The title of this diary has a negative value. Most folks would agree with that. Lying is bad. Which is why folks who do lie believe they are not lying. It's not lying if you've used some half crazed bastardization of logic to convince yourself that that which you claim is somehow the truth.
While this diary was inspired by a collection of lies still residing up there on the rec list, this diary is not about HRC.
This diary is about lying and what it means to lie.
Friedrich Nietzche once wrote -- one of his half-assed aphorisms -- "There is an innocence to lying in that it shows good faith in a cause." Basically. A willingness to lie about something is, if anything, a sign of your faithfulness to a specific cause.
On the surface, I guess that would make sense. We all know the bush admin are liars. Even moderate repugs I talk to,.... they know the bush admin is an admin predicated on lies. (They don't really care. They just want their tax cut.) Mathews has trafficked in such lies lately.... While he's been able to pin down the consequences of lying, he is basically setting down the premise that lying to start a war is a political reality of sorts.
Bill Clinton was a liar. He lied about Lewinsky, was caught in the lie, and then fessed up. Bummer for him, i guess.
Of course, everyone knows Kennedy had affairs, but no one ever investigated those affairs, so he was never put in a position to lie about them. So Kennedy ... isn't a liar.
Nietzche's aphorism just isn't absolutely wrong... there is at least one thing it draws some attention to.
It should be of immense interest to all of us to ask questions. If we know we've been lied to, the questions have to be asked....
What is being hidden??
What is the CAUSE behind the lie?
and then we ask ourselves: do i agree with that cause??
And it is here that many lies are forgiven and many lies are not. Lies are about causes as much as anything else.
But i want to offer some counterpoint to Nietzche's aphorism.
In the end, I think, lying betrays the cause the liar wants to support.
Lying is this: Lying is the admission that your cause does not stand on it's own. Lying betrays a lack of confidence one has in the truth to support their objective.