Links
Archives
A provocative exposition of the doctrines of hypocrisy by the prominent Internet controversialist David Arthur Walters. empiricalpragmatics@yahoo.com Author's Profile
Saturday, June 12, 2004
A note on religious hypocrisy Religious hypocrites take a great deal of pride in the adoption of rigid rules of behavior contrary to their actual urges in order to conquer the desires they are ashamed of and to thereby elevate themselves to a false, godly sense of superiority over their selves and others. While doing those moral "works," they often argue that faith saves and that works are futile. Indeed, their neurotic works are largely futile - they do however provide some useful character armor. We should not therefore be surprised to find them engaging in the very activity they incessantly denounce. For instance, a leading member of the Christian right, a married man who gives eloquent sermons on the sanctity of monogamous marriage, has been spotted recently in disreputable houses with both male and female prostitutes. He has also been observed by undercover policemen looking at peep shows in the back room of an adult bookstore. Likewise, someone who is constantly preaching love may be doing so because of his underlying hatred of the human race. A certain preacher hates "humanists" including Christian humanists because he hates himself and his race, yet he professes his undying love for his god incarnated in human form. Thus does he replicate Satan, loving his god alone, while hating man.
We find uncompromising, judgmental attitudes in hypocrites - ambiguity is intolerable to them. We find bigotry, hatred, fixation on some fantastic fetish either real or symbolic. A religious hypocrite feels that if he does not believe in a certain creed or perform a certain ritual, his life will not be saved from its present suffering or anticipated hell. For example, the religious addict will be saved if he compulsively prays to god, blindly cites scripture and twists it to his purpose, devotes himself to the church and nothing else, or to his god alone, and so on. Reason is of little avail to the religious hypocrite because he relies on "god's mysteries" to justify his irrational conduct. Anything opposed to his fearful addiction is blasphemy, for the action in itself serves as his fetish: he associates his conduct with the holy spirit.
Some people believe that the religious hypocrite is merely a fool or a bigot, not really a hypocrite, since his faith is true and he has no intention to deceive. But that argument is obviously mistaken. The religious hypocrite does intend to deceive himself and others; that is why he is a bigot in the first place, and why he loves to argue that faith not works saves. He who has genuine faith does not have to argue it into existence. He provides proof of his faith in his good works."No man is a hypocrite in his pleasures." Camus, The Fall
Tuesday, November 04, 2003
Hegel's Hypocrisy
by David Arthur Walters
Hypocrisy connoiseurs will certainly enjoy Eric Voegelin's work, On Hegel. Voegelin charges Hegel with hypocrisy, in the sense that hypocrisy is the sin of pride in contradistinction to the humble role played by virtuous Christians, including himself, the arrogant author of a book condemning another man for his arrogance. According to Voegelin, Hegel fabricated a philosophical system that was bound to be false because it was founded on his own weakness, which, of course, Hegel was well aware of because he wrote it to overcome his own sickness. In other words, Hegel tried to pull himself up by his bootstraps. He acted like god while knowing he was not god.
"Thou hypocrite!" was once a favorite expression of Christians who derived its pejorative connotation from Alexandrine Jews who used it as a synonym for hanef - a godless person. Reverend James Marsh wrote a famous discourse on the subject, published in Boston by Crocker and Brewster in 1843 as part of Marsh's literary Remains. Marsh quoted Luke XIII: 'For there is nothing covered, that shall not be revealed; neither hid, that shall not be known. Therefore, whatsoever ye have spoken in darkness, shall be heard in the light; and that which ye have spoken in the ear in closets, shall be proclaimed on the housetops.' Reverend Marsh wrote, "These words of our Savior were uttered in connexion with a warning, addressed to his disciples, against the hypocrisy of the Pharisees. In their immediate application, they were intended as a dissuasion from that conscious purpose of concealing selfish and corrupt principles under the show of respect for the law of God, by which the Pharisees were distinguished." Thus does Reverend Marsh's love for Jesus Christ - to whom he believes we must flee to since we cannot hide from him - based on hatred of another religious group.
In fact the Christian cult evolved from the liberal Pharisees sect whose rabbis taught, besides survival of the soul, not only the strict observation of religious law which the Christians were wont to reject in part, but also the gradual, humane reformation of that law. There would be no Christians without the Pharisees. Early Christians then turned on the Pharisees and called them hypocrites for pretending to be good, and even for actually doing good works while presumably having bad or selfish intentions; that is, for having bad faith: not believing in Jesus Christ as the one and only savior of humankind. Hence the great scapegoating injustice perpetrated against the Pharisees, rendering their name synonymous with 'hypocrite' as if they were all godless persons. On the other hand, Christians presumed that they were the only ones in possession of the real god, incarnated in a single man; but this was a supreme arrogance that Jews simply cannot stand for and still be Jews.
A man may think he is a god unto himself, but the sane man knows he is not god of the world or universe; every man who knows himself knows that he is limited and is not omnipotent. He who acts like a god while knowing he is not god is a hypocrite. Of course pessimistic Christians live not for this necessarily evil world but for the good world beyond, hence any attempt to bring the good order of heaven to Earth is hypocrisy. Wherefore Voegelin believes that Hegel is the typical system-building philosopher who would set himself up as a savior of the corrupt world, yet who is a hypocrite because he knows his salvation plan is built on his own sickness in the sick world, the rotten ground of the original sin of pride. Such spiritual rebellion is the product of an existentially deficient man; it aggravates the troubles of this world, making itself yet another source of the disease plaguing
humankind.
Voegelin argues that, while prophets are not bound by history, philosophers are so bound. Philosophers wrongly assumed a religious role and declared that philosophy had emerged from religion to finally reveal the pristine primordial deity, ridding the world of the old evil god. In effect, such a philosopher implies that "History is an immanence of god leading up to Me, the One who will inaugurate the New Life." He discards mysterious symbols, replacing them with "scientific" explanations of the good old mysteries; those intellectual fabrications are disguises for hypocrisy and are mistaken for knowledge by gullible and credulous people who would struggle for personal freedom from tyranny. Witness, for instance, the 1789 French Revolution, an historical example of such salvation-activism and its horrible result in anarchic freedom instead of the totalitarian outcome outlined in Rousseau's little book that the rioting revolutionaries waved above their heads as their guide although many were illiterate and did not know a word of it.
No, says Voegelin, man is no god, he is merely a sorcerer - he can only see the directions of history, and, with the help of language, evoke its shapes, ghosts, fictions. Hegel tried to use his imagination to eclipse God's Creation - unable to redeem himself, he created a holy book of philosophy and recommended the diabolical system therein to the world as its salvation. Therefore Hegel's conceptual spiritualism should be replaced by unquestioning humility, voluntary suffering, repentance - by a pessimistic religious system of virtual suicide - that the individual person might be saved by his unconditional surrender to his own god and in effect to the status quo on this Earth, in order live the life of Riley in the hereafter.
The hypocrisy of all this is unavoidable, for, if hypocrisy is arrogance concealed to deceive, everyone is a hypocrite. Hence it takes a hypocrite to know one and to say - like perverse Christians who love to cast stones first yet cannot see the beam in their own eyes - "Thou Hypocrite!" Not that they all do; not that we should agree with the proposition that Christianity on the whole is the epitome of bigotry, of hate-based group love, of the most awful sin of pride, of the very apotheosis of hypocrisy.
Christianity has no monopoly on hypocrisy. Nor do the Pharisees, or the Alexandrine Jews who gave the Greek term for 'actor' its pejorative connotation. Judaism and Christianity are inseparable - Christianity does not have its own religion for it is unwilling to reject its Old Testament tradition with its barbaric patriarchal god, and admit that a genuine god of Love would have to be a complete Stranger to this world. Judeo-Christianity has often been debited or credited with the creation of the Western world, curse or blessing that it might be. But we might want to consider that religion did not make the man, it discovered him in his hypocrisy or underlying crisis between the real and ideal, between Earth and heaven. We find profound truths about men and women in Judaism and Christianity. We note well its revolutionary nature in the Jewish revolts against political empire; but the fiercely independent Jews would have had a virtual tribal theocracy under their messianic king; whereas we note the tendency to individualism and the multiplication of sects among Christians - this author's favorite Christian, by the way, lives in a cave in the watershed, and calls Christian churches in the area "dens of iniquity" and "pits of vipers."
In fact, for many Christians of all kinds, god is synonymous with freedom. Now the individual in its will to exist forever without impedance is an anarch. It would brook no resistance to its will, it would be omnipotent, it would be free from everything - absolutely free, as if it were the one and only god almighty, the supreme arbiter who has no reason to think before acting. God is the social projection of such individual freedom, a positive abstraction without any content at all, for any content would limit such a god. Above all, 'god' stands for the abstract unity of a group, just as the imaginary 'I' stands for the abstract unity of the individual divided from and confronted by the multiplicity of the world about him.
So much for omnipotent, absolutely free gods. The rest of us are free FROM something or the other. For instance, a certain strain of Christians, taking their cue from revolutionary Jews, would be free from the state. They might admit that a police force and a few public works are necessary given the original evil of humankind whose salvation by universal love will not be accomplished until the return of the god's solitary son - the Greeks called the solitary son, who appeared as the brilliant and pure (Phoebus) Sun of Zeus, 'Apollo', for far-flung 'unity.' Throughout history Christians like everyone else have had a love/hate or ambivalent relationship with absolute states. The absolute god is an indefinite abstraction or Power whose forms cannot be maintained without the political distribution of that power; hence Christianity owes its present existence not only to its god but to absolute tyrants whose 'might makes right methods' were often similar to those employed by the unpredictable Terrorist Almighty of the Sky who did not let even innocent infants stand in his brutal path; the Hebrew thunder-god El, for instance, and the volcanic YHWH down south. On the other hand, with the advance of civilization, for which Christianity and Judaism does get ample credit, tyranny was curbed by the legal distribution of its own power.
