The View From 1776

Lies and plenty of them

By Marie Jon

In Southern California, we have one of the largest county fairs, where there is always someone demonstrating a miracle knife that slices and dices.

As people watch the demonstration, it looks pretty good. Look at all the fruits and vegetables that knife can cut. We’ve all seen the guy on TV who sells products that can do unbelievable things. They all come with a 100% money-back guarantee.

However, there is just one problem. When you try to return things, you find that the guarantee policy isn’t as generous as promised. You realize that you’ve been snookered.

Official deception

In 1944, the United States was embroiled in World War II against Japan and the Germany. It would not be a stretch to say that our civilization literally hung in the balance. Our world would have been entirely different if our allies had lost.

Franklin D. Roosevelt was president and commander-in-chief. He was perceived as being pro-active and on top of his game. What the American people saw was a healthy, strong leader who would inspire our nation in one of its darkest hours. However, Roosevelt was an extremely ill man during the war. His team of advisers used every ploy to fool everyone into believing otherwise.

The media also hid the truth from the American people, who thought that their president was in excellent health. After all, he would have to be, to handle all the responsibilities that fell upon him.

Reporters willingly repeated the lies that Harry Truman gave them. He assured America that Roosevelt “looked great and ate a bigger lunch than I did.” Even Roosevelt’s doctors were telling the American public and the entire world a bald-faced lie. The president’s cabinet also knew the truth and hid it.

As the lie was perpetuated, Gen. Harry Vaughan, a personal friend of Truman, revealed the truth about the very same lunch: “I had no idea he was in such a feeble condition.” The whole administration covered up the fact that Roosevelt was dying. He had hypertension, heart disease, and acute bronchitis.

In 1945, Roosevelt died due to congestive heart failure. So they all lied, so what? It was war and after all, we were fighting the Nazis. If our government hadn’t lied, we all might be speaking fluent German or Japanese. Wasn’t it Churchill who said something to the effect of, “In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies.”

With all of the subterfuge used in covering up Roosevelt’s health condition, it certainly wasn’t lying under oath. That came much later during Watergate and the Clinton scandals. Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich is another lying, deceitful politician that we’ve not heard the end of.

During Roosevelt’s era, the lies made no difference, right? After all, it was done for the good of the country and for the fate of the free world.

The God of truth

Situational ethics is a study to help people reconcile the shady gray areas of life, and perhaps choose between the lesser of two evils. But there are no gray areas with God.

Jesus made some pronounced statements about liars back in His day: “You are of your father the devil, and the desires of your father you want to do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own resources, for he is a liar and the father of it” (John 8:44).

According to the Word, the devil is not only a liar, but the father of lies. God’s Word puts the sin of lying in very clear terms.

Though our salvation centers in the Lord’s sacrifice, the Ten Commandments play a pivotal role in the lives of Christians. They deal with our words and our actions. How we act in relation to God and others takes morality to a more profound and deep level than what we say.

Bearing false witness

In our postmodern world, few seem to believe in absolutes of right or wrong. Still, branding someone a liar is one of the worst things you can say about anyone. Nobody wants to be considered a liar. That is why it was so humiliating and so wrong when Democrats, for political reasons, called President G. W. Bush a liar.

The war in Iraq became a lightning rod against Bush, whom I admire as a true and faithful servant in his response to terrorism. Since 9/11, he has kept America safe from further terrorist attacks. Yet, there are those who think nothing of pushing the envelope with their insulting mantra: “Bush lied and people died.”

Bearing false witness against another has its consequences. Incendiary words allowed every two-bit dictator to show disrespect for Bush, and further degrade the presidency. The Democrats knew they were lying, but they didn’t care. They diminished both the president’s and our nation’s status.

Bush leaves office with a very low popularity rating in large part because of the one-sided, biased media.

You’ll soon find out just how pervasive the media has been in persuading America’s electorate. In the months to come, President-elect Obama will be spoken of in glowing terms. The drive-by media will continue to lie. As our country moves in the wrong direction because of Obama’s policies, only good writes-ups and happy talk will be heard from our “in-the-tank spinmeisters.”

Moral conscience

Though the world is telling us that right and wrong aren’t absolute, we intuitively know that lying is wrong. A while back, a political comedian wrote a book called “Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right.” What a not-so-subtle subtitle, but it kind of makes a point.

Indeed, Al Franken is considered by many to be one of the worst foul-mouthed liars. Maybe he will consider updating his book with a chapter dedicated to telling how he and the Democrat Party in Minnesota stole a Senate seat by voter fraud.

Many people who have a secular-progressive-atheistic worldview believe that the world’s existence began by pure happenstance. Our schools and higher learning institutions are not allowed to teach Intelligent Design, because it challenges the lie of evolution.

However, there is a ray of hope. Not all of today’s postmodernists think alike. Many of them also believe that lying is wrong. They are bothered when they tell one lie. Could it be that we are moral beings created by a God who gave us a conscience that tells us that lying is wrong?

We do not have to look very far to see the trouble this world is in because of lies that lead to other sins: “What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun” (Ecclesiastes 1:9).

