“Words are the progeny of the soul.”
Clement of Alexandria – The Stromata
St. Augustine wrote two treatises on lying. One called Lying ca. 394/395 and a later one called Against Lying.ca. 420. He takes a very strict position against any kind of lies.
He does not consider jocose lies to be lies or illustrative lies such as a parable to be lies. Satire would probably fall under the heading of jocose lies, but he makes no exception for what moderns would call the noble lie.
A lie to divert the slave catchers from the trail of the runaway slave is still a lie, but he admits there are mitigating circumstances. To illustrate his point he gives the example of someone demanding that you commit adultery or rob someone to avoid their killing an innocent party. This is a case of your attempting to avoid a moral evil, but you are using an evil means to avoid it.
Today lies are the common currency of government and most of the news reporting agencies. It's not that they are frequently in error, it's that they are knowingly telling lies usually by commission, but sometimes by omission. Today it is much worse than the days not that long past when people complained of media bias and much, much worse than 1807 when Thomas Jefferson wrote to John Norvell:
...“Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle. The real extent of this state of misinformation is known only to those who are in situations to confront facts within their knowledge with the lies of the day. I really look with commiseration over the great body of my fellow citizens, who, reading newspapers, live & die in the belief, that they have known something of what has been passing in the world in their time; whereas the accounts they have read in newspapers are just as true a history of any other period of the world as of the present, except that the real names of the day are affixed to their fables. General facts may indeed be collected from them, such as that Europe is now at war, that Bonaparte has been a successful warrior, that he has subjected a great portion of Europe to his will, &c., &c.; but no details can be relied on. I will add, that the man who never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who reads them; inasmuch as he who knows nothing is nearer to truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods & errors. He who reads nothing will still learn the great facts, and the details are all false.”
Anthony Esolen asks in his book Out Of The Ashes, Are We a World of Liars?
“In a word, yes."
"It is almost impossible in the modern world not to accept lies as a matter of course. We are told that a woman can make as good a soldier as a man. Except for the rare amazon, that is a lie”
In the same vein a few pages later: “Here is a quick and generally reliable rule to follow. If people have always said it, it is probably true; it is the distilled wisdom of the ages. If people have not always said it, but everybody is saying it now, it is probably a lie; it is the concentrated madness of the moment.”
Lying destroys the credibility of the writer or speaker. Once the reader or listener discovers a lie in a column or broadcast it causes him to question or doubt everything else by the author.
As an example, there are two writers that I hold in high regard for their opinions on political matters and their consistent exposing and denunciation of government crimes and outrages, but at Easter time for a few years past they have both written about how the Roman government executed Jesus because they feared he was going to set up a political movement of some kind. There is no way this can be an error unless neither one of them has ever heard or read any of the Gospels. Pick any one of the four and they give essentially the same account.
St. Matthew 27
27:1 When morning came, all the chief priests and the elders of the people met in council to bring about the death of Jesus.
27:2 They had him bound, and led him away to hand him over to Pilate, the governor.
The death of Judas 27:3 – 27:10 Omitted
Jesus before Pilate
27:11 Jesus, then, was brought before the governor, and the governor put to him this question, ‘Are you the king of the Jews?’ Jesus replied, ‘It is you who say it’.
27:12 But when he was accused by the chief priests and the elders he refused to answer at all.
27:13 Pilate then said to him, ‘Do you not hear how many charges they have brought against you?’
27:14 But to the governor’s complete amazement, he offered no reply to any of the charges.
27:15 At festival time it was the governor’s practice to release a prisoner for the people, anyone they chose.
27:16 Now there was at that time a notorious prisoner whose name was Barabbas.
27:17 So when the crowd gathered, Pilate said to them, ‘Which do you want me to release for you: Barabbas, or Jesus who is called Christ?’
27:18 For Pilate knew it was out of jealousy that they had handed him over.
27:19 Now as he was seated in the chair of judgement, his wife sent him a message, ‘Have nothing to do with that man; I have been upset all day by a dream I had about him’.
27:20 The chief priests and the elders, however, had persuaded the crowd to demand the release of Barabbas and the execution of Jesus.
27:21 So when the governor spoke and asked them, ‘Which of the two do you want me to release for you?’ they said, ‘Barabbas’.
27:22 ‘But in that case,’ Pilate said to them ‘what am I to do with Jesus who is called Christ?’ They all said, ‘Let him be crucified!’
27:23 ‘Why?’ he asked ‘What harm has he done?’ But they shouted all the louder, ‘Let him be crucified!’
27:24 Then Pilate saw that he was making no impression, that in fact a riot was imminent. So he took some water, washed his hands in front of the crowd and said, ‘I am innocent of this man’s blood. It is your concern.’
27:25 And the people, to a man, shouted back, ‘His blood be on us and on our children!’
27:26 Then he released Barabbas for them. He ordered Jesus to be first scourged and then handed over to be crucified.
To top it off in case there is any doubt, St. Peter himself says in Acts 3:
3:13 You are Israelites, and it is the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God of our ancestors, who has glorified his servant Jesus, the same Jesus you handed over and then disowned in the presence of Pilate after Pilate had decided to release him.
