WHILE LISTENING TO some lawyers commenting on the obvious truth that Mark Meadows twisted his legitimate role as Chief of Staff to criminally participating in the planning of the January 6th insurrection into a proper function of a federal official it occurred to me that his claim has some of the same thinking behind it as the even more dangerous idea that someone has a "right" to lie. In fact, that his lawyer would ever leave him unaware of the obvious nature of the lie he has told in court that what he did was a legitimate function of a presidential chief-of-staff is a fine example of how the legal profession has digested that slogan and it makes them unable to appreciate that there is not only a difference between the truth and lies but that the difference is often of the greatest possible consequence. I hope he is successfully tried and convicted of perjury, though I hope even more that lawyers will stop reciting the terrible lie that someone "has a right to lie." It would seem that the rule of thumb under current notions of such things is that a lie is as good as the truth if you can work it the way you want it to. Such thinking would seem to be endemic to our legal system, yet people wonder at how Trump has managed to avoid conviction his entire privileged, rich-straight-white-male life.
I still keep hearing media lawyers like Maya Wiley use the pat phrase "has a right to lie," which it is so far beneath her to say, and many who are not usually at tall above saying such an untrue thing. It is insane that this many years into the deadly examples of why there is no "right to lie," Trump, Bush II (never forget how the Bush II regime lied us into what is still the biggest military-political disaster the United States ever entered into), Reagan's lies that fomented terrorist fascist movements in Central America leading to consequences that we are still dealing with, etc. That is well after the media itself, maybe the greatest source of that kind of criminally insane thinking, has finally noticed that lies are destructive of decent government and the greatest friend that fascism has had apart from armed violence.
Someone, someday, should make a real study of the price that American democracy has paid for the permission of the media to lie given to it by the Warren Court and expanded enormously by every subsequent arrangement of the Supreme Court, the Roberts Court accelerating the empowerment of lies like no other. It's probably at least as great as the enormous cost to American democracy and American decency that our indigenous form of fascism, white supremacy and racism has cost us. Which is not to underestimate the cost of male supremacy, the universal form of fascism that keeps half of the human population under the inhibitions of a reign of terror so ubiquitous that many Women think it's some kind of natural order that they have been gulled into rather liking. American racism is the evil fruit of lies.
There is no right to do something that is wrong.
That is a moral truth that should fall far more easily from the lips of civil rights lawyers, other lawyers, anyone who is entrusted to teach lawyers in any law school, it should be required to be posted in the front of every classroom in the country and preached from every pulpit. I would say that any school that wouldn't post it should be disqualified from presenting itself as a school, any denomination that wouldn't agree with it and so act should be defined as a pseudo-religious cult that shouldn't be allowed to pass itself off as a religion.
I've been having this argument long enough to know the moves of those who defend lying and the liars who lie.
What about lying to save the life of someone you know is in hiding from someone who will harm or kill them. The "is it wrong to lie to the Nazis about where the Jews are hiding" ruse.
Of course that is not a often encountered moral dilemma so easily 99% of the lying shouldn't be allowed to pass on that extreme exception. You could make up any possible hypothetical to demolish any possible assertion of morality. There are certainly times when it is morally responsible to kill someone, that doesn't make murder wrong, it's generally the wrong that makes killing a killer the right thing to do. It's the reason it's morally responsible to lie to a Nazi. Of course it's right to lie to the Nazis under such a circumstance BUT THAT IS A CONSEQUENCE OF THEIR FAR MORE CONSEQUENTIAL EVIL. I would point out that while it would be the right thing to do to lie to the Nazis like that IT'S A FAR DIFFERENT THING THAN CONSIDERING DOING THAT A "RIGHT". That the English language uses the same word for two quite different and far from equivalent ideas shouldn't lead us to pretend that the moral necessity of protecting would-be victims from their killers is the same thing as that the killers had a right to lie in order to whip up violence against those victims. Lying through the limits of our languages is a common form of lying to defraud us of the truth. Failing to navigate such features of language make us idiots such as so many base their professional lives on pretending to be.
