Liar Liar Pants on Fire!
If you’ve ever been a parent raising your children, you immediately know when your child is lying. So why do people learn to lie?
What puzzles me the most is when intelligent adults lie believing others they are around or speaking to are not smart enough to know the truth or reasons. Why would anyone cling to a lie knowing it is not the truth, and could be harmful to others?
Why would a leader put a company, organization, or a nation at risk? The answer lies, to make a pun, in the four points of this blog column.
Point #1. You go for pleasure and avoid the pain. Whenever a parent or friend does not confront the liar, they are reinforced to repeat the narrative because the pain does not exceed the pleasure. To simply overlook the lie to keep peace is never the answer.
Point #2. Anyone can rationalize anything to get what they want. Your child breaks a window hitting balls in the backyard, but then blames another for doing it. People don’t often weigh the consequences of their actions before they commit errors in their decision. If this were understood, criminals would not take a handgun to rob anyone.
The death penalty is a severe punishment, but less of a deterrent to murder because the criminal has never experienced that consequence. Seeing what happens to others doesn’t matter.
The government has a perjury statute. If you lie under oath and are found guilty, the consequences are severe. There must be or how would you get witnesses to tell the truth? Take the current President Impeachment inquiry to build legal articles of impeachment.
Then factor in witness bias. In their minds, the truth is what they believe it to be. But the facts must be in the written words for legal processes and judges to find the truth. Courts don’t allow hearsay testimony, and it’s rare to convict or severely punish anyone on circumstantial evidence beyond a reasonable doubt. Those courts who do lose appeals!
Is the Chairman of the Impeachment Inquiry, Adam Schiff, perjuring himself when he repeatedly states publicly that he doesn’t know who the “whistleblower” is? Much of the testimony suggests that he lying, but why? Because he has a greater belief in his bias and disdain for the figure who is president so his party can regain the office to lead the nation.
He knows there are no consequences for his actions. If found later, he would not be put in prison or fined monetary sums to be painful. He has harmed the nation, overruled the Constitution he swears to protect, and undermined the most basic rule of law – due process and the right to confront your accuser.
Point #3. The more you do for people, the less they learn to do for themselves. Ask anyone if they value anything given to them for free more than what they must work for to earn? Giving away free stuff at the expense of hardworking taxpayers who must pay for it just to get elected and get in power is the greatest Quid Pro Quo.
Those idealistic promises to offer free healthcare if they are elected are NEVER delivered. How people with even an eighth-grade education buy into that is a tragedy. What have our schools and parents done to our youth? Everything is free; you don’t have to work for anything, and the rich people owe it to you.
Point #4. You cannot build accountability in a micromanagement system. The bigger government gets with a bureaucracy to manage free social programs, you put a few decision makers in charge to make high salaries without regard for the people they are serving. That is what I define as an “elitist.”
Instead, why not offer retraining and work-study programs so the people who have need can make choices to help themselves? They will value what they learn and earn and share with others to raise children with a work ethic that can be repeated for future generations – much like the immigrants of the past generations who came to America without free entitlements other than opportunity to find work.
That my friends are The Behaviorist View.
Recent Comments