3:14 It was you who accused the Holy One, the Just One, you who demanded the reprieve of a murderer
3:15 while you killed the prince of life.
If it is true that the truth will set you free it seems obvious that the more we come under the influence of lies the less free we are. Moderns such as Orwell and Huxley have made clear the indispensability of lies to maintain control of a populace. This is tyranny 101.
The lie is the foundation stone of government. The more tyrannical, the greater the use of the lie. From the local tax commissioner or school board member all the way up to the President, dishonesty is the standard operating procedure. Almost without exception, office holders crave power and will lie to get it. Lord Acton's famous quote about power tending to corrupt leaves out the obvious corollary that power attracts corrupt people. As he says, “Great men are almost always bad men,” but they were bad to begin with. Very few people go into government to serve anybody but themselves.
Those who want to reform society or throw the bums out or “Take back America” must develop an obsession with accuracy. If you notice a lie or an error in an article, notify the author. It's possible that he is repeating “received knowledge” that isn't correct, not intentionally lying.
Everything put out by the government is suspect, whether it's about climate change/global warming, the “pandemic,” terrorist bogeymen, Russians under the bed, temporary taxes, torture, any kind of supposed attack by the enemy de jour, Huns impaling babies or Iraqis taking them from incubators, Spaniards blowing up battleships, the oil crisis, weapons of mass destruction and on and on. Arthur Sylvester, a government spokesman put it plainly to a group of reporters, “Look, if you think any American official is going to tell you the truth, then you’re stupid. Did you hear that? — stupid.” The truth from a professional liar.
It's an odd thing that the government can lie to the people – the principal - but the people cannot lie to the government – the agent. Why is there not a law against government lying? When Richard Nixon resigned from office the babblers went on and on about how, “Nixon lied to the American people” as though that was unusual. People are charged for lying to Congress or lying to the FBI, but Congress, the FBI, CIA, NSA, IRS, DEA and every other branch of government routinely lie to the people. This is analogous to your hiring an agent of some kind, a banker, say, that can lie to you, but you cannot lie to them without going to jail.
It is impossible that anything can be corrected when all remedial action proceeds from false information. It must become the normal condition of society that liars are anathematized, shunned, denounced, condemned and blackballed by all decent people if any improvement is to be affected.
The country is not failing because of racism, sexism, antisemitism, homophobia, transphobia or xenophobia, but because of veritaphobia or mendaciphilia. (I know I've mixed up some Latin and Greek roots here, but you get the idea.)
Lies are so commonplace that they pass almost unnoticed unless they pertain to something you happen to know quite a bit about, but think of the millions of people who might not have been killed if the truth had been told.
What if Walter Durante and The New York Times had told the truth about the Ukrainian famine or Holodomor? Would millions of people have been saved from starvation?
What if the Hearst papers had not promoted war with Spain by their “Remember The Maine” writings? What if it had been emphasized and widely reported that the German government had warned that the Lusitania was subject to attack? The German government actually placed ads in newspapers warning of attack.
What if Huns impaling babies on bayonets or Iraqis taking babies out of incubators or Assad gassing his people with Sarin gas or Saddam Hussein's WMDs had been shown to be false? Not only were these lies not exposed, but were widely reported as factual by the dominant press agencies. There are always a few voices of truth crying in the desert, but they have no audience except a few people who make themselves students of what is happening.
The dissemination of lies is not the entire problem, the suppression of the truth is the opposite problem. It's a problem that has been around for a long time. In 1883, John Swinton spoke these words at the Journalists Gathering at New York's Twilight Club:
"There is no such thing in America as an independent press, unless it is in the country towns. You know it and I know it. There is not one of you who dare to write his honest opinions, and if you did you know beforehand they would never appear in print. I am paid $150 a week for keeping my honest opinions out of the paper I am connected with. Others of you are paid similar salaries for doing similar things. If I should permit honest opinions to be printed in one issue of my paper, like Othello, before twenty-four hours, my occupation would be gone. The business of the New York journalist is to destroy the truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to vilify, to fawn at the feet of Mammon, and to sell his race and his country for his daily bread.
"You know this and I know it, and what folly is this to be toasting an 'independent press.' We are the tools and vassals of rich men behind the scenes. We are the jumping-jacks; they pull the strings and we dance. Our talents, our possibilities and our lives are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes."
It is important for the Manipulators Of Society to keep truth out at all costs because truth has a power of its own. When it is seen it is usually recognized. As John Milton said in Areopagitica, “Let her [Truth] and Falsehood grapple; who ever knew Truth put to the worse, in a free and open encounter.” Any error can be discovered and corrected if open debate is permitted.
When some person or entity wants to prevent the spread of “misinformation” or “disinformation” it is almost certain that they are protecting their lies under the guise of “fact checking” or protecting the public.
Truth is the most important component of an argument. If you have to lie, there is something wrong with your position. One lie detected casts doubt on everything else you say.
Writing around A.D. 300 Lactantius says what is applicable for all times:
“For when I know that the greatest orators have often been overcome by pleaders of moderate ability, because the power of truth is so great that it defends itself even in small things by its own clearness: why should I imagine that it will be overwhelmed in a cause of the greatest importance by men who are ingenious and eloquent, as I admit, but who speak false things; ...”