It's a rather obvious truth that the empowerment of the Nazis was enormously facilitated by lies permitted to be told, THE MOST CONSEQUENTIAL OF THOSE TOLD IN THE MASS MEDIA and by journalists, lawyers, and, it should never be forgotten, academics, including respected scientists of of the time. It's as true that empowering American white supremacy from lies such as the pseudo-history of Gone With The Wind and other fiction and, more obviously dangerous, lies told as "news" was given "First Amendment" protection in ways that the very lives of the victims of lives never has been protected under the U.S. Constitution. We are idiots if we don't understand the malignant effect that lies spread in novels, plays, movies and other entertainment has in enslavement, oppression, murder and genocide. Though suppressing lies as "news" or "information" is and always has been a pressing issue.
What about people who tell lies because they believe they're true? Well, IF there is little consequence to such internalized lies there might not be any good in attaching criminal or administrative consequences to lies like that which are harmless in their effects. But it is certainly a moral good and it should be a legal duty to tell them the truth when those lies are spread casually. When they're spread by the mass media, sold to millions or even many thousands who are so gulled into believing lies are truth, the dangers of lies are enormous - Trump rose on such lies, Bush II sold the illegal invasion of Iraq which has to date resulted in hundreds of thousands to millions of deaths on such lies CARRIED WITH TOTAL IMPUNITY BY THE FREEST PRESS IN OUR HISTORY. To allow lies such as Trump pretends to believe in the belief that he will get off by that ruse - as it's clear his hireling lawyers are telling those stupid enough to take their word for it to tell lies like "I don't recall," is stupid and absurd. Yet you'll hear lawyers in the media pushing that line, too.
Lies told during the Covid pandemic cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of Americans, not a few people died because of lies told by Trump, by Republican governors such as those in South Dakota, Florida, Texas, etc. by media figures, by members of Congress and by those in the media and countless lying preachers on the make. One of those two towns over got People in his cult and out of it killed. They were sold by MDs and scientists and pseudo-scientists such as "Darwinian economists." I doubt there were many of those who ever lost their professional credentials or even faculty positions as a consequence of the most consequential lies they told on FOX Lies, CNN, etc. No doubt the media lawyers, even the supposed liberal ones would call that a "right to lie."
Getting back to the "lying to the Nazis" ruse above, the idea that such homicidal liars "have a right to lie" has killed a hell of a lot of People, so it has a demonstrated effect of doing exactly what the Nazis do. It is an enormous irony of the 18th century "enlightenment" pseudo-virtue that there is a moral duty to "defend to the death" a right to tell such malicious lies has the same effect as Nazism or any other oppressive dictatorial regime. It should never be forgotten that that great event of the "enlightenment" the French Revolution immediately turned into a reign of terror by serially elevated homicidal gangster factions of intellectuals who lied about each other and immediately sent their political rivals to the guillotine. I think the reign of terror is a short quick trip into what will come when such idiotic ideas such as that there is a right to tell lies gain hold. It was and still is a regular feature of "Marxist" regimes and, now, it would seem it's being proposed for whenever Republican-fascists (white supremacists) here take control.
I have pointed out that my opinion of lawyers fell enormously during the House Judiciary and Intelligence committee hearings in which it was the diplomats and the military officers testifying at professional and even personal risk to expose Trump's crimes and it was the lawyers who covered their asses. I believe such professional ass-covering is a large part of most legal educations. Like taking professional advantages and going for the deep pockets. During and after the Trump regime, hearing lawyers saying that someone "has a right to lie" has done nothing to revive my once better opinion of the profession.
Don't bother asking about my opinion of the alleged profession of journalism. It was listening to and reading the lies carried by the mass media, especially such allegedly august organs of it as NPR, PBS, the New York Times, etc. on the "people are saying" and "both-sides" excuses and tracing those back to the Sullivan Decision of the Supreme Court that opened my eyes to the basic dishonesty of our culture under "free speech-press" absolutism. The idea that you can long allow the publication of lies and not suffer enormous consequences is best illustrated to be a meta-lie by how white supremacy has flourished in the United States before and after the adoption of the Bill of Rights. There could never have been the oppressive violence against Black People, against Native Americans and others without the regime of lies that supported it. Subjugated populations, slaves then de facto slaves under Jim Crow - even after legal emancipation and the adoption of the Civil War Amendments* - would never have faced oppression without a tidal wave of lies. Lies fed the terrorism of the slave patrols (as promoted and protected by the 2nd Amendment), of lynch mobs, the KKK and all American fascist groups and gangs. Lies are the power behind Trumpism and Republican-fascism.
