The Government Also Taught Us to Lie
The Government Also Taught Us to Lie
Paul Craig Roberts
Yesterday I wrote about how the government taught us to steal.
Today the lesson is the government taught us to lie.
Can any reader identify one issue of consequence about which the government told us the truth?
World War I? World War II? The Korean War? The Vietnam War? The assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, his brother Senator Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King? 9/11? The war in Afghanistan? The Iraq War? The destruction of Libya? Assad’s use of chemical weapons? Covid? The Covid “vaccines”? Ukraine?
Readers will find it easier to add to this list than to find one instance of the government telling the truth.
Yet, despite government’s 100% lie record, people always fall for the next lie, and by the time they catch on that they again have been played for suckers, the government has moved on.
It is very difficult to correct the lies. History books, historical novels, and movies preserve them. Professors protect their human capital by holding on to them. It is much easier to give the same lectures every year than to prepare new ones. And the human mind protects the lies. What people were taught many still regard as truth and they defend the “truth” as taught to them from the real truth that usually takes a generation or several to become established. By the time the real truth is known, most everyone involved at the time is dead, and the newer generations don’t understand its relevance.
American democracy itself has become a lie. Democracy is based on self-rule via elected representatives. But the representatives are not only dependent on votes but also on campaign contributions, and these mainly come from organized interest groups who purchase the representative’s election for him by paying the advertising bills and various fixes. The representative owes his position to the few who financed it, and his loyalty is to them. He does what he can for his constituents, but never at the expense of the interests of the groups that finance him.
Not long ago the Supreme Court ruled that campaign contributions are a First Amendment right and that interest groups have the constitutional right to purchase the government which ends up serving their interest rather than the people’s. As long as this system remains in place, it is impossible for American democracy to represent the people.
Possibly ordinary people had better representation under the aristocracy and English Kings than under American democracy. The kings and aristocracy had the government by birthright and did not need to sell their souls to interest groups. Therefore, they were free to consider the people’s interests and did so, as the continuation of the country depended on ordinary people willing to behave and to do service. When the king and aristocracy became too absorbed in their privileges and neglected the people, the French king and aristocracy became victims of the 1789 French Revolution.
These aristocratic regimes also benefitted from racial or ethnic loyalty. An Englishman was an Englishman whether he was a descendant of Celts, Anglo-Saxons or Normans. A Frenchman was a Frenchman.
To whom are a people in a diverse, multicultural Tower of Babel loyal? This is the question of our time for every Western country.
During the earlier part of my life I lived in an America in which a person’s word defined him. Contracts were handshakes on a verbal, unrecorded, deal. A person who failed to honor his word was ruined.
Twenty years ago I discussed contracts with corporate lawyers. They told me that today a contract is meaningless and unenforceable. They still draw up contracts to record what is expected by the parties to the contract against the outside chance than the parties intend to honor the document that they signed. Apparently, corporations suffer no damage from failure to honor contracts as profits are universally regarded as more important than one’s word.
Source: Paul Craig Roberts
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