Liar Liar

Everyone hates a liar—from Democrats sporting “Bush lied” bumper stickers to Republicans swapping jokes about the definition of “is.” The instinct has outlived cultures and empires, endured cruelty, witnessed glory, and even in our post-Christian, biblically-illiterate, truth-denying age holds deceptive hearts accountable, as if the legend of the “imago dei” might be more than myth, and we have in fact been created by the God who is Truth.

With or without the Ninth Commandment, we will not soon forget the lesson of the past few weeks. And the lesson is that Communists lie. Gratuitously. Unashamedly.

Whatever China’s hopes for the 2008 Olympics, the debacle has not helped the Communist government’s international reputation. From fake fireworks to a fake singer to underage gymnasts, the spectacle serves as a warning to the increasingly bureaucratic governments of the West of how an authoritarian state censors truth and confuses information with propaganda. One blogger goes so far as to say that cheating has become an epidemic in Chinese culture. At any rate, honesty has never been the easy road to success, post-Cultural Revolution. If the Communist Party forbids visiting Olympic athletes from speaking their opinions, imagine the rolls of duct tape it must be using on its own people.

To the north, the Russians have been telling some fibs of their own. Though officially no longer Communists, Putin and Co. might as well have painted U.S.S.R. on the tanks rolling deep into Georgia, the warpath paved with lie after lie and broken treaty after broken treaty. The crisis felt like a George Orwell novel, as Moscow sent its solders onward to force a Georgian ceasefire the Georgians had already commenced. That the alleged “ethnic cleansing” of separatists never occurred hardly came as a surprise, as Moscow’s true ambition—the restoration of empire—was painfully clear to every nation crouching in the shadow of Russia’s borders. Old habits die hard. And now, to add insult to injury, Putin is making the groundless accusation that the U.S. incited the Georgian war to help a candidate win the presidential election.

As America wrestles with opinion-stifling euphemisms such as the “fairness doctrine” and “hate speech,” we dare not forget the lie-deterring benefits of a free press. In liberty as in bondage, lies will be told, but where there is freedom, the chance exists that the lies will be exposed for what they are. I make no philosophical claim to an innate human right of expression. My point is more practical. And the point is that Communists lie. Or to put it broadly, governments that control the flow of information have scant incentive to tell the truth.