Chapter 12 of Sissella Bok's book (1999 edition),
Lying: Moral Choice in Public and Private Life, focuses on the rationales and consequences of governments and politicians lying to the public for its own good. In general, Bok finds good reasons to not lie to the public for its own good, except possibly in rare, extraordinary circumstances. She lays out the main excuses for lies like this: “.... three circumstances have seemed to liars to provide the strongest excuse for their behavior -- a crisis where overwhelming harm can be averted only through deceit; complete harmlessness and triviality [of the lie]; and the duty to particular individuals to protect their secrets.”
She rejects all three defenses for lies as almost always inadequate because lies easily and usually expand to more lies that create harms of their own that outweigh whatever good there may have been. Lies often beget more lies and that may
decrease belief in truth for most people.
That is just human biology. She also points out that when the liar’s rationale for lying is examined closely, is it usually far less compelling than the liar asserts. In other words, liars tend to lie about why they lie. All three rationales constitute often overlapping streams of lies that can flow together to “form the most dangerous body of deceit of all.”
Bok argues that government and politician lies, allegedly to avert public harm from imminent threat, are usually intended to avoid official or personal embarrassment and/or crimes. The threats tend to be overblown or non-existent. Lies to protect secrets in the public interest tend to be excuses to hide and protect private gain. A problem that some liars suffer from is human bias. They underestimate or even completely reject the ill and morally corrupting effects of lies. Many liars have the arrogance to believe that if the lies are revealed, the public would not complain and might even be grateful to have been duped. Other liars know better, but don't let that to hold them back. Different liars operate on different levels of immorality.
In that regard, three wars are relevant, WW1, WW2, and Vietnam. Bok discusses WW2 and Vietnam. For WWI, the federal government mounted a massive propaganda campaign to coax isolationist America into the slaughter in the name of making the world safe for democracy. In WW2, FDR nudged isolationist America into accepting the war in a series of steps of deceit. In Vietnam, Johnson lied about wanting peace to win the election although he fully intended to escalate the war. Bok asserts that maybe FDR’s lies might be justified in view of the very real threat, but that was not close to the case for WW1 or Vietnam. Vietnam was purely for Johnson’s political career. Arguably, support for the war in Iraq was also grounded in lies to the American people, e.g., it will be over fast and not cost much in lives or treasure. Bok describes Johnson's deceit and its consequences:
“[Johnson repeatedly told the American people] ‘the first responsibility, the only real issue in this campaign, the only thing you ought to be concerned about at all, is: Who can best keep the peace?’ The stratagem succeeded; the election was won; the war escalated. .... President Johnson thus denied the electorate of any chance to give or refuse consent to the escalation of the war in Vietnam. Believing they had voted for the candidate of peace, American citizens were, within months, deeply embroiled in one of the cruelest wars in their history. Deception of this kind strikes at the very essence of democratic government.”
Bok also points out that government and politicians usually falsely believe that their lies will never become public.
An excellent example is the recent revelation that, after three of fighting for the documents in court, that the American government repeatedly lied to the American people about the dismal status of, and prospects for, the war in Afghanistan. Government fought hard to keep the American people deceived, but eventually the truth came out and more public trust in government was lost.
People cannot consent - power flows to the liar
Bok argues that when people are lied to, they cannot consent to what the lie leads to. Power flows from the people to the liars and the interests they protect. Most people believe that political candidates and government lies often and that alienates and leads many people to not vote or trust much or anything a candidate or government says. Lies damage democracy, honest governance, civil society and the rule of law. The power of political lies can be summarized like this:
“When political representatives or entire governments arrogate to themselves the right to lie, they take power from the public that would not have been given up voluntarily. .... But such cases [that justify lying] are so rare that they hardly exist for practical purposes. .... The consequences of spreading deception, alienation and lack of trust could not have been documented for us more concretely than they have in the past decades. We have had a very vivid illustration of how lies undermine our political system. .... Those in government and other positions of trust should be held to the highest standards. Their lies are not ennobled by their positions; quite the contrary. .... only those deceptive practices which can be openly debated and consented to in advance are justifiable in a democracy.”
No wonder that people distrust our democratic government and each other. We are awash in an ocean of unjustifiable political lies. Dark free speech is winning its endless immoral war against democracy, honest governance and the rule of law.