With that in mind, we are not surprised by Voegelin's attack on Hegel. Indeed, many good Christians hated Hegel with a passion, and called him a madman because his philosophy spelled absolute political tyranny, to be provided on Earth according to the systematic providence of the World Spirit. Hegel was initially a 'liberal' or an advocate of democratic liberty; his sympathies were with the French Revolution until its excesses caused him to violently back-pedal to the absolute state, which he conceived as the concrete embodiment of the god of the universal ethic, the nebulous Good (of course there is no etymological relationship between 'god' and 'good'). For Hegel, individuals were so much dust to be ground up by the universal world mill operated by the world spirit. And whatever is here and now, is here because it ought to be as it is. Of course a few heroes or representative men are of greater moment as they help the wheel roll from China to its future in parts West; as certain Chinese Buddhists know, the Pure Land is in the West, the future into which the Sun descends - it appears that China may rule the world after California falls into the ocean.
It takes a hypocrite to know a hypocrite. As his critic Voegelin knew, Hegel himself wrote about hypocrisy from a similar perspective, that hypocrisy is the pretense of godliness, which is in itself an arrogance. Hence it would suit this occasion to provide a brief description of Hegel's definition on hypocrisy for the hypocrisy connoisseur to savor.
In hypocrisy there is a difference between the good appearance presented by the subject and the subjective reality of his evil or selfish intent. Insofar as the subject is wholly self-interested or selfish, and conceives that he alone is a law unto himself, as if he were god almighty or the universe, he represents evil; for the particular subject in itself without any object other than itself is an empty or false universal. "On its formal side, evil is most peculiarly the individual's own, since it is precisely his subjectivity establishing itself purely and simply for itself...." On the other hand, the moral man has the universal social good in mind and intends to conduct himself accordingly.
A hypocrite has a bad conscience when he is aware that his will conflicts with the "true", or social, universal; yet, despite hits bad conscience, he sets himself up as pious and righteous in order to deceive others; or, he may use one good act performed as justification in his own eyes for his bad deeds; he may also justify some evil deed by finding a single good reason for it - say the recommendation of a single minister.
Hegel addresses the "empty formalism" of preaching duty alone. "Because every action explicitly calls for a particular content and a specific end, while duty as an abstraction entails nothing of the kind, the question arises: what is my duty? As an answer, nothing is available except to... strive after... one's own welfare, and welfare in universal terms, the welfare of others.... Specific duties, however, are not contained in the definition of duty itself.... Duty itself in... self-consciousness... is inwardly related to itself alone... is abstract universality... it has identify without content, or the abstractly positive, the indeterminate.... In every end of a self-consciousness subject, there is [this empty or abstract] positive aspect necessarily present because [this general] end is what is purposed in an actual concrete action. This aspect he knows how to elicit and emphasize, and he may proceed to regard it as a duty or a fine intention. By so interpreting it, he is able to pass his action off as good in the eyes of both himself and others, despite the fact that, owing to his reflective character and his knowledge of the universal aspect of the will, he is aware of the contrast between this aspect and the essentially negative content of his action. To impose this way on others is hypocrisy; while to impose on oneself is a stage beyond hypocrisy, a stage at which subjectivity claims to be absolute." (The Philosophy of Right)
The hypocrite's deeds give the lie to his fine words. Even if they do not, we can accuse him of having bad intentions. Hegel, in Phenomenology of Mind, describes the psychological strategy of the hypocrite who knows his moral duty is socially determined yet takes his own individuality as the whole to which he alone has a duty. "(The particular self's) pure self, as it is empty knowledge, is without content and without definiteness." Yet it becomes "conscious of the opposition between what it is for itself and what it is for others, of the opposition of universality or duty and its state of being reflected into self away from the universal.... Over against this internal determination there thus stands... the universal consciousness; for this latter is is rather universality, duty, that is the essential fact, while individuality, which exists for itself and is opposed to the universal... is held to be Evil by the consciousness which thus stands by the fact of duty, because of the lack of correspondence of its internal subjective life with the universal; and since at the same time the first [empty individual or evil] consciousness declares its act to be congruency with itself, to be duty and conscientiousness, it is held by that universal consciousness to be Hypocrisy.
I think we get the picture. We see evil and good in their extremities at opposite ends of the continuum. Individual and society, particular will and universal will. With the horrors of the French Revolution in mind, Hegel favored the right-wing authoritarian end. It is no wonder that men and women pretend to be good as publicly defined. Are we all hypocrites? It seems that both Hegel and Voegelin, the critic who called Hegel a hypocrite, might agree that humans, as anti-social individuals, are originally evil. Is the man who admits he is evil and acts accordingly a hypocrite? Or is the sociopath a hypocrite?
Hegel presents the concrete state as the solution for dissolution of evil - the state is somehow provided by the World Spirit - we fear that it is a dystopian Totalitaria, a virtual prison. Voegelin would apparently have an indefinite, abstract god preside, but this personal god is the projection of the individual anarch in its original evil which both philosophers rightfully fear. In any event, may god forbid theocratic tyranny under fictitious gods. Further, we have good reason to fear the man-made calamities of the personification and deification of nations and states even more than the irregular natural wrath of the Terrorist Almighty.
We hope for a happy medium or golden mean rather than an "either good or evil" for our conversation or dialectic, that our conversant life may never end. Yet progressives may not be rid of the either/or, even if they say progress is from a lesser good to a greater good instead of from evil to good. Divided as individuals from unity by self-consciousness, we are given an underlying crisis or hypokrisis that requires decisions. We suspect that hypocrisy is the human predicament. But we do not want to water the pejorative term down and render it meaningless in its application to certain individuals who are much bigger hypocrites than others. Hypocrisy connoisseurs will appreciate the sophisticated philosophical hypocrites only in comparison to the vulgar ones in their collection.
Sources:
Voegelin, Eric, HISTORY OF POLITICAL IDEAS, V.12 ON HEGEL, Columbia, Mo: University of Missouri 1997
Hegel, G.W.G., THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF MIND, transl. J.B. Baillie, London: George Allen 1949
Hegel, G.W.G, HEGEL'S PHILOSOPHY OF RIGHT, transl. T.M. Knox, Oxford: Clarendon: 1942
Robinson, Jonathan, DUTY AND HYPOCRISY IN HEGEL'S PHENOMENOLOGY OF MIND, An essay in the real and idea, Toronto: University of Toronto
Thursday, October 23, 2003
The Biggest Hypocrite in America
by David Arthur Walter
'Tis grave philosophy's absurdest dream,
That Heavn's intentions are not what they seem,
That only shadows are dispens'd below,
And earth has no reality but woe."
-William Cowper, 'Hope' (1781)-
Hypocrites are a dime a dozen, but some hypocrites are much bigger than others. In fact, Reverend Jonathan Ellsworth Perkins wrote a book about the biggest hypocrite in America. Reverend Perkins was an aide to the radical minister of the Disciples of Christ Church, Reverend Gerald L.K. Smith. The mere title of the book - The Biggest Hypocrite in America, Gerald K. Smith Unmasked - gives those of us who are hypocrisy connoisseurs sufficient cause to suspect that its author was a hypocrite too. After all, we know a lot about hypocrisy, and it takes one to know one.
We hear that Reverend Smith was a hate-mongering anti-semite. We note that Perkins his biographer was also the author of Jesus Was Not a Jew. How can that be? Well, Britons of the Anglo-Israelite persuasion - frustrated Hebrews who spoke of New Canaan and New Jerusalem - persuaded each other that the Anglo-Saxons were one of the ten lost tribes of Israel. In the American colonies, the Anglo-American pioneers armed themselves with the Ten Commandments and fancied themselves as Hebrews founding the New Jerusalem. And it was no coincidence that the Germanic folk figured they were following in Moses' footsteps in South Africa. When anti-jewry gained ground and having distant Jewish relatives fell out of favor, an Anglo-Saxon could avoid being a Jew if not a semite and still be one of the lost semitic tribes simply by being in the right tribe - definitely not Judah's tribe - and if being a semite presented a problem, one could be a Hittite, and so on. Moreover, German theologians did their level best to take the Jew out of Jesus so he could be retained and the oriental Jews expelled from the occident. Some went so far as to claim that Jesus was a Greek. Reverend Perkins said Jesus was an Anglo-Saxon. In any case, he and Reverend Smith had a number of things in common until they had a falling out.
We do not have to take a disgruntled ex-employee's character assassination of his fellow Christian for granted. Reverend Smith granted Glen Jeansomme extensive, frank interviews for his book Gerald K. Smith, Minister of Hate - but was he a hypocrite? Vulgar religion stands accused of being a form of organized "better than thou" hypocrisy, or systematic hate-based group love; if that is the case, how could an honest minister of hate be a hypocrite? Perhaps hypocrisy is simply the sin of pride; maybe for that reason Reverend Smith was in fact the biggest hypocrite in America at the time; yet discriminating hypocrisy connoisseurs believe there is more to hypocrisy than arrogance.
