I did not have sexual relations with that woman. — President Bill Clinton
Nicholas R. Jeelvy’s recent Counter-Currents post, “The Elite Are Those Who Refuse to Lie,” got me to meditating about lying and liars.
From the “Good Book”:
These six things doth the Lord hate: yea, seven are an abomination unto him: a proud look, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood; a heart that deviseth wicked imaginations, feet that be swift in running to mischief; a false witness that speaketh lies, and he that soweth discord among brethren. — Proverbs 6: 19-19
Think about it for a moment: What the Lord doth hate reads like a generic job description for the abomination that is the upper echelons of our “proud-look” ruling class. All that’s missing is “other duties as assigned.”
Lying is the grease that lubricates the gears of the managerial state, a Big Brother devoted to the shedding of “innocent blood” (Iraq, Serbia, Afghanistan, Ukraine . . .) devising “wicked imaginations” (“white privilege,” “reparations,” “diversity is our strength”) and sowing “discord among brethren” (60 years of affirmative action, open borders).
Truth for the ruling class is an enemy. As dissidents on the Right, we, above all, regard ourselves as truth-tellers, which makes us the enemy. Being “the enemy” exposes us to the calumny, vituperation, and hatred — the ultimate psychological projection — of Big Brother.
Telling the truth and being honest is and has always been the bedrock of human decency and goodness. No one can ever be good without being honest. A dishonest person cannot ever hope or genuinely claim to be decent. Dishonest people — no matter how talented, intelligent, high-minded, or greatly intentioned they may otherwise be — corrupt themselves, soil their surroundings, and ruin the lives of people close to them, and often beyond. When dishonest people control collective enterprises, disaster unfolds. The normalization of pathology and indecency becomes routine.
Lies tear open holes in human relationships into which burrow copious forms of malignancy and perversity. Lies destroy the good things that take long, serious effort to build such as friendship, trust, cooperation, and affection. Lies harden the hearts of the deceived and turn any willingness to forgive into grudging suspicion and implacable resentment. Liars are reluctantly, if at all, forgiven because any confession or apology itself must fall under suspicion as a lie or a pose. A plea of “I am sorry” from a habitual liar elicits from the petitioned rejection or cynicism, not forgiveness. Marital infidelity, a crooked business deal, the betrayal of a promise – with each, someone looks into the eyes of someone else who trusts them, then lies.

You can buy Stephen Paul Foster’s novel Toward the Bad I Kept on Turning here.
Truth remains forever intrinsically superior to falsity,[1] a fact the underlying reality of which gives the formation and telling of the lie a paradoxical twist. The liar wants and needs to be taken as a truth-teller. The official Soviet news organ for seven decades consistently lied and distorted about nearly everything the government did. It was called Pravda, the Russian word for “truth.” “All the News That’s Fit to Print” has been the famous slogan of America’s Pravda, the New York Times, since 1896 and is a mockery of the debased state American journalism.
The lie succeeds only if it evades its essence and fronts itself as the truth. To be successful — that is, to be believed — a liar must be perceived to be the opposite of what he truly is. Yet, the liar cannot help but fear and shun the truth. He inevitably comes to loathe the truth-teller for being what he himself can never become, and thus will resort to the self-righteous indignation, defamation, and vituperation that are his stock-in-trade. The truth-teller becomes the object of fear and resentment because he threatens to expose and undo the liar. Since no one believes a liar, he, knowing what exposure means to him, harbors malice toward truth-tellers — those he willfully impersonates, but those whose ranks he can never join. The Left’s long history of defamation and hatred likewise comes from its lying and the liar’s natural fear and loathing for the truth-teller.
Like everyone, however, the liar deeply resents being lied to — another indication, ironically laden, that truth remains inherently superior to falsity. The liar will always demand the truth from others, but reserve for himself the advantages and flexibilities of deceit. “Liars share with those they deceive the desire not to be deceived.”[2] The liar himself will never cease to employ the opprobrium “liar,” even though he is one himself.
Lying is also a host for other parasitic vices. To a lying disposition, many other character defects, failings, and corruptions attach themselves and feed off of it: cowardice, envy, greed, opportunism, and arrogance. Lies advance the schemes of cheaters and smooth the way for the vengeful, the fakers, and the shirkers of responsibility to have their way and evade detection and condemnation. Lies are essential to the success of collusion, bribery, political corruption, and tyranny. They are the indispensable tools of criminals used to set up their victims and shield their deviance from scrutiny. The child-seducer, the con artist, the fraudster, the swindler, the bribe-taker, the perjurer — all resort to lies in order to achieve their ends, gratify gross impulses, trample, defile, steal, and ultimately to escape detection and rightful punishment. Lying is also closely linked with fanaticism, because the fanatic subordinates everything, including a regard for facts and truth, to the advancement of his cause.
