It's time to stop the lying!

Divide and conquer.

That’s the old reliable formula for defeating your enemy, and unfortunately it’s being used with absolute effectiveness by the power elites in our national media and government. Just as immoral regimes of the past have lied to their people in order to generate division and hatred among races, religions and cultures, so too does it seem that America has been beset with poisonous lies whose only aim is to tear us asunder.

You certainly can see the template for that vicious strategy employed in the last few months in the race war that many have tried to foment in the wake of isolated incidents involving black men killed in confrontations with white police. It’s as though these young protesters have never heard of a white man being killed by a white policeman, a black man killed by a black policeman, or even a white man killed by a black policeman. And far be it from them to ever consider the many cases where white policeman have been killed by young black men.

Let’s assume that the rioters, protesters and demonstrators don’t know any better. Shouldn’t their leaders? Shouldn’t congressmen? Shouldn’t the attorney general? Shouldn’t the president?

But it seems that for many so-called leaders all that matters is the chaos and confusion that can be caused by channeling the anger of the mob against the status quo, against the government, against social norms. The race baiters who engage in this kind of behavior are just as conscious of the blood that will be spilled by their rhetoric as the men and women who condition pit bulls to rip each other apart with predictable ferocious suicidal rage.

Thinking about the ease with which so many supposedly educated Americans were manipulated into blood-curdling fury by the grand-jury decisions in the Michael Brown and Eric Garner cases made me realize that most of the problems in our country are caused by people who lie brazenly in order to pit one segment of society against another. 

So my new battle cry is: Stop lying! 

—Stop Lying About Racial Inequality. Yes, it exists, but it does not exist at this point because white people are trying to crush black people. Most white people want black people to have great lives, happy lives, fulfilled lives. To think otherwise is absurd. If most white people were truly racist idiots, they would not have created all the civil-rights protections, affirmative-action programs and anti-poverty programs that they have tried in the last 50 years. And while we are on the topic, most of those anti-poverty programs have done nothing more than institutionalize poverty in black communities. If we want to change black lives for the better, we need to try something new. I’m open to suggestions, but a good starting place would be to ban Al Sharpton.

—Stop Lying About Economic Inequality: Does an income gap exist between the rich and poor? You bet. Is there any way for that gap not to exist? Not unless Congress decides to pass a law against reality. (Note to self: Congress cannot legislate reality any more than it can endow people with unalienable rights.)

Instead of complaining about income inequality, or legislating against it, people who don’t like it should be examining the root causes of it. That would do a lot more to help poor people in our society than implementing Marxist redistribution of wealth schemes such as the Affordable Care Act. The one thing we know about Marxism from experience is that it doesn’t work unless propped up by a military dictatorship (Russia) or by massive foreign aid (Cuba). And if you think China is a Marxist success story, you either don’t know anything about Marxism or you don’t know anything about China.  

There are many root causes of income inequality and of the growing gap between the rich and poor in the United States, but for now let’s just consider one. We are importing millions of impoverished people into our country as illegal aliens. Obviously that has to increase income inequality. It is also an inconvenient truth that the same people who are the loudest critics of income inequality are the largest supporters of importing poverty. Do you think there might be an underlying agenda?

Stop Lying about the Gender Wage Gap: This one is so blatantly false that it merits its own heading in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, used by psychiatrists to categorize the varieties of delusional experience. In the old days, the Gender Wage Gap would have been a subcategory of “mass hysteria.” 

Thousands, perhaps millions, of Americans have mindlessly repeated the mantra that women are paid 77 percent of what men are paid for the same work. Outrageous! Except it is simply not true. In fact, women in the aggregate are paid 77 percent of what men in the aggregate are paid for completely different types of work, different levels of experience, and with different goals. 

Of course, there are already laws that forbid pay discrimination against women, but perhaps the best one of all is the law of supply and demand. If women were in fact paid 77 percent of what men make for the same job with the same level of experience and the same abilities, then all employers would try to hire women in order to enjoy the salary savings, and in short order the law of supply and demand would push women’s wages to the same as men’s — if not higher. Or has the law of supply and demand been rescinded by Congress along with reality?

Stop Lying about the College Campus Rape Epidemic: The Rolling Stone rape story retraction/apology brings into focus the so-called college rape epidemic. We are led to believe that women on college campuses are in greater danger than women elsewhere, thus impugning the character of male college students everywhere. But before we jump to conclusions, let’s think about the underlying facts. 

First of all, the number of women on college campuses has increased dramatically over the past 20 years. That means the number of actual sex assaults against women will increase even if the rate of assault has remained the same. In addition, the willingness of women to report being sexually assaulted has also dramatically increased, which would also lead a casual observer to assume that the number of assaults has increased. That assumption may or may not be true.

But even more important from a sociological point of view is that society has deemed it entirely appropriate for men and women to live together not just in the same college dorms, but on the same floors of the same college dorms, and sometimes side by side in college dormitory rooms. Now, unless some liberal professor somewhere has figured out a way to neuter college-age men, the expectation that there will not be inappropriate and even criminal sexual behavior in that setting is absurd. 

Stop lying to yourself about human behavior. Having men and women live together in close quarters will always result in an increase in sexual activity, both voluntary and forcible. Because there are bad people, rape will always exist. If you truly want to lessen sexual assaults on campus, then bring back men’s and women’s separate dorms. 

Stop Lying About the Republican War on Women: What exactly is this anyway? From what I can tell it consists of three parts. The phony gender pay gap; allowing employers to make their own decisions about what kind of health insurance coverage to provide for their employees, in particular contraception and abortion; and seeking restrictions on abortion. 

As noted above, the gender pay gap is a chimera that has as much chance of being proven as the tooth fairy. The matter of health insurance is not an attack on women, but a defense of free enterprise and religious conscience. To see it otherwise is to turn truth on its head.

And finally, most particularly, the abortion issue is not a war on women; it is a war on children. After all, to be a real war, there have to be deaths, don’t there? And there have been more than 55 million deaths of American babies caused by abortion since the procedure was legalized by the Supreme Court in 1973.

Stop lying about the war on women, and start worrying about the war on children! Don’t care about children? Then say so, but don’t blame Republicans because they do!

These are a few examples grabbed from today’s headlines almost at random. The list of such fakery and foolishness in our current political climate is almost infinite. You can throw the Republican lies about opposing Obamacare, illegal immigration and endless government borrowing onto the pile. It’s not just a Democrat problem. It’s a national problem. And the worst part of it is that tens of millions of Americans know the truth and remain silent. 

Well, as Edmund Burke is reputed to have said, “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.” Speak up, America, or there won’t be any America left. Silence is a vote for the lie.