Is a lie of the government ever 'OK'?

7

7 Iron

500+ Posts
Is it ever ok for the government to lie?

I pose this question here, because I want to avoid any discussion of blowjobs or the war in Iraq.

I didn't see the entire History Channel program, but they had some special when that movie "300" came out and they were talking about the history behind Sparta and that whole time period.

Basically, a ruler of one of those countries exaggerated and fabricated some sort of threat from another country in order to convince his people to support the massive buildup of his country's armed forces - it ended up that the other country attacked them and they were able to be defeated, because the ruler's lie had prepared them to battle.

Yes a muddled and perhaps erroneous summary, but you get the idea.

Is it ever ok for a leader to blatantly lie to the people he rules to avoid panic, or to win his people over to his cause?

Obviously a bad example would be Hitler's lies about attacks on Germany in order to convince Germans to support his aggression.
 
There are such things as good lies. I can think of a situation where the benefits of a lie make it good.
 
I think that the one good thing FDR ever did was to be extremely passive with regard to knowledge of an impending Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. That was a brilliant military decision.
 
Of course it is OK for the guv to lie, it's even appropriate for the guv to lie about lying. Mr Sanctimonious himself Jimma Catarrr lied his *** from the get go when he stated that neither he nor his administration would ever lie to us.

as long as people are cognizant of the fact that the governmend is lying and don't believe con men like Jimma Catarrr and Bill and Hillary Clintonn in everything they say then things will eventually turn out ok.

after all didn't that liar Abe Lincoln say you can fool all of the peeps some of the time and some of the peeps part of the time but you can't fool all of the peeps all of the time and then he scarfed down a whole box of peeps.
 
If it is to a foreign government then yes, if the lie is directed at the people that pay for it then know.
 
The problem is that its not always ok for the govt to lie. Based on that, any lie can be justified as being allowable since its at the judgement of the liar.
 
In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies.
-- Winston Churchill

Yes. Keeping secrets and lying is a staple of any nation's national security.
 
Eisenhower lied about sending U-2s over the USSR. He looked stupid when they produced Gary Powers. That is the most famous lie. I can't say it was a good one or not. But if a government had a secret way of spying on an enemy and fessed up all abouit it when asked, that might be pretty stupid.
 
A lie with an intended result of aiding and benefiting the citizens of a country is justifiable and sometimes necessary.

A lie that is intended to be detrimental to the citizens of a country ,or counter to an outcome they would have chosen through their own free will , is not justifiable.
 
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