"The Consequences of Untruth"
Recently there has been a lot of talk about the possible cultivation of untruth by leaders in the United States government. Some people don’t take it too seriously, but say that it is the stuff of politics and that every president does it from time to time. But I believe that any society worth its salt is built on the foundation of integrity. This moral standard does not include dishonesty being alright in public life, but not in private life.
Several years ago, in a time of righteous indignation over truth-telling I came across an important book by Stephen L. Carter called Integrity (HarperCollins, 1996). Carter is an American law professor at Yale University. The fabric of a person’s life, no matter what his/her vocation might be, must be an integral whole. Upholding integrity is most important for any society. As a law professor, he detailed how important truth telling is particularly to the legal and judicial system. It is the basis of a just society.
In President George Washington’s Farewell Address our first president “lifted up the importance of religion and morality to the country’s well-being.” (William J. Bennett, The Book of Virtues, Simon & Schuster, 1993). He said in part: “Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, Religion and Morality are indispensable supports…The mere politician, equally with the pious man, ought to respect and to cherish them….’Tis substantially true, that virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government…Observe good faith and justice toward all Nations. Cultivate peace and harmony with all. Religion and morality enjoin this conduct; and can it be that good policy does not equally enjoin it. It will be worthy of a free, enlightened, and at no distant period, a great Nation to give to mankind the magnanimous and too novel example of a People always guided by an exalted justice and benevolence.” This coming from the president whose birthday we celebrate on this President's Day. According to a Parson Mason Weems' biography shortly after Washington's death, when confronted by his father about a cherry tree, this future president said “I cannot tell a lie. I chopped down that cherry tree.”
The cultivation of untruth is damaging not only to the fabric of American society and our standing among nations. It is damaging to the future of our country. It is damaging to our youth. In Integrity Stephen Carter writes of how he learned the lessons of integrity the hard way in his public school in New York, but was so grateful for being held accountable for it. “My first lesson in integrity came the hard way. It was 1960 or thereabouts and I was a first-grader at P.S. 129 in Harlem. The teacher had us all sitting in a circle, playing a game in which each child would take a turn donning a blindfold and then trying to identify objects by touch alone as she handed them to us. If you guessed right, you stayed in until the next round. If you guessed wrong, you were out. I survived almost to the end, amazing the entire class with my abilities. Then, to my dismay, the teacher realized what I had known, and relied upon, from the start: my blindfold was tied imperfectly and a sliver of bright reality leaked in from outside. By holding the unknown object in my lap instead of out in front of me, as most of the other children did, I could see at least a corner or a side and sometimes more — but always enough to figure out what it was. So my remarkable success was due only to my ability to break the rules. Fortunately for my own moral development, I was caught. And as a result of being caught, I suffered, in front of my classmates, a humiliating reminder of right and wrong: I had cheated at the game. Cheating was wrong. It was that simple.”
As a grandparent of six, I know personally how my grandkids look up to me. Although I am not perfect, if I exhibit lack of virtue in my language or conduct, they will either consciously or unconsciously react to my behavior. The same standard of behavior and conduct obviously applies to parents of children. Does this not encapsulate the peril of perpetual untruth on a society when people at the top reflect untruth in language, conduct, and behavior?
If the United States of America is to be the country that President Washington foresaw us being, we need to return to the virtues of morality that undergird the fabric of our society. While we (including our presidents) have never been perfect, the basic integrity of our government has never been challenged to this extent at any time in recent history. It may very well be the test of whether we are, or will remain, a beacon for the nations of the world. Our society’s fall, like ancient Rome, may well be the consequences of our untruth.
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