These are perilous times for America and the West. False ideas have not only gained a powerful hold over the minds of millions. Such ideas are now attempting to silence dissent and forbid open debate. They seek a total monopoly over free thought.
We must fight back, in the spirit of Solzhenitsyn’s 1974 manifesto, “Live not by Lies,” and Rod Dreher’s recent book with same title. We must refute the “smelly little orthodoxies” of leftism, as Orwell called them. With Vaclav Havel, who led the Czechs in throwing off communism, we must commit to “living in truth.”
A complete list of the aggressive, seductive lies now widely prevalent, which we must tirelessly reject and correct, one at a time, would run into the hundreds. For starters, here are ten lies about reality that occurred to me as fast as I could write them down.
No doubt you can expand my list with dozens more of your own. I hope you will. If we let these stand, we’re not in touch with reality at all, and the results will soon be fatal to our civilization. So join me: let’s be about the business of living in truth!
1. Science disproves religion. That’s a lie. Investigating the material universe can only tell us how things work. But it can’t tell us where we came from, why we’re here, or how we should treat each other. Those moral and spiritual questions can only be addressed by seeking to know God and obey him. Religion and science are not an “either-or” for human flourishing. They are a “both-and.” Each has its role.
2. Freedom is the master value. That’s a lie. Ordered liberty is surely a cherished aspiration for all individuals. But a world of limitless freedom would be a world where relationships wither, the weak are unprotected, and selfishness reigns supreme. The master value for human flourishing is personal responsibility, fostering community and self-realization alike through the Golden Rule.
3. The planned economy works best. That’s a lie. The USSR boasted it would “bury” the USA. The opposite was true. Look at the nighttime satellite photo of South Korea, ablaze with light, and North Korea, shivering in the dark. China only began to thrive when it abandoned communism for capitalism. Markets, property, enterprise, and prices produce the best standard of living, as the American experience shows. Why else do millions still risk their all to come here? Advocates of planning seek power for themselves, not prosperity for all.
4. Oppression explains everything. That’s a lie. Yes, people-groups sometimes clash cruelly, but more often they peaceably coexist and beneficially compete, cooperate, or combine. Critical theory, intersectionality, victim narratives, and group guilt are but 21st-century versions of 19th-century Marxism, which has caused untold suffering and slaughter through the years. They yield lose-lose outcomes wherever tried. Let’s don’t!
5. America is systemically racist. That’s a lie. Yes, our country like most others has had its share of racial and ethnic injustice in the past. But America’s laws, customs, attitudes, and institutions are now almost completely purged of those—free of them. To allege systemic or structural racism, implicit bias, invisible and ineradicable, is to put Americans of all colors into a guilt trap with no escape. And nonwhites will suffer most.
6. The US Constitution is unjust and obsolete. That’s a lie. For over two centuries, while other regimes have come and gone, our constitution has stood the test as a wise, resilient form of government for the most successful nation the world has ever known. Recognizing the people as sovereign, it gives all an equal voice in self-rule and an equal opportunity to rise. It respects majorities while protecting minorities. It guards against the abuse of power. It does establish justice, as the Preamble intends, and it is in no way timeworn—but evergreen.
7. Climate change is doom. That’s a lie. First, the best measurements of global warming are inconclusive and insignificant. Second, the positive and negative impacts of some small warming in the next hundred years (if any occurs) are a wash. Third, the greenhouse buildup of CO2 is arguably not human-caused, and the current policy response won’t much reduce CO2 anyway. Fourth, the best hope for mitigation is innovation by free people, not command-and-control by elites. But beware: such control is what the elites are really after.
8. Mankind is earth’s enemy. That’s a lie. This wonderful blue and green planet is humanity’s God-given home. It was made for us, and we for it. Recent centuries have seen ever more people living ever longer and better lives in a cleaner and better protected environment. Our stewardship of the earth is steadily improving, and the future is full of hope. Voices of fear are either misinformed, driven by ignorance and self-hate—or manipulative, bent on a hypocritical power trip. C.S. Lewis foresaw it all in The Abolition of Man and That Hideous Strength.
9. Life doesn’t begin at conception. That’s a lie. From the moment sperm meets ovum, the miraculous thing taking shape in the mother’s womb is never going to be anything else than a new, uniquely destined human being, a little person in its own right. The abortion debate won’t go away. There may be hard choices for that baby’s parents to make, and difficult issues for lawmakers to decide—but let there be no mistake, what’s in question is indeed a baby, not a tissue mass.
10. Death with dignity is everyone’s right. That’s a lie. Death in the best of circumstances is an utter indignity. That moment when the lights go out for the last time is an offense against decency, and we all know it. St. Paul was right: death is our enemy. The movement for euthanasia and assisted suicide is rampant in Canada and Europe, and it’s gaining here. It’s fueled by those who consider the old and the ill a costly inconvenience; away with them! But “life unworthy of life” is a Nazi idea. God forbid it should now seduce us.
11. Speech is violence; so is silence. That’s a lie. Acts of violence cause physical harm. Words that are said (or unsaid) merely cause emotional upset. The difference is as great as that between a lightning bolt and a lightning bug, to borrow from Mark Twain. Coercion over what we can say or not say—and ultimately over what we’re allowed to think—is nightmarish tyranny. It brutalizes the human spirit. Its advocates seek to rule us absolutely for their own fanatical ends. We must resist it to the death.
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Oops, I lied—er, fibbed anyway. My list of ten lies about reality turned out to be eleven. No. 11 seemed well worth adding, since if allowed to prevail, it will cancel any dissenting voice opposed to the first ten. Which in fact is already happening everywhere you look, every day.
The people of the lie (as Scott Peck’s famous book called them) have a long head start on us, and they hold the high ground. The hour is late. A hymn I was raised on sounds the bugle call: Let us then be up and doing. Live not by lies, America!