Reverend Smith was the most vituperative bigot in the United States, and as such he was the mentor and associate of some of America's leading bigots. By-goddery or bigotry is the sin of pride. Again, for some judges, that alone might have qualified him for the Biggest Hypocrite in America title. Our elders remember Smith well. He preached politics for the Kingfisher - Huey Long - whom he idolized and called a "superman." Long served Louisiana as governor in 1928 and as U.S. senator in 1930. He led a populist movement to power, and he ruled Louisiana at will, hence he was called a demagogue and dictator by his enemies. Reverend Smith, his political organizer, pointed out that the people had in a referendum voted 7 to 1 in favor of Long's legislation. Smith said Louisiana had been a "feudal state" before Kingfisher, the peon's knight, appeared on the scene in shining armor. Smith went on to characterize oil and gas barons, bankers and other parasites with vested interests in free income as "the feudal lords of New Orleans and the plantations." The poor were thoroughly exploited by the rich. Big corporations imposed taxes on the poor, many of whom had little money because they worked under the commissary system - they were paid in scrip only good at the company store. The poor were taxed into abject poverty. The state itself was in shambles. The corporations were stripping its natural resources and investing nothing in public works. Existing roads, bridges, and ferries were in terrible disrepair. People were taxed at the polls and had to pay exorbitant tolls - a poor Depression Era person had to pay $8 to use the bridge into New Orleans. Illiteracy was high: half the kids were not in school. But the aristocrats basked in luxury and lived high off the hog. In short, the pseudo-conservatives were living their dream.
Things changed for the better when Huey Long took the reins on behalf of the people. Taxes were levied on natural resources. The poll-tax and property-tax burden on the poor was lifted; that alone added 300,000 new voters to rolls and freed 95% of the black population from taxation. Tolls were abolished and ferry rides were free. Public funds were invested in public works such as new roads and bridges. Schoolbooks were free; night schools were set up for adults; traveling libraries toured the state. That was just the beginning, but it is enough to understand why Huey Long was hated by the few and loved by the many.
And then there was the Share Our Wealth Society organized by Long and Smith in 1934. It soon had 326,000 members in Louisiana and 3,000,000 in the United States. Each member signed a registration card that bore the inscription, "Every Man a King, but No One Wears a Crown." The Society promised to outdo Roosevelt's New Deal - Roosevelt was duly worried. The Society had a plan. Huey Long really did not believe it would work, nor did the economists, but Reverend Smith liked the plan because, at least as far as he was concerned, it was based on the biblical principle of "sharing" the wealth of the rich with the poor. Others said the plan was to rob the rich to pay the poor. The plan appeared to be a national socialist or fascist scheme rather than a communist one, for private property and the profit principle would not have been abolished; however, whereas the fascists pandered to big business, their scheme would have restrained big business. Hodding Carter, a liberal newspaperman, said this of the approach:
"Of course, there is nothing new if the human fundamentals to which Huey and the Reverend appeal, or in the economic reforms they advocate. Class consciousness, envy of wealth and a desire for the creature comforts of life are strong in every nation in every age. This is especially true of the poor whites of the South, those near-disenfranchised, lethargic and doomed relics of a ruinous agricultural system. Old-age pensions, unemployment insurance, a balance supply and demand, wealth spread - these have been the war cries of modern economists long before the New Deal was supposed to begin its attack on Big Business. But where the student of economics presents his suggestions through an impersonal, systematic theory, whose appeal is primarily to the rational, Huey and his high priest strike home to the emotions, the hates and the desires, the superstitions of the under-privileged poor-white class."
Of course we recognize the rationalized hypocrisy of classical liberalism in Hodding's typical objection. The power elite, to maintain their interest in the power structure, assume an impersonal or scientific facade and resort to the drab metaphysical terms of their secular religion, such as "market forces", if not the Invisible Hand", to justify their immorality. "Let the market decide", said the airline executive just the other day, in response to objections to his company's price war on the new kid at the airline hub; then the MBA went back to his office and laughed up his sleeve - his airline raised prices to previous levels after crushing the upstart in its crib. Emotion, the intimate synthesis of thought and feeling, happens to be the source of moral values. Furthermore, we know very well that the "politically correct" snob is often a bigger [expletive deleted] and hypocrite than the guy who wears his heart on his sleeve.
People are certainly emotional about the lack of food and shelter and the possibility of supplying the demand for it. As every scientific industrial revolutionary knows, if production were cranked up to full capacity, there would be plenty for everyone. Scarcity exists because it is created to make a few people rich at the expense of the poor. Under the Share Our Wealth plan, the wealth of the rich would have been limited to $10,000,000, an enormous sum in those days, surely enough for a moderately selfish family to live on. On the other hand, poverty would be limited to no less than $5,000 of real property per family. Not only would every family have a $5,000 home, they would have a job, a car, and a radio! Furthermore, the plan provided for free higher education for the mentally able, veteran's benefits, and old-age pensions. Full employment would be obtained by reduction of work hours and public works projects. Who could object to such a family-oriented plan for America, where every man would be a little king or capitalist?
Reverend Smith handled the propaganda, and he sang it out like a fundamentalist preacher. H.L. Mencken called Smith: "The greatest orator of them all. Not the greatest by an inch or a foot or a mile. But greatest by at least two light-years." When Smith was a young pastor, a member of his congregation said he was a promoter, not a preacher. That is to say that he was a hypocrite, we suppose, or, as Plato would say, a sophist, providing that the truth is so plainly self-evident that it wants not the deceptive art of persuasion.
"Let's pull down these huge piles of gold," sang Reverent Smith, "until there shall be a real job, not a little old sow-belly, black-eyed pea job but a real spending money, beefsteak and gravy, Chevrolet, Ford in the garage, new suit, Thomas Jefferson, Jesus Christ, red, white and blue job for every man! ... Lift us out of this wretchedness, O Lord, out of this poverty, lift us who stand in slavery tonight. Rally us under this young man who came out of the woods of north Louisiana, who leads us like a Moses out of the land of bondage into the land of milk and honey where every man is a king but no man wears a crown. Amen."
"Reverend Smith," wrote Hodding Carter, "who, next to Huey Long and Mississippi's [Senator Theodore] Bilbo, is probably the most talented rabble rouser in the South, can in an instant switch his mighty voice from piteously picturing Christ on the Cross to calling the local anti-Long leaders a 'bunch of dirty, thieving drunkards.' Escorted by force from one parish by a determined group of anti-administrationists, with the heeded warning not to turn up again, he bobs up in the next parish with a vitriolic attack on his 'persecutors' and proceeds upon his Christian way, describing the wife of a former Governor, who fought Long until her recent death, as 'two jumps ahead of the insane asylum,' and calling upon any hostile member in the crowd to 'shoot me while I stand here helpless,' his arms outstretched as though pinned to a cross and his sound truck surrounded by vigilant state police in plainclothes and uniform."
Louisiana already had the third largest debt in the nation: $150,000,000. No doubt money would have to be created to pay mounting debt. Inflation would run rampant; people would be able to pay off old debt at a big discount; the lenders would be wiped out. And the upper limit on wealth at $10,000,000 in 1934 dollars would be the ruination of many a feudal lord. No, the social disease must not be allowed to spread. It is no wonder that people on the right prayed every night for the early death of Huey Long. His prophet foresaw the 1935 assassination:
"Wall Street and its newspapers, and the radio liars say this is a scheme to make money for your friend, Huey Long," shouted Reverend Smith to the crowd. "They'd kill him if they could, my brethren. And they're going to have to kill him to keep him from helping you. As God is my judge, the only way they will keep Huey Long from the White House is to kill him. But when they do, his great work will go marching on. Share, brothers, share, and don't let those white-livered skunks laugh at you."
The assassin was shot dead by bodyguards - the controversial investigation of the crime was never completed. Smith continued to promote the Share Our Wealth plan for awhile after Long was assassinated, but with his "superman" dead and the economy improving, people sold the plan short. Smith graduated to unadulterated bigotry and racism. He lectured with the frustrated fascist and America Firster, Father Coughlin - he and Coughlin formed the Union Party in '36 to oppose Roosevelt. When Henry Ford, convinced that the Jews were about to grab his stuff, grew paranoid, Smith the conspiracy theorist was on hand to publicize 'The International Jew' and 'The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion.' Smith offended quite a few people when he called General Eisenhower a "Swedish Jew." He published the hate-sheet, 'The Cross and the Flag.' (see excerpt below) The flag of Caesar next to the Cross of Jesus - what better symbol of hypocrisy could be devised?
Reverend Smith loved Nixon's hatred for communism although he did not care for Nixon as Vice President. He changed his mind soon enough, and said, "(Nixon) is the greatest president we have had in this country." Of course Nixon was an outstanding hypocrite, his reopening of relations with China being an egregious case on point. Smith defended Nixon during the impeachment; he said Nixon should have done a better job of covering up, and he that claimed Nixon was forced to resign by the Zionists, who were, as usual, conspiring to rule the world. But enough said: he eventually retired to Eureka Springs in Arkansas and erected a series of tourist attractions, the monuments known as The Passion Play, which include the impressive 'Christ of the Ozarks.'
Reverend Gerald L.K. Smith was what we might call a nutcase if only the term were not politically incorrect today. Mind you, he was not unloved. His devoted wife, whom he married when he was a young man, cleaved to him throughout and survived him. He called himself "the outcast of Christ." He backed outrageous causes, attracting disgruntled outcasts, some of whom financed him. On the other hand, his ex-aide Reverend Perkins, as we can see from his character assassination, hated him as if he were the Satan of satans. Perkin's book did little or no harm to Reverend Smith's bad reputation, for people either love or hate a man like Smith - the latter camp was overflowing in his case. Some of his admirers are still alive. If it were not for his racism and bigotry, we would like the man better. But as hypocrisy connoisseurs we like him well enough to add this story to our stock.
