You’re Being Deceived… It’s Time to Stop the Lies

by Bob Bauman JD

Parliament of Whores is the title of P.J. O’Rourke’s 1991 classic political humor book. Subtitled A Lone Humorist Attempts to Explain the Entire U.S. Government, it is a scathing critique of the American system of government from a conservative perspective.

If O’Rourke wrote a companion volume describing the current administration, I think an apt title might be A Congregation of Liars.

Rarely, in so short a span of time, have so many officials of an American administration engaged in so many blatant deceptions, distortions, fables, falsehoods, outright fraudulence … and even perjury.

Prevarication seems endemic in this administration, from the president and the attorney general down to the White House press secretary and national security officials.

And the sheer audacity of the deception on display is breathtaking…
 

Asked during a U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee hearing in March whether the National Security Agency (NSA) collected data on millions of Americans, James Clapper, the director of National Intelligence, replied: “No, sir.”

This blatant falsehood was committed in front of one of the congressional committees charged with oversight of surveillance programs — oversight President Obama and other NSA defenders falsely claim is one of the “safeguards” against NSA abuse.

So obvious was his lie after the revelations of NSA domestic-snooping whistleblower Edward Snowden, Clapper was forced to admit that his statement was, in his words, "clearly erroneous" and he apologized.

As Glen Greenwald of The Guardian points out: “Intentionally deceiving Congress is a felony, punishable by up to five years in prison for each offense. Reagan administration officials were convicted of misleading Congress as part of the Iran-contra scandal and other controversies, and sports stars have been prosecuted by the Obama DOJ based on allegations they have [lied]”.

Yet, put aside for a moment that this massive, secret surveillance of all of our emails, phone calls and financial records violates our constitutional rights. I have commented about that before.

I want you to consider what a government of lies means to each of us, and to America’s future, when our government officials, led by the president of the United States, routinely lie to us, intentionally and repeatedly. At worst, this destroys whatever trust we have in a government that now controls much of our lives. It engenders fear, disrupting our personal ability to plan our lives, our businesses and to move forward. Living under lies means we can never be certain about our future and what the government will do to us.

But We Are Not Naïve

Now, I’m not naïve enough to believe that outrageous statements and charges made during presidential and other election campaigns haven’t become standard fare. Many of us have recognized these are phony and meant to mislead.

What I am referring to are the repeated false or evasive statements over the last five years by President Obama and officials of his administration about critical national and foreign policy issues. To wit:

• “What I can say unequivocally is that if you are a U.S. person, the NSA cannot listen to your telephone calls and the NSA cannot target your e-mails,” Obama said in a June 17 interview on PBS’s Charlie Rose Show.” That was a lie.
   
• Such lies are not new. A Washington Post article by Greg Miller states: "Details that have emerged from the exposure of hundreds of pages of previously classified NSA documents indicate that public assertions about these programs by senior US officials have also often been misleading, erroneous or simply false."
   
• And what about the pack of official lies concerning ObamaCare and the terrorist attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi? And don’t forget about the fast and furious gun running in Mexico by the Justice Department and Attorney General Holder’s lies to Congress about his role in wiretapping members of the press.

We, no doubt, like to think that we are superior to the Depression-ravaged Germans who were duped by Adolf Hitler and his “Big Lie” technique. We won’t fall for the Big Lie, we think. But ask yourself this: Aren’t most Americans being deceived by this multitude of government lies, unwitting victims of planned deception in which a lazy media is complicit? When we knowingly or in ignorance accept a government of falsehood, we allow those who lie to expand their power over our lives, to consolidate that power and expand their control. Unless we have the truth, we are unable to challenge the deceivers and end their domination – something we must do to reassert our freedoms and save our country.

As chairman of the Freedom Alliance, I have been consistently providing my readers with reliable, hard facts they can use to make personal and financial decisions in the midst of this cauldron of lies. Based on my public service and research, as well as my travels and contacts worldwide, I have endeavored to provide unvarnished truth in my essays, monthly reports, special alerts and interviews.

There was a time when a government official habitually lying to constituents about matters of great import was unthinkable. Times have changed. I not only truly believe in the old saying “the truth will not only set you free,” but also that it will keep you free. And the need for it has never been greater.
 

The hour is late for America. We must all do whatever is in our power to resist the Big Lie.