A nation of liars--well, on one side, at least

Victor Davis Hanson notes that far too many of the "elites" of the U.S. are chronic pathological liars.  He wonders how this came to be.  Some (edited) highlights below:

"Recently the attorney general of the U.S. lied to Congress:  He said he knew of no citizen’s communications that his department had monitored.  This was a flat lie.

In fact, Holder knew that his subordinates were targeting reporters.

He lied again about the New Black Panthers case, swearing that there was no political decision to drop the case. Not true; the decision to drop the case came from the top.

He lied yet again--to Congress, under oath--about when he first learned about the gun-running operation called Fast and Furious.

The director of national intelligence also lied, under oath, to Congress.  Later, James Clapper admitted that he had given the “least untruthful” account.  Oooh, congratulations James, that's soooo admirable.

Still later Clapper admitted that he had just flat-out lied to Congress. Was he disgraced? Fired? Further confirmation of his “largely secular” lie?  Nope.  He was not punished or reprimanded in any way.  And equally important, not a single member of the Lying Media so much as batted an eye.  Yet when W was president the Lying Media constantly shrieked about how horrible...awful!...ghastly!...invasive! it was for the gummint to collect data on Americans.  Why did they change their position completely?

Elizabeth Warren invented an entire pedigree.  Her blatant lie won her a Harvard tenured professorship--and later, even after her lie became widely known, a U.S. Senate seat.

Harry Reid knew nothing about Mitt Romney’s tax returns, but lied about them anyway.

Barack Obama has also lied--a lot, and from the very beginning of his national career. He looked right into the cameras and denied he knew Bill Ayers well.  Ayers, he said, was "just some guy from the neighborhood." Same denial about Tony Rezko.

He lied when he promised, as a newly elected senator (his first national post), he said he wouldn't seek the presidency.   And of course since he had all of zero experience nationally when he was elected to that position, everyone fully believed him.

Lied when he said he'd close Guantanamo.

Lied when he said he'd cut the deficit in half in his first four years.  His actions suggest he never had any intention of even trying to do so.

He's lied about the circumstances of America’s gas and oil production surge — which occurred despite his anti-oil policies, not because of them.

He lied about his involvement in the radical ACORN community action group, and fabricated about his father’s and grandfather’s World War II involvement.

Tally up what Barack Obama said about his health care initiative, the border fence, and his fiscal policy. Almost all of his major assurances proved to be...lies.

He even lied about much of his own biography.

But why focus only on politicians like Holder, Clapper, Warren and Obozo?  The Lying Media routinely peddles the most infamous lies--provided the lies are of a class that could be called “noble untruths."  For example: ABC manipulated a video to show George Zimmerman without much injury to his head, and no one seemed the least bit perturbed.

NBC edited an audiotape to suggest that Zimmerman was a racist.

The New York Times even invented a new journalistic category, “white Hispanic,” to suggest Zimmerman was really mostly white.  Of course the paper would never suggest that Barack Obama wasn't African-American, nor call Bill Richardson a “white Hispanic.”  You might ask 'em why the different standards.

They won't respond, but you might enjoy asking 'em anyway.

The Lying Media blythely printed the content of a letter allegedly written by the prosecution's star witness, Rachel Jeantel, and only at the trial did Zimmerman's defense team manage to show--live, in front of the cameras, and thus impossible to ignore--that Jeantel didn't write it--and couldn't even read "cursive" writing.

Moreover, in her paid-for after-trial interviews she admitted she lied in her initial testimony to investigators.


Virtually every one of the Obozo administration's current scandals involves lies. No unbiased, rational person believed Lois Lerner's declaration--echoed by the White House--that the IRS targeting of Tea Party groups was entirely the decision of rogue agents from a Cincinnati field office.

No one believes the government's explanation that the attack on our people in Benghazi--that killed four Americans--was triggered by a bad video on the internet, which  Susan Rice had assured the nation on all the Sunday talk shows.



Why do so many on the left routinely lie?  Because they get away with it.  And are actually rewarded for it.  We've become a society in which ends are all that matter--no matter what ghastly things one did to accomplish them.  Barack Obama is president — and who now cares about the details of exactly how that happened?

A century ago, if a politician repeatedly uttered lies he'd be impeached and shunned.  But when Joe Biden habitually makes things up the media just shrugs and says “that’s just ol’ Joe.”

Hillary Clinton lied--a lot--when she was first lady about documents under subpoena. She lied as a candidate about coming under hostile fire in the Balkans. And she lied as secretary of State about the train of events in Benghazi.

And? Those lies were either forgiven or quickly forgotten.  Or they contributed to the “complex” persona who--astonishingly--is among the most widely admired in the U.S.

It's often said that no one can fool history, especially in the age of the Internet.  But the truth is that liars on the left liars routinely not only get away with it, but also get a short-cut to fame and wealth.

If Susan Rice had gone on television and confessed the details about the status and recent history of the security measures in Libya she likely would have been out of a job — either by being fired or by the failure of her president to win reelection.  Once again, lying paid off big-time: Obama was re-elected--and appointed Rice to be national security advisor.

Decades ago lying was considered bad, and a person who was shown to be a liar was disgraced and usually shunned.  But today lying almost always pays off for the liars--at least if they're Democrats/liberals.

You might consider how that came to pass, and what it means for our future.