Appendix:
This Is Christian Nationalism
by Gerald L. K. Smith
(The Cross & The Flag) December 1959
The Christian Nationalist Crusade is a nationwide political movement dedicated to the mobilization of citizens who respect American tradition and whose idealism is founded on Christian principle. General Douglas MaeArthur in one of his great public pronouncements said: "The two greatest symbols in this civilization are the Cross and the Flag." This statement overwhelmed me with inspiration in view of the fact that the official organ of the Christian Nationalist Crusade is the magazine "The Cross and the Flag."
The motive behind the term Christian Nationalist is easy to define and simple to interpret. We believe that the destiny of America in relationship to its governing authority must be in the hands of our own people. We must never be governed by aliens. We must keep control of our own money and our own blood. In other words, we must be true to the Declaration of Independence. That is Nationalism. Like General MacArthur, we believe that the spiritual symbol of our statesmanship is the Cross, which is indeed the symbol of Christianity. We believe that the inspiring dynamic out of which America grew is Christianity. We believe that there would be no real America such as we love and for which we are willing to die if there had been no Christianity. Thus, when a Christian is a Nationalist he becomes necessarily a Christian Nationalist. This movement, which now reaches into every state and community of the Nation, launched its campaign some years ago in relationship to ten high principles to which we have committed ourselves.
I. The first principle is: Preserve America as a Christian Nation being conscious of the fact that there is a highly organized campaign to substitute Jewish tradition for Christian tradition....
II. The second principle for which we stand reads as follows: Expose, fight and outlaw Communism.
III. The third principle on which Christian Nationalism has built its nation- wide movement reads as follows: Safeguard American liberty against the menace of bureaucratic Fascism. Bureaucratic Fascism has appeared in the American form. It has been a cross between Kremlin Communism, English-German Socialism and Italian Fascism. Fascism, as we now have it, is confiscating independent wealth by way of the income tax and destroying the liberty of the States by way of the Supreme Court. At this very moment we face the risk of a nine-man Fascist dictatorship, posing as the Supreme Court of the United States, completely contrary to our Constitutional traditions.
IV. The fourth principle to which this dynamic and much persecuted movement has been dedicated reads as follows: Maintain a government set up by the majority which abuses no minority and is abused by no minority. Fight mongrelization and all attempts being made to force the intermixture of the black and white races....
V. The fifth principle reads as follows: Protect and earmark national resources for our own citizens first....
VI. The sixth principle reads as follows: Maintain the George Washington Foreign Policy of friendship with all nations, trade with all nations, entangling alliances with none. Our failure to follow the George Washington policy has yielded the fruit of chaos which our foreign policy now portrays.
VII. Seventh: Oppose a World Government and a Super-State....
VIII. The eighth principle reads as follows: Prove that the Worker, the Farmer, the Businessman, the Veteran, the Unemployed, the Aged, and the Infirm can enjoy more abundance under the true American system than any alien system now being proposed by foreign propagandists. Subversives, superficial nitwits and mind-washed propagandists are always attacking the traditional American economic system of free enterprise....
IX. The ninth principle reads as follows: Sateguard America's tradition in relationship to immigration. The same conspirators who would destroy our Nation and its independence by treason from within, or by the establishment of a World Government - these same forces are ready to let down the bars and admit the Asiatic, African and European multitudes. This campaign to destroy our immigration tradition is supported by every Jewish and Communist organization in the world. They are ready to smear and assassinate the character of any statesman who stands in their way. Fortunately, we have been able to hold the line; but if the wall ever breaks we will be invaded and destroyed without the firing of a shot, merely by the act of indiscriminate admission of aliens to our shores.
X. The tenth principle reads as follows: Enforce the Constitution as it pertains to our monetary system. I claim to be no expert on the subject of monetary reform, but the Christian Nationalist Crusade takes its stand with those patriots who insist that we must free our Nation from the manipulating chicanery of the money-changer....
Upon these principles we take our stand, and I defy any cynic or critic to deny that these ten principles do not define traditional Americanism. This is not a negative Movement. We are not in the business of just being against something. It is our deep conviction that every Crusade must commit itself to a great positive and must be for that positive even at the risk of life itself. The positive in our Crusade is Christianity and the Constitution. Once we commit ourselves to this great spiritual patriotic implication, we naturally must be known as opposing every symptom, every gesture that appears in opposition to our Christian American tradition. These become the negatives. Negatives are valuable only when they appear in defense of a great positive. Men who are against things without being for great principles serve little constructive value in the affairs of this life....
Again quoting General MacArthur:
"Listen not to these voices that are raised against our (American tradition), be they from the one political party or from the other; be they from the high and the mighty, or the lowly and the forgotten. Heed them not. Visit upon them a righteous scorn born of the past sacrifices of your fighting sons and daughters.
"Repudiate them in the market place, on the platform, from the pulpit. Those who are our friends will understand. Those who are not we can pass by. Be proud to be called patriots or nationalists or what you will, if it means that you love your country above all else, and will place your life if need be at the service of our Flag."
References:
The Biggest Hypocrite in America, Gerald K. Smith Unmasked by Reverend Jonathan Ellsworth Perkins, Los Angeles: American Foundation 1949
Minister of Hate by Glen Jeansomme: Yale 1988
New Republic, Feb. 13, 1935, Article by Hodding Carter.
Tuesday, October 21, 2003
The Rise of American Hypocrisy
Confidence Men and Painted Women turned America into a nation of hypocrites according to Karen Halttunen's book by that title, subtitled 'A Study of Middle-Class Culture in America, 1830-1870. There are still a few dour puritanical characters around who persist for the greater glory of god; who are sober, industrious and frugal; who really believe honesty is the best policy. But the sourpusses are few and far between, far outnumbered by smiling hucksters out to win friends and influence people with a winning image for the greater great glory of the almighty dollar. Today a country bumpkin can become a virtual city slicker thanks to the all-pervasive imaginary world of our information age. And if he really wants to get ahead, he might as well sell the farm to the corporation, or let the bank have it, and take an apartment in town.
Money, not moral character, became the ticket to paradise after the Civil War, as carpetbaggers fanned out throughout the South and a multitude of young men went West after the golden Sun. All that gleamed was not gold, yet a sucker was born every minute and the sizzle soon sold the steak. What you see is what you get, therefore think positive. Appearances were everything for the pioneering phenomenalist out to turn a buck.The American world was awash in success manuals. Manipulative man applied the science of manipulation everywhere. Dale Carnegie quoted Dorothy Dix: "Every man knows that he can jolly his wife into doing anything, and doing without anything." And every wife must want to be jollied, for "she has provided him with a complete diagram to work her."
Talk might be cheap, but it will help a man from rags to riches and even from log cabin to white house when combined with the right attitude and plenty of pluck. Character alone was not doing the trick. Funds were accumulating in disreputable hands. One could be honest for a profit, but honestly no longer paid that well. Truly sincere people were being left far behind by the sincerely insincere confidence men. And being nice got one nowhere - nice guys were finishing last.
Fortunately, the laws of the jungle were discovered and revealed to all who had the money to buy the book. Hypocrisy became the order of the day. Nothing succeeded like the appearance of success; lawyers at least tried to maintain an appearance of propriety. If he had no business to speak of yet, he pretended that his business was vast. Virtues were not good enough in themselves; they had to be displayed to the right people and marketed. A self-confident man trumpeted his prefabricated virtuous self in the right quarters of town. He printed his character on his face. If he had no inner character to draw upon, he bought a ready-made suit - clothes made the man. He smiled systematically and otherwise played his part. He was cheery and civil, joking and bantering with all. The charmer was also impudent and bold. The manipulator purposed to mould men with his magnetic, dominating personality. And, like Horatio Alger's Ragged Dick, he was not beyond playing practical jokes on people and laughing at their credulity. Nor was the master of impressions reluctant to pick a few pockets along the way to sacrifice to the god of business and thieves.
Once in awhile someone would step out of the shadows and shout, "Hypocrites!" A number of sermons were delivered to rebut the various doctrines of hypocrisy. The feel-good-faith flock were duly adjured to abjure the deceptive ways of the Liar; little good that did the Liar's growing brood. Although they acted otherwise, they knew that god had been murdered some time ago and that the pious priests and pontificating puritans were the biggest liars and hypocrites of them all. To resist the master of guile in any event was futile and downright foolish. There was no profit in resistance, and long gone was the day when Joachim of Flora dreamed of turning the whole world into a monastery. Ironically, that would create an economic boom, and the spiritual generals would no doubt sell out to dissident profiteers. However that may be, man became god. Man is Jesus waiting for god's return. To this very day a few red-necked rubes in the fields still believe that nature's regularities are interrupted by divine punishments from unpredictable time to time, but the enlightened directors of the agricultural combines know better. Of course the laws of probability indicate that every system is fated to fail one day, no matter how improbable that might seem, but until then man is in charge, therefore let us seize the day and everything we can get our hands on - the fittest will win since God's hand is invisible..
Advice manuals prior to the Civil War condemned 'personal magnetism', the cult of seduction and manipulation - charlatanism. Youth were warned of the evils of the theatre, demon alcohol, painted women, gambling halls, obscene literature and such. The direst warnings added to Evil's allure, and war made the evils available, for war is the father of all things. Of course industry, sobriety and frugality were preached after the war, but their influence was waning. Derogation of the con man, however, was disappearing from American literature. Karen Halttunen tells us that "The major reason for the confidence man's disappearance from advice literature was the growing acceptance of the idea that the young American on the make had to become a kind of confidence man himself in order to succeed."