The pretenses of the legal profession and, especially, the courts are among the most consequential of lies. It is from such lawyers and judges and "justices" that the idea that someone can "have a right to lie" comes. It was a consequence of the idiotically truncated writing of the golden calf of American liberalism, The First Amendment, drafted by some of the most respected lawyers of the time. That it does not specify that there is a right to tell the truth but there is no right to lie is its major and glaring flaw. Another is that there is no such thing as a "right" which does not inhere to a living being, the "press" has no rights because "the press" is an artificial human construct. So is a religion. There may be a right for a person to believe what they choose to or to associate with others but that does not give their shared belief or an organization they want to associate in anything like a right to do something like discriminate when operating a public accommodation. I am inclined to suspect that some of the language of the Bill of Rights was inserted to thwart the rights of those who were enslaved by James Madison and the others who adopted the wording of them but I think much else was put in because they didn't really give it much thought. I don't think it's possible to hold other People as slaves without it totally corrupting the slaver. And some of the founders were quite OK with genocide, as well. I don't think there is any such thing as a racist or genocidalist who is safe for a democracy to enable and nurture. Or any whose moral or even political authority is safely held up as sacrosanct and above the strongest critical analysis.
Some of it was probably the casual adoption of slogans of "liberty" or "freedom" that didn't have much thought put into them, I don't remember ever hearing those associated with the less audience pleasing feature of responsibility. Such conventional slogans are used with little thought, certainly less thought than Supreme Court "justices" have put into twisting them in directions it's clear no one ever intended in the 1790s or even till 1964 and under which no sane person could still consider them as virtues. Such legalistic lying is certainly consequential. As consequential as that huge whopper put into American legal lore and practices that corporations enjoy "rights" such as the Roberts Court has put over the rights of natural human beings in their "religious liberties" codification of bigotry. Such lies make it clear that it's time for those of us targeted by the Supreme Court regime of lies, think seriously about these issues because it's clear, they're coming for us. Black People and their rights to full citizenship, Native Americans or even their lives, other targeted minorities, Women who are being denied the most basic of rights to determine what happens within their own skin, LGBTQ+ People. The old "civil liberties" lawyers and their slogans and come-ons are no help to us in the end, they have put the "right to lie" AND EVEN TO OWN AUTOMATIC WEAPONS of white supremacists, Neo-Nazis and others ahead of our very lives. They peddle as virtue their enablement of Nazis and the KKK and corporations to get us addicted to alcohol and opiates, etc. And addled by such slogans as I am critical of above, even sober American liberals suck it up like "free press" fentanyl. Even as it leads to the election of Republican-fascists who lose elections.
That old lie that there is a right to lie has had its trial in history and its results are obviously catastrophic. Whatever dangers that can be imagined-up by an acknowledgement that there is no right to lie are conjectural, the dangers of lies allowed is a clear and present danger. We can't live with a First Amendment that permits lying, especially in the mass media. Democracy can't survive it. Equality certainly can't, it has been the continual first casualty in the liars lies against the Truth and it has been the entire time the First Amendment in its present flawed form has been the law of the land.
* Which the Supreme Court has twisted out of any semblance of their obvious meaning and original intent, especially the 14th Amendment. That's one of the reasons I am skeptical that the corrupt Roberts Court will apply the obviously intended disqualification of the insurrectionist-president Trump when the case gets to it. There has been no branch of the government more addicted to lying than the Supreme Court, and it doesn't even have to run for the offices they hold. That goes back to John Marshall and Joseph Story in their white supremacist slavery decisions, which, by the way, fundamentally and enormously enriched the legendary John Marshall whose enormous wealth was founded in slavery. That such self-enrichment by Supreme Court "justices" has been permitted since the start is another important flaw of the U.S. Constitution, one which we are required to lie about but I'm a bit of a thought criminal, after all. I will go so far as to say the Constitution as it is written has become an impediment to us learning from even the most severe lessons in the hard school of experience, the First Amendment as it is written, among the greatest inhibitions of that national lesson learning.
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