Lies and Public Life
Posted on: June 16, 2023
- In: General
- 4 Comments
Boris Johnson’s systematic lies to the UK parliament have been exposed by a parliamentary privileges committee. Facing a 90-day suspension, Johnson chose to resign, but continues to damn the report of his lying. Many hope this is the end to his political career, but people like Johnson and Trump know how to manipulate public opinion and galvanize their acolytes in self-righteous crusades.
This is more than about government parties during the Covid lockdowns. It is about the centrality of truth and truth-telling to public life. Whatever academic parlour-games are played around the concept of truth in some university departments, and whatever cynical politicians and business magnates may say about their “realism” or “pragmatism”, morality lies at the heart of democratic politics and economic conduct. Enquiries and investigations into misconduct presuppose the objectivity of truth and moral values. Can a well-ordered market economy flourish in a cultural climate of moral relativism (where morality is treated as a matter of convention or individual choice)?
Truth-telling, making and honouring promises, are the sine qua non of healthy governments and markets. “My word is my bond” was the old motto of the financial City of London. Fraudulent traders, tax evaders, money-launderers and dishonest accountants prey on the taken-for-granted honesty of the majority. Once they are found out, confidence in the system collapses.
The British philosopher Roger Trigg observes:“Any view that sees obligations as merely created by agreements must still accept that any agreement has to have force even when it is inconvenient to keep it. In other words, parties to an agreement have to have a moral outlook already formed. It must give them a sense of what is right, and a willingness to abide by it, even when it is in their own interests not to do so. The problem is that a liberal view of society is one where morality is a private matter, and public reason may not appeal to private, individual moral beliefs. Yet at the same time it depends on tacit, or actual, agreements and promises to live by certain public procedures, and to follow them in good faith… The character of the whole may depend on the character and principles of the participants, but liberal doctrine wants to remain neutral as to what those should be… this is a deep problem for liberalism.” (Morality Matters, Oxford: Blackwell, 2005)
Furthermore, in a society that tends to reduce all moral language to talk about “personal preferences”, why is it that the moral character of a witness, whether in a law-court or a scientific laboratory, is still considered absolutely vital to the pursuit of “truth”?
In other words, a vibrant liberal democracy presupposes a particular moral culture: one in which not only freedom and tolerance are valued, but also where truthful speech, civility in public interactions, respect for the weak, and financial integrity in public institutions are practised by a significant majority.
In many post-colonial societies, liberal institutions do not work well because the required cultural mind-set is either absent or deficient. Sri Lankan politicians, for example, routinely tell blatant lies in parliament, let alone in the mass media. They are simply shrugged off by the general public. The idea of appointing a select committee to investigate lies told by a head of state to parliament is unthinkable!
Johnson’s Partygate fiasco also raises deeper questions about the morality and gullibility of the electorate in one of the the world’s oldest parliamentary democracies. Here is a man who was sacked by the Times newspaper when a young reporter for making up a quote, and who was later demoted to the Conservative back benches in parliament for lying about an affair. Nevertheless, all his lies about Brexit were swallowed wholesale by a public that gave him a huge majority in the last parliamentary elections.
It raises troubling questions about the public culture in Britain and the USA, where “politics as spectacle” has come to imitate Reality TV.
4 Responses to "Lies and Public Life"
What a sad reality. I expected that in my own country, Romania, but not in what used to be a bastion of democracy.
UK is not in shambles, morally and spiritually. And there is no shame about it, it seems.
It makes me wonder what’s next. 😦
I think ethics is sorely missing from public discourse. This is evident in the largely impoverished nature of discussions around so-called culture war issues. I hear even those with whom I have shared political values on the Left speak about ‘morally-loaded’ statements around economic choices for example (Isabella Weber, I’m looking at you), as if morals have no place in the discussion. As if they are ever absent. It’s just a case of whether one seeks to be upfront and/or articulate what their moral motivations are. As for the UK being some ‘bastion’ of democracy, it’s always been more a set of ideals- often cynically-exploited to justify their own morally questionable foreign policies – rather than a lived reality. As Vinoth implied, those who live by principle help hold it all together, I believe in large part. It has to be embedded de juro (legislation) and de facto (culture) for it all not to fall apart.
I find left-liberal lunacy as infuriating as right-wing rants. As if “equality” and “justice” were not moral concepts.
Vinoth Ramachandra 
1 | Chris Hudson
June 20, 2023 at 7:26 am
Spot on.