That is, we needed confident men, and eventually women, in our new social and economic order. The con man was reformed and became the confident, successful man, the idol of the New Thought Movement. He was still a hustler, if you will, a wheeler-dealer. Since the latest New Age, he represents a vanishing breed. Not all of them learn their trade from success manuals. I had the good fortune of working for one of them in my youth, and I look forward to recounting those good old days.
Monday, October 20, 2003
Apology for Hypocrisy
Hypocrisy in its pejorative sense can be a depressing subject. No-one likes to hear the hypocritical refrain constantly repeated over and over, that everyone including himself is a hypocrite proudly putting up a false pretense of universal goodness to hide the original evil, the particular selfishness within. After all, calling someone a hypocrite is tantamount to calling him a selfish bastard who pretends to be otherwise. The Alexandrine Jews translated hanef, denoting a godless person, into 'hypokrite'; until then, 'hypocrisy' simply meant to play a part, hence a hypocrite was merely an actor. Since God is the universal father who provides the patriarchal community with its unity, a godless person is a bastard; and a selfish bastard at that, because he thinks of himself and does not have the good of the community at heart.
Moreover, the hypocrite would rather not do his moral duty, which is a social duty or duty to the universal - the community. He would rather be true to his individual will, which is essentially anarchic because it would persist forever if only it could, without resistance, without any leadership but its own freedom unbounded. But alas for the individual; he is not the omnipotent, universal god. He is a particular, part-time, demigod who must occasionally spell his name backwards and tag along with the others if he would survive as a human being. Wherefore we don our masks and play our parts for our own good. Thus is the social interest a selfish interest. To call a married woman a hypocrite for playing a wifely role because she wants the benefits of marriage is hypocritical. The term would be more fairly applied if she took her vows and gave a command performance of the duties of her role with evil intent, say to get herself in her husband's will, then arrange for a seeming accident. Madonna played that role quite well in Body of Evidence; the protagonist married wealthy men with weak hearts and literally screwed them to death; lawyers debated whether or not a woman's body could be legally defined as a 'deadly weapon.'
So we think 'hypocrisy' is an abusive term, and we take pause to apologise for calling people selfish bastards. Augustine, whom many Christian scholars claim is the founder of modern Western intellectual history, received the impression from his misinterpretation of Paul that man is a selfish bastard or godless man because he fell from grace into sin and must be redeemed or burn in hell. Even innocent babies are tainted by Augustine's original sin: if they are not baptized, they will burn in hellfire. Augustine wrote the first Catholic justification of state persecution of religious error, setting the stage for the Inquisition. To object to forced conversion is to disbelieve God's power to convert. God the father must whip his sons, for "true education begins with physical abuse" - "per molestias eruditio". Original sin is sin of the flesh. Augustine was a profligate before his conversion; thereafter he deems a woman's embraces "sordid, filthy, and horrible." In his old age this brilliant man, who had in fact contributed many bright lights to humankind, became the apotheosis of christian hypocrisy - that is, if christianity be a religion of love. He became an evil cleric, merciful to those who feared him, hateful to those who disagreed, and would have had all those opposed to his views subjected to state cruelty in order to impose his version of the divine order on the city of his god. Such is the trap of divine anarchy that god-men who adore omnipotent gods often fall into.
Yes, hypocrisy is a depressing subject, and the term is unfairly applied to a few of us after everyone is implicated. We are sick and tired of hearing about our our original evil and our selfishness and our hypocrisy. It is high time that we accentuate the positive, keep the good things in mind and feel very blessed. After all, we have heard the gospel that good is a positive thing, while evil is its absence or merely nothing, therefore let us ignore evil and focus on good. In fact there is nothing to ignore for evil has no positive existence. Why, Augustine himself said that evil has no existence. And we do not have to prove that evil is nothing, for it is impossible to prove the negative, that nothing exists.
Life must go on and it will go on one way or another whether we like it or not, so let us proceed with a smile on our face and a song on our lips. Laugh, sang the wildly popular American newspaper poet, Ella Wheeler Wilcox, and the whole world will laugh with you. Human life will be a continuous improvement to perfection if we put on a happy face and keep our goal in mind; every swerve from our wanted destination will be corrected by our cybernetic pilot. We may have been wrong in the past, but so what? We can certainly become better in the future, so let us not dwell so much on our past mistakes that we lose faith in our progress to perfection and lose confidence in our ability to achieve it.
If we are all hypocrites then let us reinvent ourselves and give the word a flattering spin - we invented the negative stereotype and we can rid ourselves of it. After all, we do not find the stereotypical hypocrite running around classical literature, no more than we find hypocrites in the rest of our animal kingdom. Yes, the monarch butterfly is poison to predators; the pseudo-monarch butterfly is a good dinner but looks like poison so the predators shy away; but we do not charge the camouflaged butterfly with hypocrisy! When a woman changes her dress or puts on pants to suit the occasion, we do not call her a hypocrite. And her cosmetic is good medicine all around when the cosmos looks sick and disordered.
No, we are not butterflies; we don't think butterflies self-consciously intend to deceive predators. We are something more than animals, or at least we think we are the kings of our kingdom - 'think' is the key word. We do not have to automatically deceive each other in order to evolve. We can put our best foot forward, put on a jolly good shew, pull ourselves up by our bootstraps - if that is hypocrisy, this is our apologia for hypocrisy. Our camouflage is for our mutual benefit, not for cheating some hungry competitor out of dinner - we would rather feed him for $6.95. Again, we have something more going for us than do butterflies. Darwin's 'bulldog' or propagandist, T.H. Huxley, knew that - Huxley was no social Darwinist. Man is more than an animal: biological evolution per se is his worst enemy if he does not use it to his advantage; otherwise he will destroy his race with weapons of mass destruction. By golly, man does well to deliberately put on a smile that the whole world may smile with him. His smile will come true; he will get ahead in the world and do the world some good to boot, so let us not be so hasty with the bitter, judeo-christian condemnation - "Thou hypocrite!"
It is said that he who lies long enough comes to believe his lies, and that he who believes moves the world. Well, then, why not tell good lies? If the miserable man gets up every morning, smiles into his mirror and says, "I am a happy man today! Good Morning, and the top of the world to you! " the days will go better for him, until one day his positive mental attitude will be a matter of habit and he will be on the top of the world. Let us not blame actors for acting, for not actually being the person they pretend to be. Every pretender is not a happy hooker or a confidence man who would win our heart to pick our pocket.
There is a underlying crisis in every man that makes him a natural-born hypocrite or actor, something that moves him to be other than he is, to make something of himself, to progress from evil to good, and to that end he plays his part. He knows that he differs from his role, that his role is a lie so to speak, yet he plays his part and does his best to be true to his character. 'Hypocrisy' can be a good thing. So he is divided and that division identifying him is determined by his decisions or crises which turn on a point, the decisive turning point where past and future continuously meet, where we are baptized in freedom if we seize the moment before we fall into oblivion.
Let's end our apology for hypocrisy here, for it is Monday morning, and what a wonderful morning it is! Let's put on our best faces today and see what transpires.
The Gray Area - Where Zarathustra's Twins Meet
We were glad for our freedom when we first heard the tidings about the difference between good and evil and about our power to choose between between them.
"Hear ye all who come to inquire about the truth. We praise the wise one and we thank him for providing us a with a good mind in accord with the divine law firmly written in the heavens. Now listen to this truth and meditate upon it, that each man must decide for himself what he believes and choose accordingly. In the beginning two spirits, the best and the worst in thought, words, and deeds, proclaimed themselves. From these two, those of good knowledge chose aright, and those of evil knowledge did not. The two spirits created life and death and being and nothingness when they first came together. Certainly those who cloth themselves in the divine light of truth shall have the best life, and those who do not shall have the worst."
Of course we knew which one we would choose - certainly not the evil one. At the very least we would avoid the appearance of impropriety and observe the first rule of rhetoric, that a speaker should never speak against himself. As Pufendorf one said, "Nay, there is no man who does not speak better than he either thinks or does." Furthermore, Quintilian stated in his Institutes of Oratory, "Nor is there anyone so wicked that he would like to appear wicked." But someone warned us about hypocrisy lest we deceive others or ourselves into believing we are better than we really are and lead people astray. We were adjured to tell the truth, for truth is the highest good of all; to wit: X. Then everything would fall into its right place and we would live happily ever after in harmony and peace. So far so good. But alas, although we abjured evil and avoided hypocrisy we somehow got our goods mixed up and found ourselves in a gloomy place, wandering about like dazed junkies in the gray field of asphodels. Where did we go wrong? Where are the blessed isles? Everything seemed so clear when we began, but somehow our progress was impeded and now we stand as confused as a hedged-in billy goat who cannot retreat or advance. Wherefore this confounded gray area?
It all seemed so simple at first. We saw the light at the end of the tunnel and we wanted it badly, but after we set out doubt was raised and certain questions were posed, such as "That which I ask thee tell me soon, lord, Which things are best? What, according to divine law, may enhance my district? ... How can those to whom thy revelation is declared lose perfect devotion? ... Who is holy or wicked among those of whom I inquire?"
Apparently the wise lord empowered us to answer these questions ourselves in order to save the world and perhaps the cosmos, so we gathered to discuss the issues and we were soon engaged in heated arguments. Perhaps we fell in with the wrong crowd, the liars and hypocrites. We would say demons, but nowadays daemons are all bad, and we do not like to demonize our colleagues. Nor do we have to. We understand that supernatural demons are to blame for our angry sessions.