Everyone lies sometimes. Most people, I believe, lie sparingly, reluctantly, with embarrassment, with fear of detection — and most are probably poor at it. Physiology, the blush, makes it especially hard for some. “Good lying” usually requires practice, although like many other human activities, some people are naturally better at it than others. Some even seem to be born liars.
While everyone has likely lied at some point, not everyone is a liar, however. Some lies are benign. Some are even kind. Some are necessary. A liar, however, is a different sort of creature: someone who has lying embedded firmly and deeply in his character. The confirmed, artful liar achieves his success and builds his life around lying. He cannot breathe without routinely mangling and twisting the truth. I have met and observed people like this, some in very high places. They are often intelligent, charming, and even charismatic, but virtually everything they say in some way effaces the truth, distorts reality, and deceives.
Liars achieve success — that is, the lies they tell are taken to be true, and they are perceived as truth-tellers because most people operate on a daily routine with the assumption and trust that those around them are in fact truth-tellers. Thus, one grimly contemplates and rues the opportunism and predation of the liar who takes full advantage of others’ natural trust of others. All successful liars are in a sense “confidence men,” individuals who prevail in deceit because they usurp others’ good faith and turn it into a lamentable defect or lapses of judgment. The so-called Fourth Estate, in its tergiversation from a guardian to a state propaganda arm, has been an ongoing betrayal of the trust and good faith of the American people.
The real liar lies reflexively, but with skill and audacity. He performs with ease, confidence, and at times evinces a self-righteous indignation to help sell his evasions and deflect scrutiny. Successful lying and the confidence that arises from it breed arrogance — that “proud look” — and so sometimes the liar lies even when he does not need to: from habit, for practice, or just for fun. The career of the accomplished liar often follows a trajectory of increasingly ambitious mendacity fueled by his growing confidence in his lying skills, his imagined superiority, and his disdain for those dupes who believe him. In contemplating such an individual over time, one can observe a mounting arrogance, personal recklessness, and contempt for the boundaries of conduct that are enforced by probity and integrity among most people.
When liars face exposure for what they are, however, they often become emotional. Sometimes they go on the offensive. They fume with a feigned indignant posture. They accuse and malign those who have exposed them with more lying.
The liar’s exposure is two-layered: the fact that he lied, and the lie itself. To watch a liar exposed is a singularly pathetic and revolting experience. “What difference does it make now?” The character of the exposed liar, once it is opened for inspection, often reveals itself in its ruptured, conflicted state as he attempts to both deflect and bear responsibility at the same time. One then may likely hear “I made mistakes” — a complete and deliberate perversion of the term, continuing even in confession the liar’s resolute dishonesty with his evasion of responsibility. Lies are released intentionally, while mistakes may be due to a myriad of factors such as carelessness, misperception, poor ability, or lack of competence. Or, “mistakes were made” — the resort to the passive voice and the implicit denial of an intentional agent. One rarely hears a direct confession to a lie — “I lied about that,” or “I was a liar,” or even less likely, “I am a liar.” You will never hear this from anyone. It seems easier for someone to admit to almost anything else, or confess to any other defect — “I cheated on my wife,” “I stole the money,” “I am an alcoholic” — than to confess to being a liar.
Honesty is also the bedrock of institutional and organizational decency and integrity. Institutions and organizations that are led by liars amplify and compound their leaders’ personal dishonesty, and stamp it upon their operations. A large part of organizational success depends upon mutual trust, both within the organization and in its external relationships. Lying breaks that down. Institutionalized lying pushes the institution into dysfunction, and sometimes into fatal pathologies. Institutional missions are eroded. The goals are compromised, and the achievements are tainted or fail to materialize altogether. The dishonesty leads to intrigue, and creates layers of mistrust and openings for opportunism. Cynicism abounds.
Not surprisingly, people who have been lied to turn bitter and mistrustful. When lying becomes routine and expected, the purest, rawest cynicism inevitably follows in its wake. Cynicism is indiscriminate revenge taken against liars, institutions, and practices that are immersed in lies. A spouse who has been lied to may not just give up on the deceitful mate, but may turn against the institution of marriage itself. The lying spouse has injured his mate and soiled the institution.
