Karl Marx embraced a principle that the end justifies the means. In other words you can lie when you want to win a victory for Communism. The Democratic Party and other left-leaning political groups embrace this principle as well. Communists prohibit nothing in pursuit of victory–betraying family, cheating, swindling, abusing, torturing, etc.

So, why preach against that? We all know lying is wrong including liars. And So how can preaching to a choir intent on singing out of tune have any influence?

But if some people have no integrity, why do their lies affect us? Isn’t it like setting a trap for birds while they watch? Are we dumber than birds if we trust them? Are their lies allowed?

Yet, in our desire to be civil and be accepted by society, we choose to lie to ourselves and tell ourselves we should trust the untrustworthy. Perhaps we think we’re being nice when we’re putting ourselves, our family, and others at risk. We injure our loved ones to spare the deceivers who have no intention of sparing us.

Let’s Be Honest: Lying is Not Allowed for Ourselves

If we don’t believe a liar, let’s be honest about it. Let’s put away our cowardice and admit that we don’t have reason to believe a person who we know has proven himself or herself willing to lie.

How do we know if a person is a liar? Well, it is not by some magic formula.

1. Have we heard them lie?
2. Did they deceive intentionally or make an honest mistake?
3. Can we be honest with ourselves about that?
4. Can we be brutally honest with ourselves and our assessment?
5. Are we honest out our assessment positive, negative, or uncertain?
6. Are we afraid to deal with an honest assessment of their integrity?

Perhaps our problem is our own honesty. It’s hard to assess someone else’s integrity when our cowardice drives us away from our own ability to be honest.

How to Call Out Lies

If the lie is obvious, and many political lies are, why not just call it out? What can be so uncivil about calling out a lie when they were uncivil enough to insult your intelligence with a very obvious lie?

For example, someone says, “Trump has lied 30,000 times” or 16,000 or some number of times. Isn’t it pretty obvious that the person is either concocting or repeating a lie? Did someone sit with a click-counter hitting the button and counting up, “Fifteen thousand nine hundred ninety-nine, sixteen thousand”?

If you say, “That’s a lie”, everyone will have reason to go, “Duh”. Right? If you call the person an idiot, that’s an ad-hominem. That won’t help. They might accuse you of taking them too literally. But what if you asked them, “Is lying allowed for you but not or Trump?”

How To Call Out Lies?

Why not think about some answers you might give instead? I doubt I have the best answers, but I could give it a shot and come up with a few possibilities.

• Wow–did you actually count them with a click-counter?
• Really? You mean he intentionally engineered that many attempts to deceive? No humorous exaggerations? No mistakes? Counted carefully with a counter to make sure he never got to 16,001? How many people were assigned to the task of counting and vetting each lie to make sure it was actually an attempt to deceive someone? Sixteen thousand? Really?
• Can you list them and tell me what they are? If Trump can say them and you can count them and vet them, I am sure you must be able to name them as well. Right? Or you wouldn’t really know that there were that many, now, would you?
• If you lied about Trump, is lying allowed?

The idea is that if they have a right to insult Trump’s integrity outright, then anyone should have a right if not a moral obligation to question their integrity to make sure Trump really deserves to be insulted.

Can you kind of get a feeling for the mendacity required to call someone a liar without knowing for sure that this insult is deserved?

Perhaps it isn’t the accused that lacks integrity but the accuser.