"The assembled demons could not rightly choose between the two spirits, for as they were debating the Liar approached them and the demons rushed into wrath, polluting the spiritual life of mortal men."
If the heretical truth were told about the two spirits, we might hold ourselves personally responsible for our plight and say that the two are fraternal twins fathered by mankind, and, that wherever one may be found, the other is bound to be. May heaven forbid it, for a lot of good that would do us with so many shady characters to contend with.
Forsooth we have found ourselves where heaven and hell meet, in the gray area. We feel that something is wrong as our indecisive friends (or are they foes?) pull down the shade on truth and justify their moral turpitude with turbid talk about the principles of chiaroscuro. To make matters murkier, the moment any one of us objects, he is called a hypocrite (we would say 'she', but we keep her pure, hoping she will save us from this depressing intercourse). Ironically, even those who insist that there is no such thing as either/or and who claim that anyone with an intolerance for ambiguity is a neurotic and a potential fanatic - they too feel there is something gravely wrong with our gray matter. If it were not for the asphodels, the absinthe, the music, the poetry, the prime numbers, and the injunction against beans, the tension would be unbearable.
Notes:
I have paraphrased excerpts from Zarathustra's Gathas.
Saturday, October 18, 2003
Ultimate Hypocrisy
"Do not speak to us of our hypocrisy from your high place, thou hypocrite! Yes, you are a hypocrite by your own definition. You preach original evil to us, you condemn the origin of life and advocate an empty eternal life that is death. Yet you live on in this world, and if we stripped you of your costume, we could not distinguish you from another cattle.
"Hypocrisy you say is the sin of pride, for pride is the pretense of goodness, therefore we are to be humble because we are originally evil. And in your proud humility you exalt your self-righteous self to condemn us to hell unless we accept you as an authority and agree with your version of the truth. Then and only then may we be saved and live forever in your heaven with big smiles on our faces, gladness in our hearts, and hugs all around.
"Yes, we charge you with the ultimate hypocrisy of calling us all hypocrites. But you deny personal responsibility for your hypocrisy: you claim that you are merely a messenger of absolute truth, an apostle or envoy bringing to us the glad tidings that, although we are originally evil, we can be saved from evil if only we will accept your word for it; that there is only one way to heaven, the way you have elected in order to become one of the elect. As a matter of divine course, of course, the rest are damned to hell. Yet again you deviously deny personal responsibility while claiming that you are a responsible person. You insist that your word is not your word but rather the word of god; but he, always a he and never a she or an it, cannot be called to personally testify.
"We think you lie. Get thee behind us Satan!"
And behind us you are, chasing us down every damned street. We do not want your brochure, What God Can Do For You, yet another instance of the hypocritical me-culture of personal salvation. Yet you will not let up - your mission is relentless. The Jew who said missionaries are murderers because there are two ways to kill a Jew, one being to convert him, and said missionaries therefore should be hated as mortal enemies - he made a good point.
"Have you been born again?" you hustle after us down the street and are at our elbow, ignoring our 'No thanks' to your hand-out - we regret our initial courtesy.
"Born once is good enough for us," we say and speed up, but you are still at our elbow, and we resent the aggression.
"I was born again and you can be born again too," you rapturously gush.
Perhaps rudeness will rid us of this plucky pest: "And so was the president born again, and he is the greatest hypocrite who has ever walked the face of this Earth. May your god bless you but don't push your god on us, just get the hell away from us!"
No, we do not appreciate your confrontation at all, we look away from the leering front you put up, we pick up our pace and walk towards the corner, but you are right behind us, still at our elbow, and you proclaim your glad tidings in a loud voice:
"I am not pushing anything on you!" you lie. "This is not my message, it is god's message: Christ died for your sins!"
"What sins? You do not know us. How dare you implicate us in a murder, judge and condemn each and every one of us, you hypocrite!"
We thank god that the light has changed. Alas, you paused but now follow us across the street, catch up with us again, push your grinning face in our left ear, and say ever so sincerely:
"Jesus loves you." Another me-culture advertisement.
That is the last straw, wherefore we stop, turn, and declaim, "Jesus is the only one who loves us, and he loves us because you don't love us."
"What?"
"You don't love us, you fear and hate us. Only Jesus loves us because you don't. If people really loved each other, they would not need Jesus, he would be a nobody. You need Jesus because you hate and fear people. But you need people even more so you congregate to hate others together for there is safety in numbers, and you love your own number."
"You don't know what you are saying. Jesus loves you! You must repent of your sins!"
"Our sins? How dare you! Your love is hate-based love."
Why are you walking away from us? We are moved to call after you: "Your Jesus loves us because you don't!"
"You don't know what you are saying!" you respond from the distance as you hurry away to save someone else with your be born again hustle. Maybe we should chase you down the street and save you from your hypocrisy since you cannot save us from ours.
Better yet, let us desist from this accursed hypocritical discourse, this ultimate hypocrisy of ours, go home, have a glass of schnapps beside the fireplace, and make love in the hopeful privacy of our bedroom.
Friday, October 17, 2003
Hypocrisy Defined
Today we do not have far to go to find a hypocrite, not if a mirror is around. Hypocrisy appears to be the underlying crisis of humankind. But appearances are deceiving. Hypocrisy is so pervasive and obvious and we have gotten away with it for so long that it is not believed to be a crisis anymore.
Presidents and citizens, generals and grunts, executives and employees, lie through their teeth on a daily basis and we think nothing of it. We know elected political leaders are the phoniest people in the world; they represent our hypocrisy; they take the hypocritical oath of office, to abandon their principles and promises and do the will of the People. That much is given, therefore we are pragmatic and unprincipled. We vote for them on the basis of whether or not they are pro-this or pro-that or vice versa, and our pros and cons contradict each other because we have no principle. We hope they will at least keep one or two promises, something to do with the main concerns of religion and politics, life and death; say, regulate sex and make war so that our mates and other property will be secure.
In any case, when we pull up the grass roots of the pros and cons, we find clumps of hypocrites. In fact, hypocrisy is so widespread that the term itself has lost its pejorative value even at the highest level. That the president is the greatest hypocrite in the world has no more value than a breath of Los Angeles air. Yet the subject of hypocrisy remains a matter of great moment to those who really believe, for example, that Jesus was a great philosopher, instead of just saying that during a presidential debate to get the vote of the religious right. The candidate made that statement after refusing to give a born-again Christian all he could give, a merciful thirty-day stay of execution; he said a governor must obey the will of the People, not the will of the Savior. The leading spokesman for the religious right said the governor "would have no mercy if he kills that poor woman", then campaigned for him after he killed her.
O, my, if only we could go back to the good old days of Z when there was a void between good and evil, when right and wrong were two different things, when truth and lie were distinct one from the other. When the difference between good and evil fades, the value of hypocrisy diminishes, until, at last, when good and evil are thoroughy confused, there is no hypocrisy, technically speaking, for hypocrisy is more than a lie, it is a habit falsely worn, a pretense of goodness cloaking the evil will. Christians were once fond of calling fraudulent ministers who sought their fame and fortune under the cloak of religion hypocrites. Once the clear distinction between this evil world and the good one hereafter became confused, compromises were made: the organized Christian religion became one of the greatest hate-based love hypocrisies ever contrived by humankind.
The primitive Christian was engaged in a dualistic struggle. He or she was not interested in reforming this evil world. This world was damned, that much was obvious at the time. Religious life was a preparation for a different world, for the next world, a good world. So great was the difference between the twain that all attempts to bring Heaven to Earth were bound to fail. Why, the attempts themselves were hypocrisy, the proud, sinful acting out of, "I am good, better than others, they need to be reformed."
Hence the real drama of Reality is played out in the Other world, not in This Lying World of Ours which occludes it. Only faith in that good future, not present works, can save the person from eternal damnation. The issue raised thereafter, when the apocalyptic Messiah did not return right away as expected and the date was put off to "only God knows when," was what to do, for, if works do not work, then does anything go as long as one has faith? Hence we have the doctrine of Anything Goes. All are to have faith, but only a few will be chosen and the choice is not in their hands but in God's hands.
We sympathize with the Christians because we too are involved in the human predicament. We might say that 'hypocrisy' is universal because it appertains to the under (hypo) lying crisis (turning point) between the evil we are and the good we can become; or, if you prefer, from lesser good to greater good: but here we go again, the clear distinction is lost for we muddy the water with two goods. The root of the term 'crisis' means 'decision.' Such is the progress of human life from evil to good, or, if you will, from real to ideal, that conscious decisions must be made between good and evil. There will be many mistakes along the way; however, the important thing is the recognition, as the greatest Christian existentialist said, that there is an Either/Or, and that a decision must be made in good faith before the ship goes past the turning point. These decisions make the man. The rest go along for the ride or just drift in the seas or irresponsibility.
