The big lie that we can’t afford to help our own
Don’t believe
I remember President Harry Truman saying about a pesky opponent, “The poor fellow’s got a handicap: You can always tell when he’s lying. If his lips are moving, he’s lying.” That’s pretty much how it is today. The lies come at us hard and fast. But there is a defense: what my dad called “horse sense” and more elegant people call “common sense” and I call “logic.” Let’s take an example.
We read, time after time, in the Post-Gazette that “the universities and the news media are biased against the Republicans.” If you take that at face value, it indicts academia and the press for prejudice. But, if you apply logic, what it says is that the reasoned opinion of the better-educated and better-informed citizens is that Democrats are preferable to Republicans. Just scrub away the poison words and the sneer, and the lie is revealed.
Here’s another favorite: “Government bureaucrats can’t accomplish anything; we need to turn the country over to the businesspeople.” Logic, based on facts, tells us that businesses fold up and die at a horrendous rate — about 90 percent. That invalidates any claim that privatization is a good idea.
How about “government regulations are bad for the economy”? Doesn’t the fact that the United States — regulations and all — has had the longest, largest and strongest economy the world has ever seen sort of make that a dubious proposition?
People lie in order to get what they want. It’s always been that way and it’s never going to change. So when we fall for that stuff, it’s our fault. It’s our fault that we have brought our country to the brink of destruction by voting for the most proficient liars. The examples of lying to get what they want go on and on, but here’s the topper: We can’t afford health care, the minimum wage, unemployment relief, environmental regulations and all that touchy-feely stuff. Codswallop! We established the United States to “secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity,” and, by horse sense, common sense or logic, that means putting the welfare of our people first in consideration. PAUL ALTER
Wilkinsburg