(LifeSiteNews) — That cooperation with falsehood – whether in the form of direct lying, endorsing lies, or deliberately turning a blind eye to them – is widespread in politics should be well known to anyone who has followed developments in the field even a little.
Lying has become so pervasive that it appears almost as a generally accepted part of the game. True, politicians often accuse one another of lying, yet in doing so they tacitly acknowledge that they themselves are, as a rule, guilty of it. Naturally, this is never admitted publicly.
As lying and, more broadly, cooperation with falsehood have been fundamentally normalized in politics, there exists a constant pressure to employ falsehoods as instruments of political struggle so as not to be outmatched by those who do so consistently. In this respect, falsehood in politics resembles doping in sport. Everyone seems to understand that using it is wrong, yet it is simultaneously argued that if one refrains from it while others do not, participation in the competition becomes pointless: defeat is inevitable. It is even said that one might as well retire from politics immediately.
Because the use of falsehoods often provides a short-term advantage – for instance, by aiding attacks on opponents or defending oneself against such attacks – it looks like an indispensable element of successful political competition. To make this seem more justifiable and to preserve a more pleasant self-image, one reassures oneself that we, unlike our opponents, employ falsehoods for noble ends. We use them for the good of the people and the state, in defense of light against darkness and, therefore, bear no moral culpability for lying. Thus, one arrives at the worn-out slogan that the end justifies the means.
Unfortunately, this is self-deception. It is appealing, as self-deception always is, but it produces the opposite of the intended result. Not only do all liars believe they lie for a good cause but lies remain lies regardless of the cause they are meant or said to serve. For what is a lie? A lie is the negation of truth, its absence. Lying always entails the denial, obscuring, or distortion of truth with the aim of misleading, manipulating, or otherwise deceiving. It induces others to believe that darkness is light – or at least that, in a given situation, there is no alternative to darkness. It claims that the only guide one can rely on in this gloomy labyrinth is the proclaimed “truth-teller” who is, in fact, the liar.
Habitual lying makes us liars
Moreover, lying is not something external to us that we can engage in without it altering who we are. On the contrary, one who begins to lie and does so regularly, or even habitually, without regret, becomes a liar – the embodiment of falsehood– regardless of how noble they believe the goals served by their lies to be. For one’s moral character, both vices and virtues alike, is shaped precisely through one’s actions, especially repeated actions.
This problem has not only a moral but also a deeper ontological dimension. If God, as the source of all existence, is the fullness of truth, then abiding in God presupposes abiding in truth. By lying, a person separates himself from truth and thus from God – separates himself from what truly is, from reality itself, and contributes to the disintegration of the order grounded in truth. Lying necessarily entails cooperation with evil, an opening of oneself to evil, for Satan is the Father of Lies. To open oneself to evil is to place oneself in its service – even when one persuades oneself that the lie is told for a good cause.
Although lying is expected to yield benefits in political struggle and may indeed do so in the short term, in the long run it produces the opposite effect. Liars inevitably lose trust, for trust can be placed only in those who are faithful to truth – that is, those of whom one can be confident that they do not lie as a matter of principle. Without the trust of the people, however, only tyrants who impose themselves through cunning and force can prevail in politics.
A growing web of falsehood creates an institution of lies
As a rule, lying is such a phenomenon that if one gives it a finger, it takes the whole hand – and eventually the soul. One lie leads to another, the second to a third, and soon lying becomes habitual, almost reflexive, employed whenever it appears advantageous – even in the absence of any apparent necessity, simply as a matter of convenience. Each new lie requires concealment by further lies, and thus a growing web of falsehood emerges, which may ultimately become institutionalized and passed on through hierarchical structures of loyalty. Gradually, a partisan and bureaucratic system is constructed to ensure the sustainability of foundational falsehoods.
The more falsehoods are employed, the more transparent this becomes to thoughtful and honest people. For liars, however, the opposite process unfolds: the more they lie, the less capable they become of recognizing both that lying is wrong and that their lies are obvious. In their own estimation, liars achieve ever greater mastery of their “art,” which in turn emboldens them to practice it even more – among other things, by covering up and justifying earlier lies with new ones. Even when they realize that more perceptive individuals see through their falsehoods, they turn away from them, raise the stakes, and exert themselves even more to keep the less discerning masses under the spell of their lies. Over time, the liar fails to notice that he no longer knows how to act in any other way than by lying – not only because this has become his standard toolkit but because it has become who he is as a person. No one can outrun one’s shadow.
Virtuous politicians vs. ‘the best’ politicians
In light of the foregoing, participation in politics can be understood as a kind of spiritual practice – an activity that requires daily ethical choices and thereby shapes the individual from within. It does so slowly, through repetition and often imperceptibly, and yet profoundly. Being a politician is not merely an office or role that one puts on in the morning like a garment and removes in the evening without being personally affected by it; rather, it is a condition that inevitably molds one’s thinking, attitudes, and character. Each time one supports a position that appears useful but is untrue, one distances oneself from truth as a person; conversely, each time one chooses fidelity to truth, despite the inconveniences it may entail, one’s moral backbone is strengthened. It is through the accumulation of these small, often outwardly unnoticed choices that not only the direction of political action is determined, but also the kind of person one becomes. These two aspects are inseparable.
It is therefore regrettable that those who are often considered the best politicians are simply those who lie with the greatest confidence, fluency, and persuasiveness. Such “mastery” is not a virtue but a technical skill that accelerates spiritual and moral decline – both at the level of the individual and of politics as such. In short, it is the process of silencing and ultimately killing one’s conscience. This is not a race worth entering, for the apparent victories it offers are always achieved at the cost of something far more important. If refusing to participate in such a game means the end of a politician’s career, then this is a loss worth accepting, since the scale of the alternative loss – the loss of one’s dignity – is immeasurably greater. It is therefore worth striving to establish – even on a small scale – the conditions for a principled rethinking of politics as such, grounded in fidelity to truth. Thus, politics might once again be understood not as a means of imposing personal or group interests through lying, deception, and manipulation, but as an art of serving the common good, and as its indispensable precondition, truth.
Politicians generally do not lie in order to protect the electorate and their interests. As a rule, lies are told deliberately and cynically in order to construct and cultivate a distorted self-image, to conceal the accumulation of earlier lies, and to realize ambitions for power. It is important to understand that liars dare to lie only because, for one reason or another, they regard the hearers of their lies as intellectually inferior to themselves. They do not merely consider their audience unworthy of the truth but treat them as either incapable of seeing through falsehood or incapable of responding to it adequately. As such, a successfully deployed or swallowed lie is, to a significant extent, also a demonstration of power – a confirmation of one’s superiority – just as the absence of protest against proclaimed falsehoods serves as a confirmation of either dull-mindedness or loyalty.
Society must refuse to cooperate with falsehood
In today’s political reality, lying is no longer merely the problem of individual politicians but a deeply entrenched element of political culture. It is tacitly accepted and tolerated as an inevitability. For this reason, improving the political situation cannot be achieved merely by changing parliamentary compositions or governmental power. What is needed is a principled societal turning point in attitudes toward falsehood. Politics does not have to be inherently dirty – at least not for everyone who participates in it. Yet anyone who wants to heal political culture must also refuse cooperation with falsehood – not as a tactical maneuver but as a matter of principle.
Ultimately, all of this can be reduced to a single question: is politics for us the art of serving truth, or the art of adapting to falsehood? All politicians answer this question through both their words and their actions – and every citizen bears responsibility for the answer they are willing to accept.
Varro Vooglaid is a Member of the Riigikogu, the Parliament of Estonia, and one of the founders of the Foundation for the Protection of Family and Tradition.