Yet again, if we say that hypocrisy is the universal crisis of mankind, the crux of reality upon which man's aspirations are crucified, therefore everybody is a hypocrite, we lose the particular hypocrite in the abstract generality, and anything goes again, for we should not throw the first stone, we should forgive, and so on and so forth, a lax policy condemned as immoral by Jews and many other ancients, particularly the orthodox Zoroastrians. The Greek word 'hypokrisis' simply meant 'to play a part.' The hypocrite was an actor. The Greeks recognized that "the world is but a stage", and the word 'hypocrite' was not a pejorative epithet. We have the Alexandrine Jews to thank for the perjorative usage. When they translated the Old Testament into Greek, they used the morally neutral 'hypocrite' in place of 'hanef', which is a very strong word meaning godless person. Hence a hypocrite is a godless person and hypocrisy is the way a godless person acts. He covers up the truth of his evil nature with lies. He pretends to be good but he is evil. Of course we know that god is Truth and satan is the Liar. The Christians enjoyed the term 'hypocrite.' It was unfairly applied to the Pharisees, and ever since then 'pharisees' and 'hypocrites' are, for those Christians who are ignorant, synonymous. Consider this, that, if human nature is truly corrupt or less than it could be, then no person should put on a pretense of goodness and righteousness. If he would confess anything truthfully, he would humbly confess his sins; otherwise he would be guilty of the sin of pride: hypocrisy. But I am no Christian philosopher, so I quote Augustine's sermon on the Sermon on the Mount:
"Therefore, He said, when thou dost an almsdeed, sound not a trumpet before thee, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may be glorified by men. Do not, He said, desire to become known, as the hypocrites do. Now, it is manifest that hypocrites do not carry in their heart what they flash before they eyes of men. Hypocrites are pretenders, like mouthpieces of other persons, as in the plays of the theatre. For one who in tragedy takes the part of Agamemmnon, for example, or of any other person involved in the story or myth being enacted, is not really the person himself, but impersonates him and is called a hypocrita. So, too, in the Church or in any phase of human life, whoever wishes to seem what he actually is is not a hypocrite. He pretends to be a right-doing person, but is not such in practice. The whole purpose of his behavior is to win the praise of men. The mere pretenders can win, too, deceiving those to whom they seem good and by whom they are consequently praised. But from God, the Observer of hearts, they received no reward but punishment for their deceit; and from men, He says, they have received their reward; and most justly will it be said to them: Depart from me, yet workers of deceit; you bore my name, but you did not do my works. Those, therefore, have received their reward who give alms with no other intent than to received acclaim from men; not, if they received acclaim from men, but if they act with the intention of receiving acclaim, as has been set forth above. Praise of men should not be sought by a person who does the right thing, that they may benefit who can also imitate what they praise; not, that he should think they are in any way benefitting him whom they praise."
This is not the place to criticize the great Augustine, claimed by Christians as the founder of modern intellectual history. He was a former Manichean whose Zoroastrianism was tainted by Zurvanism - the doctrine that good and evil have the same father; with that and the corruption of his times in mind, we can understand his conversion to a more clear-cut distinction between good and evil, at least in intention. But we cannot see a man's intentions, and therefore we judge him by the facts of his works. Along this line we find the Deists who admit the existence of god, who believe in rewards and punishments in the next world at least, but whose worship of god consists not in professions of faith or abstruse theological incantations but in actual works.
In any event, those of us who have more than half a brain have problems with black-and-white, either/or thinking. For instance, pride might be considered as a blessing and not a sin, a motive for some of the greatest and best deeds ever done in this world. Nevertheless, on the other hand, we do get the critical Christian point and we feel the pricks of conscience jabbing us from time to time even though we might live the lie to such an extent that we think it is the truth. Alas, hypocrisy deceives the self as well as others.
Please mind you now, if this be not already obvious, that your most humble author is not a Christian, at least not wittingly - he could not avoid the culture into which he was born. Nor does he have a license to practice religion or to give spiritual advice - please consult your bona fide spiritual master. Yet he does believe the world is going to hell in a hand basket of hypocrisy manned and captained by a demonic crew. Wherefore he screams bloody murder from time to time, not to prophesize inevitable doom but to sound his own muffled alarm. No doubt very few people will hear it, for his neighborhood has a small population, twenty at the most, yet he needs to hear the echo, for his alter ego is humanity introjected.
Source Quoted:
ST. AUGUSTINE, THE LORD'S SERMON ON THE MOUNT, Translated by John. J. Jepson, Westminster: The Newman Press 1948
General Lie
The dystopia 1984 was premature: the title should have been 2084. The year 1984 has past but the spirit of 1984 is still at work in capitalism despite the failure of the national socialist and communist campaigns. But not to worry. The number of dissident intellectuals who worry about the evils of The System diminishes because their minds are being submerged, nay, are being assimilated and absorbed by the homogeneous, gelatinous gray matter, the Borgian Blob beneath the gargantuan mechanical carapace.
Who needs a liberal education or a self-education? The human race has already been systematically liberated by science and technology. We near the end of human history whose objective is freedom. WE are almost free enough to totally obey now: The System is freedom in obedience. The once adamantly independent intellectual has joined the amorphous population of irresponsible credentialed narcissists staring into the corporate pool of Echo's tears. Credentials, indeed. The sausage-factory graduate is handed a pigskin at the commencement exercise: "Here is your brain." With this football he or she can proceed to beg in hyphenated broken English at corporate back doors:
"Extremely well organized, detail-oriented, highly self-motivated, ambitious, career-minded team-player with a can-do attitude and excellent communication skills seeks key place on winning team. Highly energetic self-starter. Eager to hit the ground running to meet deadlines long before they arrive for cutting-edge, rapidly expanding, fast-paced company. Works best under pressure. Dynamic, multi-tasking, customer-driven, high-expectations environment preferred. Loves constant change and long hours without overtime pay. Willing to make sacrifices: integrity, conscience, family, and three chickens a week."
What communication skills? and to what end? Never mind, just push the right sequences of buttons and everyone will get it and obey it and produce it and consume it. The hackneyed phrases of form letters no matter how inapplicable to particulars will more than suffice when 'integration' and not 'integrity' is the key word. We are racially, politically and economically integrated now. We do not worry so much about our liberty for we find virtual liberty in our freedom to choose from an amazing variety of optional dressings on goods and services mass produced by virtue of scientific management. Fascists and communists and capitalists alike loved America's scientific management scheme. Yet the intellectual roots of modern business administration are not in America but in Europe, in the Jesuit's educational 'conspiracy' hatched in monasteries and cultivated in universities and military schools.
Today's neo-liberal masters of business administration are jesuitical monotheists devoted to the disciplined rational pursuit and compound accumulation of an overarching abstract value: money. Money is god because it gives any person no matter how honorable or dishonorable power over things and persons. It is not so much the thing as the power that is wanted. Money is worth dying for and profit is salvation. Profit is frantically sought no matter how many heart attacks one survives: we look at the fast-paced businessman and say, "He is a walking heart attack," but he does not know his condition; if he does, he just keeps on going anyway, like that battery in the commercial. Money comes not in peace but with a sword to destroy not only the family but traditional morality with its plural values. Morality becomes a pretense as exchange value replaces it. Profitable individualism is perfected in the universal hypocrisy of This Lying World of Ours. In any event, the army of workers must be organized and managed undemocratically in order to reduce costs and increase sales so that the kept class may be kept up with unearned income - the executive officers who aspire to join the kept class are entitled to obscene salaries and perquisites whether they lose or win the battles.
No doubt with the advance of technology many benefits trickle down to obedient employees as a consequence. As a matter of fact, there exists an open dirty secret: if the furnace were allowed to go full blast and the products were broadly distributed, poverty would be eliminated forthwith. But we must not allow that to happen, because people are basically lazy and prefer to lay around all day, smoke pot, drink booze, shoot up drugs, gamble, and fornicate. In fact, they would stop working without the fear of poverty to motivate them. Civilization would soon be destroyed. Therefore a system must be maintained, a system based on the scarcity principle - if there is no real scarcity, a false scarcity must be created.
The System is painful at times, but as long as the masses are systematically preoccupied with bread and circus, with standard trash, junk, and garbage, the elite are secure in their luxurious compounds furnished with custom-made things. We are an option-rich people, therefore we are free to choose between things. The choice is between buy and buy, or consume and consume; and to have that liberating choice one must sell and sell, or produce and produce, or be born rich or otherwise come into some unearned money. The surgeon general of the United States defined mental health as leading a productive life, and recommended mind-bending prescription drugs for those who cannot stand it. As long as one goes along, one is free in his or her obedience. There is always freedom of thought and conscience, and in the creative imagination, even in prison where great libertarian tracts have been written. If one can find enough leisure in voluntary poverty or wealth, religion or art-for-art's sake might set one virtually free.
Do we like The System? Not really. If people were allowed to pitch tents or to build lean-tos, huts and cabins wherever they liked, without paying rent or mortgage payments, the residential real estate bubble would burst - there would be no affordable housing shortage. But that cannot be. That is why the military junta of Myanmar, for example, wants everyone to live in regular Western houses instead of bamboo houses that can be built in a day if they happen to burn down because a woman is not careful smoking her cheroot - she was once the freest woman in the world, the envy of British women who visited Burma.
However, something is wrong with the the dark view of our race, especially with the allegation that humankind is a kind of sloth - that is a lie. We are not all lazy prostitutes: we do not work for the money alone or the thing that it can buy. We are not natural born bums and wicked welfare recipients. We know wealthy and poor people who love to work. We love action. We are natural born creators and builders. We cannot stop building when we should stop and be as lazy as a sloth sometimes appears to be. Moreover, men and women have built up fabulous fortunes not merely for love of money or power but because they love to be building something for people and they just cannot stop themselves; and those projects have enormously benefited our kind. So there.
On the other hand, the restlessness has gotten out of hand, and we are right to criticize it, to give ourselves a break, to take more and longer breaks from the compulsive make-work that consumes so much time in the 'advanced' economies of the world. Making work just to work is presently working the ruin of the physical, mental and spiritual resources of the the world, and does so in the false name of inevitable progress to a nebulous, indefinite utopia or X, but we know better, for we residents of This Lying World of Ours are hypocrites.