A cynic is one who has given up on the truth. He sees everyone as a liar, a fraud, or a dupe. The cynic, unlike the skeptic, is a believer, but can only bring himself to believe the worst of others. The dupe’s failure is one of excessive credulity, an eagerness to believe a lie, or a lack of critical judgment. The cynic’s failure is to give up on the possibilities of honesty and integrity, and to needlessly concede the entire expanse of humanity to the liar and his dupes.
When a society’s institutions are corrupted, when truth-tellers are defamed, or when the truth simply becomes the official propaganda pronouncement of the moment, eventually no one can trust anyone. Suspenseful anticipation of the next turn in the propaganda saps energy and exhausts resources. With massive, institutional lying, the power-brokers ultimately become increasingly repressive and reckless.
The Polish philosopher Leszek Kolakowski writes that in totalitarian societies, lying is a routine state function:
Versions [of truth] are released for the people from above and can be altered the very next day. There is no reliable criterion of truth apart from what is declared truth at any moment. Thus, the lie in fact becomes the truth, or at any rate the distinction between truth and lies, in the ordinary sense of these words, disappears. This is the great triumph of socialism in the sphere of knowledge: to the extent that it demolishes the notion of truth, it cannot be accused of lying.[3]
Kolakowski was a post-war witness to the Sovietization of his country and the envelopment of its people and institutions in a pervasive system of collective dishonesty. He was a brilliant young philosopher who was part of the academic establishment, but who was eventually unable to remain a part of a dishonest, fraudulent system. As an undaunted truth-teller, he was cast out of the Party and forced into exile.
Kolakowski, writing of twentieth-century Soviet rule, ended up describing twenty-first-century America as well. The Soviet Union was a vast empire built on lies. The American empire is run by liars. As Right-wing dissidents, in this time of complexity and uncertainty, how can we combat the perplexity that complicates our lives and causes anguish and despair? The first step is to refuse to believe what the regime’s spokesmen tell you is true. Always ask yourself: cui bono? Who benefits from you believing what they say?
Refusing to believe is an act of courage and independence. Don’t surrender to the social blackmail: “We won’t approve of you!” “Non-believers are not welcome here.” Remember: It is important not to be a fool. Fools are easy to manipulate. It takes effort not to be one.
Seek out people — wise people, smart people — you trust who are non-believers. Listen to what they say. Take comfort. They have taken that step before you, and will help point the way and give you confidence that you are in touch with the truth — and with reality.
* * *
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Notes
[1] See Sesselia Bok, Lying, Moral Choice in Public and Private Life (New York: Pantheon, New York, 1978), p. 50: “. . . before we begin to weigh the good and the bad aspects of a lie, the falsehood itself is negatively weighted; while such a negative weight may be overridden, it is there the outset.”
[2] Bok, Lying, p. 23.
[3] Quoted from Dmitri Volkogonov, Autopsy of an Empire: The Seven Leaders Who Built the Soviet Empire, Harold Sukman, editor and translator (New York, Free Press), p. 393.
18 comments
Bravo Mr. Foster. You nailed it as always! My mother used to say “when you catch a liar you can guarantee he’s a thief among other things.”
I’m sure what brought all of us here was the realization that everything we were being told is horseshit. Once one has his Aha moment, all the dominoes begin to fall. I think the Rosa Parks fairy tale got me started.
You’re exactly right to not believe anything you’re told. Remember what The Exorcist said to Father Damien. “He mixes lies with the truth to confuse us.” Great job my friend!
Thanks, Fred. I much appreciate your comments and encouragement.
You’re welcome Stephen. I read it a second time it was so good.
Great article, Stephen. One of the most insidious species of liars is the pious fraud, who lies for “unselfish” motives. Religion and political partisanship are the usual excuses. Twitter is the first place that people rush to post dishonest partisan spins on current events, since if they seem serviceable they will spread virally.
When I was a Christian, the evidence for the fallen nature of Homo sapiens was all around me. I used to joke that it was the only doctrine that required no faith to believe in.
But I chafed at the grim notion that the fallen world lay under the power of Satan, the Father of Lies. Prescinding again from divine revelation, it has become a mere fact of observation that we live inside a Russian doll empire of lies.
Switching sectarian metaphors a bit, I have come to feel like an atheist in Mecca.
John 8:44
“Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it.”
Exactly
The lies we tell ourselves and our loved ones are the most destructive. The lies of leaders are expected and exposed daily. My own have nearly driven an irreparable divide in my relationships. There is time to recover, but it truly never feels right or good. I don’t think the article looked at this personal aspect of lying quite enough. I don’t usually lie at work or with strangers. Yet I’ve done so with family for decades. It saddens me when I think about it.
“I don’t think the article looked at this personal aspect of lying quite enough.”