The legacy of lies

You can’t wake up without hearing bad news that boggles the human mind — wars, man’s inhumanity toward others, crimes, calamities.

Arrogance, self-centered greed, and lying deceitfulness caused the Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac-Democrat Housing Debacle. Congressman Barney Frank and his buddies were in the front line that damaged our country’s economy. To this day, he denies they did anything wrong. Instead, the Democrats and the media feed us the lie that it was the Bush administration that caused the mess we’re in today.

Untruthfulness has immense potential for causing insurmountable damage. It’s obvious that no one likes getting lied to. It makes people feel like fools. They feel violated, cheated, and extraordinarily deceived. It’s not a good feeling.

For decades, the Israelis have been told there would be peace. However, there is no more trust left when trying to talk with Palestinians who would be more than happy knowing that every last Jew on this earth were dead. People of goodwill can’t barter with those who lie and have no respect for human life.

A courageous son of a Hamas leader gives us insight to what the tiny State of Israel is up against. “There is no chance. Is there any chance for fire to co-exist with water?”, said Mosab Hassan Yousef.

Throughout the Bible, we read one example after another of people who lied. The problems they caused were staggering then — and many of the same problems persist, in various forms, today.

Back to the future

As inauguration day draws near, the American people are ready to be comforted by an incoming president at any cost. They’d rather be spared the truth than to hear about hardships and sacrifices that are needed to fix our broken economy.

With no hesitation, Obama reaches “back to the future” to implement the same type of programs that failed our nation in the past. When more government jobs are created by means of higher taxes, less money is available to employ people in the more efficient private sector.

Consider the following excerpts from CNSNews.com:

“Obama’s ‘New Deal’ Not Likely to Cure Economy or Unemployment Rate, Free Market Economists Say:

“President-elect Barack Obama has announced an economic plan comprised of massive public works programs to stimulate the economy and create 2.5 million jobs, at an estimated cost of $1.2 trillion.

“Some analysts are calling it a New New Deal, comparing it to Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal response to the 1930s Depression. But government data show that FDR’s programs did not substantially reduce unemployment, and some economists think such programs actually prolonged the Depression and kept unemployment high.

“In a radio address on Saturday, available on his change.gov Website, Obama said that he and his economic advisers had crafted an economic recovery plan ‘that will help save or create at least two-and-a-half million jobs, while rebuilding our infrastructure, improving our schools, reducing our dependence on oil, and saving billions of dollars.’

“Robert Higgs, a senior fellow at the free market Independent Institute, told CNSNews.com that ‘Obama’s plan for a large public works program certainly resembles some of the Roosevelt efforts, especially in 1935-1940, under the WPA, the Works Progress Administration.’

“ ‘I think there’s a very high probability that this kind of proposal will actually make matters worse,’ said Higgs.

“Lee E. Ohanian, professor of economics at UCLA, agreed that Obama’s plan shared similarities with Roosevelt’s ‘New Deal,’ which expanded the federal government with the creation of 36 agencies, such as the Federal Emergency Relief Administration, the Federal Housing Administration, the National Industrial Recovery Act, the Public Works Administration, and the Social Security Administration.

“In addition, Roosevelt presided over the creation of the Civilian Conservation Corps, the National Labor Relations Board, the National Recovery Administration, the Tennessee Valley Authority, the United States Securities and Exchange Commission, and the Works Progress Administration.

“The Roosevelt administration launched those myriad programs to stimulate the U.S. economy out of the Depression and get unemployed Americans back to work, but data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show that the yearly rates of unemployment during the New Deal in the years before America entered World War II did not decline to the rates prior to the Depression.”

Promise of change

As the new administration comes into office, let us not forget that Obama promised America change and truthful transparency. Many doubt that he will be able to deliver what he has promised. He is the same man who embraced Rev. Jeremiah Wright for twenty years, and palled around with unapologetic home-grown terrorist William Ayers and had dealings with Tony Rezko. Taxpayer money was given freely to friends in Chicago. We’re sure to have an unbelievably interesting full four years.

With Obama’s finagling, history will repeat itself under the leadership of another big tax-and-spend Democrat who believes that big government is the answer for everything.

The Democrat Party has missed the mark. They have pulled the wool over the eyes of many and refused to understand that FDR’s policies prolonged the Great Depression by an educated guess of seven years. Despite all the accolades given to Roosevelt, prosperity eventually returned to the United States, not during his administration, but only after World War II.

America will not see positive changes. Between Obama’s poor domestic and frighteningly naive foreign policies, and the declining social mores, we will be pushed to the brink. It may take decades to recover from the damage caused by this extremely liberal administration.

“Rescue me, O Lord, from liars and from all deceitful people” (Psalm 120:2)

As President-elect Obama launches ‘Renew America Together’ service plan, learn what you can do. RenewAmerica.us has many well-thought-out strategies and common sense ideas to influence us for the good of our country. Please sign the pledge and get started with RenewAmerica.us-Activist Tools

Marie Jon is a political/religious-based writer and founder of http://www.DrawingClose.org — a sister website to RenewAmerica.us.