Can You Tolerate A Government that Lies to You?

“The social contract is nothing more or less than a vast conspiracy of human beings to lie to and humbug themselves and one another for the general good. Lies are the mortar that bind the savage individual man into the social masonry.” H.G. Wells

We Americans put up with an awful lot of plain old evil in our society; but there is one thing that we simply will not tolerate—that is a government that tells us lies. Lately, the American people have had a very strong suspicion that the government has been lying to us about the scandal at the IRS, the Fast and Furious scandal, and the debacle at Benghazi, Libya. It has been very hard to know just how many of our suspicions have been true, because of the skillful way the administration has covered up the facts.

Under the Freedom of Information Act, the large majority of governmental information is supposed to be available to the people; but the executive branch has worked hard, time and time, again, to keep important information away from the public and from legislators who need the information in order to design laws. Congressional committees have had great difficulty getting information out of the executive branch. Some legal watchdog groups like Judicial Watch have had better success in getting the President and his helpers to turn over information; but even they have had huge difficulties obtaining information. Following is a list of excuses the administration has used to deny information to people who need it:

“You can’t have it because of ‘executive privilege.’” “You can’t have it because it is in an ongoing investigation.” “You can’t have it because it is classified (by the President).” “You can’t have it because the effort to get it will be too onerous.” “You can’t have it because all of our computers crashed simultaneously.” “You can’t have it because there is no pertinent information there, anyway. Trust me.” “I only knew about that when I read it in the newspaper.” “That happened more than six months ago. Forget it.” “Nobody told me about that. I can’t be connected with that problem.”  “We’re putting that on hold; we’ll get it to you later (months later).” “We had no reason to believe the data was located there.” “If you want that information, you have to sue us for it.” And then…when they finally turn over some information, all the important data is blacked out! I ask you—is this freedom of information? There may be some truth to some of the above excuses; but, by and large, these excuses indicate cover-up of government failures.

“Transparency” in government has become a joke in this administration, despite the fact that President Obama promised before he was elected that if he were elected President, he would institute the most transparent administration in history.

Well, it seems that there will never be anything like transparency in this administration. Nevertheless, the American people seem to have suspected a deliberate cover-up of information that might be damaging to the administration; and they have acted on that suspicion. The electorate has placed in the House of Representatives the largest majority of Republicans in years; and they have elected ten more seats in the Senate than the Democrats occupy.

It is my personal opinion that the President should be impeached and replaced with someone who will be more honest with the American people.