Victor Davis Hanson writes Lying for the Cause in The National Review.  I was considering a piece on the recent accumulation of lies befalling the progressive movement, but there is nothing I could write than could touch Hanson’s piece.

Excerpts: (but do read the whole article)

Four, liberal lies are cheap. They by intent turn attention to easy icons rather than the more difficult and complex paradoxes of the human condition that defy easy sloganeering or cookie-cutter big-government solutions. By iconizing Michael Brown or Trayvon Martin, the black political elite avoids the intractable problem of the violent death of over 6,000 black youths per year, the vast majority killed by other blacks. Blaming stereotyped white racist cops for less than 200 deaths per year serves as an exculpatory salve for not having a clue how to stop the near-genocidal shooting of inner-city young black males. Rich white kids march and scream at police barricades about law enforcement’s supposed racism, but they do not march into the inner city to protest the mass killings of young blacks, or for that matter go into the inner city much at all. What could they do or say, within their own political world views, to help prevent the epidemic of violent death unleashed on young black males?

Al Sharpton can get rich shaking down the establishment with the always implied message that the alternative to his own de facto protection racket is burning stores in Ferguson. Jesse Jackson and Louis Farrakhan have no clue how to restore the black family, create an urban entrepreneurial class, or reduce black illegitimacy and crime rates to the levels of other minority groups. In exasperation, it is simply far easier — and more lucrative — to scream about an impending race war or suggest the grand jury is little more than a Jim Crow–era lynch mob.

For these reasons and more, either liberal mythography is not seen as lying, or it is at least more advantageous and more lucrative than the truth. And so we will see more of it.

HKO

At the heart of modern progressivism is an “ends justify the means” mentality.  Lies are merely myths to serve a greater purpose.  Facts only have value to the extent that they serve the preferred narrative. Emotionally inciting anecdotes have more value than carefully considered analysis.  Intentions are of far more value than accountability or results.

 

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