Yes, I was thinking mostly about lying done by ideologues (“pious frauds,” as Greg noted), fanatics and crooks. Personal lying in my view is more ethically complicated. Truth can be brutal and so, how brutal can (should) you be with people you care about? Immanuel Kant is famous (infamous) for his application of the categorical imperative that forbids lying — ever — his hypothetical example of not lying to “the murder at the door” asking the whereabouts of his intended victim. I’d lie to the guy at the door and revisit the CI looking for a loop hole.
The two most common personal lies are to save face for oneself and to spare the feelings of others. Sometimes the same lie can do both. When someone asks you about your day and you say that you are fine when actually you are considerably embarrassed by a dumb mistake you made, I see nothing wrong with that. You don’t have to share your embarrassment or burden your friend with sympathizing with and reassuring you.
But I think the mark of a true friend is not sparing your friend’s feelings and risking a bit of upset if the truth really needs to be said, eg if someone is making a serious mistake.
An example of the truth coming back to bite me. As a basketball referee we usually have small talk about how our season has gone so far. Me being mister truthful that night bared my grievances to a guy I’d worked with for years. Of course it got back to leadership and my goodwill earned from years went up in flames. Instead of the usual everything is fine I decided to let it out. They knew I knew the truth and they used it to push me further down. Sometimes discretion is the better part of valor no? I ended up in a better place in the long run but it is amazing how a few words spoken at the wrong place and time can cause immense damage.
I really don’t have a problem with lies that are designed to spare someone’s feelings or simply to save time and/or embarrassment. And the reverse is also true: when I ask someone how their day is, I expect them to say “good” or “fine” or, at the worst maybe, “meh, not great, but I’ll live.” I certainly am not asking because I want to hear all of the sordid details of their shitty day. I’m just being polite, and I expect them to return my politeness with a nice, comfortable, white lie. It’s a ritual, not an interrogation.
But I counter with what is the point of asking if you don’t have a sincere interest in how their day is going? Or in my case my season? If you don’t want to actually hear about it you probably shouldn’t ask. I’m for being polite but also dislike the disingenuous approach knowing they aren’t actually interested.
I think this attitude is overly prissy and faux high-minded. How are you? Wie geht’s? Comment allez vous? Como estas? These phrases and their stock responses are the basic building blocks of social interaction in most, if not all European tongues. Very few people abuse these challenges with other than fairly stock responses. Of those who do some will be in genuine distress and you have the option to try to help them or not. Some will be self-absorbed ruminators. You’ll probably give them a wide berth in future, but I doubt it’ll take more than than a minute to extricate yourself.
Very important subject, Mr. Foster. Big Jewish lies and little harmless lies.
I despise liars, especially moral cowards who like to say they are in “this thing of ours,” and when we tell them unvarnished truths, dispelling big lies, such as these examples:
1) there is no equality among individuals nor among races;
2) the Jews’ holocaust story is hogwash;
3) that Jesus and his imaginary Jewish daddy up in the sky are not real, nor will they save our race,
… they know what we are telling them are truths and agree, but they don’t have the courage to repeat these same truths to others; they are liars by omission. That is the definition of moral cowardice. Telling the truth is our best weapon: Our Weapon: The Truth | National Vanguard
Under that image of Lying Hillary you write, While everyone has likely lied at some point, not everyone is a liar, however. Some lies are benign. Some are even kind. Some are necessary. I’m reminded of the only TV commercial for GEICO insurance that I ever liked: “Honest Abe,” standing behind his wife, is asked by Mrs. Lincoln, facing her dressing mirror, if the dress she’s wearing makes her look fat. What is he to do? Her ass is a yard wide. He is in a quandary, and gestures to her without saying anything, showing his thumb and forefinger pinched about a half inch apart (i.e., like “maybe just a little bit, Dear”). That did him no good at all. Mary Todd marched off in a huff, her feelings hurt. Abe should have lied and told her, “No, dear it makes you look marvelous, enchanting.”
I enjoyed the article’s discussion of lying. It reminds me of the proverb:”A lie is going around the world while the truth is still putting on its pants.”
A superb piece of writing Stephen. I enjoyed that immensely. Yes, we are being ruled by the craven and corrupt. I’m reading Johnathan Bowden’s book at the moment – Western civilisation bites back. He considers ‘our’ position now. Our contemporary position being that of having to deny and disavow anything to do with European heritage and of white European heritage in particular. You moral message also resonates passionately. I sometimes think that hell is empty and all the devils are here; as Shakespeare once noted.
Thank you. This has been a very bad week. Yes, the devils are here and all around us.
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