lie some more. They lie so much that this becomes a way of
life.
Lincoln said that no society
can survive if it is divided against itself.
But neither can one endure if it is built on a foundation of lies. In such a world, people cannot trust one
another. They cease being mutually
helpful because they fear that they might be taken advantage of.
We seem to be reaching the
point of no return at an accelerating pace.
The question is therefore: will we stop ourselves before we slide into
the abyss?
Melvyn L. Fein, Ph.D.
Professor of Sociology
Kennesaw State University
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