The utopia of our modern forefathers is here; we know it is rapidly becoming a dystopia. Yet we praise it. We put up a pretense that it is a good thing, for instance, to welcome change; to be welcome mats for somebody else's perpetual innovation; to change for the sake of change; to upgrade everything just to keep our jobs; to spin our wheels producing superfluities just to have private crappers; - to do all this falsely, on command from the top down, in the name of individual liberty. It is the liberty of an army ant. We are just going through the motions. We have no idea where the the military-industrial complex will strike on its next pre-emptive, self-defensive campaign to save the world for its own good whether the world likes it or not. We know the generals are lying through their whitened teeth; one lies to the whole world because he has high office; the other to the American people because he wants high office. The generals know they lie, but here we go again, we prefer the lies. The general's colleagues warn us: they say he an untrustworthy, ambitious, self-infatuated liar, but otherwise he a good general. The "otherwise" is good enough for us. Hypocrisy has become the norm, hence 'hypocrite' has ceased to be the epithet the Alexandrine Jews and Christians made of it.
We are uneasy. Our wealthy friends feel the malaise or malease precedent to the outbreak of mortal disease; they continue to gain weight. The much less well off know what they are afraid of and are accordingly terrified and stunted in their growth. The dogs are behaving in a peculiar fashion; Californians are are beginning to freak out; a quake impends. The world is working hard on the verge of another major heart attack. We must take a break and reflect on the meaning of hypocrisy. We must drop the false pretenses and admit that we are at an either/or crisis in human history. Either life and truth; or death and lies. No, everything is not black and white - there are gray areas. But in this case we have Truth and Lie separated by a void. The lying and spinning must stop. We must pause, rest, reflect, withdraw from the deceptive course. We are lying to ourselves and to each other. The lies we tell to protect ourselves, to give ourselves separate and important identities as individuals and as groups, have been repeated so often that they are almost believed; we know better because of the spark of light in the emptiness, yet we continue apace. Thus has lying and pretense made devils and hypocrites of us all in This Lying World of Ours. It will not be easy, but that much can be changed, and at the grass-roots level.
This Lying World
We are taught to have good manners at an early age. For example, we are to show respect for our parents and elders, or else. We must show respect even though we have good reason for disrespecting them. In that respect, we are taught to lie for our own good.
One of the legendary primordial emperors of China was born into a poor family; he had the worst parents in the world, yet he showed them respect. Because of that and other virtues, he was appointed imperial councillor, married the king's daughter, and was eventually named emperor even though his blood relation to royalty was rather remote. The legend emphasizes his virtue, and mistakenly states that he had no royal blood in his veins. Ritual virtue has big rewards sometimes - no doubt it has saved the lives of many abusive parents over the ages.
The small child soon learns about justice. If the child is good, he should enjoy good results, and, if he is evil, he should suffer evil consequences. But the authorities are unjust; they do not mete out rewards and punishments fairly, nor do their deeds match their words: in fine, too many of them are lying hypocrites. Yet the child had better not charge his parents thus: "You are liars! You are hypocrites! You are evil!" No, ma'am, the child had better lie or at least keep his mouth shut, for silence is golden. As he matures, he must perfect his hypocrisy. He had better be a hypocrite on a daily basis, or else. Or else he will not be loved by his family and friends - love means overlooking the faults of the beloved. Or else he will not receive good grades and receive his diploma. Or else he will not get a job, or, if he does, he will not be able to hold it for long.
Moreover, the child is taught not to throw the first stone. He is taught that he is a sinner too. In fact the ill-bred authorities who are considered to be bred well are so persuaded by their upbringing that their own nature is evil that they have concluded, in order to excuse themselves, that every human being is originally evil. Of course that too is a lie. In fact, the babe was born innocent, and the stone was first thrown at him by his creators.
But never mind: it seems we must show respect towards and even applaud the generally recognized authorities if we are to have our way, even those elected authorities we have voted for who soon prove themselves to be the greatest of all liars - of course lying is a bipartisan activity. Misdemeanors in lowly offices correspond to high misdemeanors: to impeach the elected hypocrites would at the same time constitute a silent impeachment of the majority for wanton negligence at the very least, for a careful examination of the candidates would have exposed the awful truth about them in the first place. Yet after they are exposed the majority are silent and the demonic crew remain in office by public default, thus does the impeached majority stand convicted of its leader's high crimes. Nevertheless, there is cause for hope, for the truth is still mighty potent in the good minds of a democratic people. We are not Saddamized Iraqis: our constitution provides for non-violent revolution, wherefore we can proceed in good conscience to overthrow evil governments to save a good state.
Our world is a lying world, therefore when a sorry sage tells us that the world itself is a big lie; that it is a fabrication woven, say, by Madame Maya; or that the world is an illusion concealing the absolute unmitigated truth about the one and only Reality, which the sagacious fakir, whether he be a dervish, sadhu, or master illusionist, is of course privileged to know; - we tend to believe his self-contradiction even though we know it is a bald-faced lie. Of course many true statements are in fact made in this world. For example, it is an obvious truth that the world outlasts every individual. Yes, the things of this world pass away, but many of them have been around considerably longer than the human race, and they will endure long after its extinction, nay, even after the extinction of the Sun - take gold for instance. The whole wide world is not vain and empty as the sour-grape eaters say. We are the ones who are vain and empty. Our lies are vanities. If the secrets were out, the scandalous emptiness of the forger would be exposed.
Indeed, there are universal laws physical, mental, and moral. Einstein did not say that truth is relative hence one truth is as good as another; nor does the theory of relativity validate the doctrine of ethical relativity, that one good is as good as another because there is no absolute Good. No, the theory of relativity supposes that universal law holds true no matter where you are and no matter how fast you are going. Of course the theory of relativity is still being tested, but so far so good; the evidence bears it out. As for the constant, the same results may be obtained by all who care to duplicate the experiments. The speed of light in a vacuum is generally accepted as a constant of about 186,282 miles per second because that speed has been repeatedly measured in several different ways - other electromagnetic phenomena, invisible to the naked eye, have about the same speed. Time is not the standard - time is relative to the constant, the speed of light. The scientist wants accurate and reliable information. The physicist who lies about natural phenomena and natural laws would soon be proven wrong in an honest world.
Yet in the moral sphere, where immeasurable quality or ideal values take precedence over measurable quantity, it is said that no objective standard naturally obtains, and that any necessarily arbitrary social standard imposed would be in opposition to the essential freedom of human kind, a freedom supposedly rooted in the subjective or anarchic individual unit that would, god-like, endure forever without impedance if only it could. On the other hand, the individual is a god spelled backwards and a cattle on the way home. There are natural laws that regulate human association along the way and make of the individual unit a social person. But this is not the occasion to expound on the freedom-in-order dialectic, nor on the idea that human history is the progressive liberation of individuals from authority, whereby the power of the elite is gradually diffused or replicated among the masses, who, in turn, somehow become a great global herd of liberated individuals. What concerns us here is the lying along the way.
The modern science upon which our technological progress depends relies on a skeptical search for the truth about things, not on habitual lying. Yet lying is so pervasive in our culture that we shrug our shoulders and overlook it, or insist that it is necessary and therefore a good thing instead of an evil thing. And that is a terrible mistake in the long run. There are a few universal laws in the moral sphere. A nation of liars led by pathological liars will not last long. It has not been that long since the Eskimo name for "white man" was "liar." Honesty really is the best policy over the long haul. Truth is the standard to which the best persons adhere. I speak here of truth in the existential sense; for example, the inner truth we feel when we lie, knowing that we are liars and deceivers and that we have joined the camp of wicked demons.
Humans have always had cause to lie in certain situations and to justify lying when caught in lies. Lying is quite natural, say the received authorities. Some even claim that lying is the very essence of human liberty, that the small child first finds its freedom and its independent identity in that secret place within where lies are forged. Which is to say that the person is a lie or a mask for the actors whom the Greeks termed 'hypocrites.' We also hear that lies are a form of camouflage upon which the lives of virtuous and innocent people depend. And it is suspected that, if everyone told the truth about what they thought of each other, the world might be wracked by violence in which untold millions would die in orgies of mutual mass murder. Much more good has been claimed for the evil of lying, but never mind; suffice it to say that too many liars think the evil of lying is in getting caught and prosecuted.
Still, most people have a feeling that lying is wrong - immoral. If we are to do our best in the world, we think we should know the truth about it, that we should, like every scientist, want reliable information upon which to make a decision. Yet we cotton to a culture that rewards lying and punishes honesty. Not that we want to lie or go along with the lies. Not that we want to be wicked and to excuse ourselves with evasive talk about gray areas and ethical relativity and transcending good and evil. Gray areas certainly appear; but there are black and white areas with a void in between, yet we claim black is white and vice versa, and we know we are lying. But we can hardly help ourselves. A man resolves to tell the truth one day, then, the very next day, he lies to get a job or keep his job - or a woman. Why, I have even caught myself lying for no reason at all except to give the impression that I am a good guy or a bad guy, and not just a nobody.
The caption below the jail cell states, "The truth shall set you free," but if the truth were told today we might have to build even more prisons and our streets might be flooded with homeless people. It takes a great deal of courage to tell the truth and nothing but the truth. Especially when the misleaders and those who want to replace them are pathological liars. Yet I for one do not think the world would completely fall apart if the truth were told. I believe it would be a better place to live in.
|
|
