America can’t survive on lies and make-believe morality

When I was in the fifth grade, an encyclopedia salesman visited our classroom to promote his collection of 12 leather-bound books. For readers under 20, encyclopedias were the forerunners of Wikipedia — or, perhaps more accurately, Google. If you wanted to learn something about anything, you had to look it up.

After his pitch, the salesman handed out buttons to each of us. They read: “We never guess, we look it up!”

We need prayer. Not just for revival, but for clarity. For courage. For love of truth and love of country.

So I, being just one of the self-appointed class clowns, pinned on the button and proudly declared, “I never guess, I make it up!”

The 10-year-olds giggled.

Never guessing and making something up might be a brilliant joke for young children, but as adults, it can become a dangerous mindset — even an evil way of thinking — when applied to important cultural and political issues. Such thinking can divide — and eventually destroy — a country.

The following four areas are particularly threatened by such falsehoods that have taken root and now threaten to tear us apart.

Shoddy journalism

Once a noble profession, journalism has become a playground for flimsy narratives based on anonymous tips with little to no evidence. Case in point: the Wall Street Journal’s recent hit piece claiming Donald Trump sent a warm birthday greeting to Jeffrey Epstein.

Evidence, anyone? Bueller? Bueller? Still waiting.

Does passing off shoddy evidence as absolute truth surprise anyone anymore?

When Jussie Smollett claimed that MAGA thugs put a noose around his neck, called him naughty names, and did other unspeakable things, the press took his word as gospel. The facts didn’t matter. The narrative did.

Did it really need to take a court case to finally drill down to the truth behind Smollett’s ludicrous claims?

And then came Trump’s impeachments. First, they accused him of being a Russian puppet. Later, they dragged him into court over a decades-old assault allegation lifted straight from a television script — and again for a real estate "fraud" case without a single victim.

It's a classic projection: Accuse your opponent of the very thing you’re doing. Whether that came from Goebbels, Alinsky, or some other manipulator of mass opinion, it’s been remarkably effective. But it’s time we bury that tactic — and hold its promoters accountable.

On-demand abortion

I was a college sophomore in 1973 when the Supreme Court debated legalizing abortion. The argument was framed around “choice,” but I kept asking: What choice are we talking about?

If you wave away the smoke screen and charged rhetoric, the issue is plainly about human life. No one debates whether an eagle’s egg holds potential life — you destroy it, you pay a fine. But human babies? Their lives can be extinguished on demand, through nine months and, in some cases, even after birth.

That’s moral madness, not medicine.

Homosexuality and transgenderism

Remember when “what we do in the privacy of our own bedrooms is nobody’s business” was the mantra of the LGBTQ movement? That private preference has now practically become a public mandate.

Today, the demand isn’t tolerance. It’s celebration. It’s not just that two adults love each other. It’s that your children must learn to affirm their “gender identity” in school. And if a little boy thinks he’s a little girl, you have to support that too, even if it entails permanently changing his body before he’s old enough to get a driver’s license.

What began as “big Bill wants to love big Bill” has turned into “little Bill needs to become little Jill.”

Weaponized racism

As destructive as the above lies have been, none have proved as divisive as the redefinition of racism.

In its most weaponized form, racism has become acceptable. That’s how we got to the idea that electing someone like President Barack Obama was necessary “payback” for the sins of the past — for the horrible institution of slavery that your ancestors may or may not have condoned.

Voting for someone based on the color of their skin rather than the content of their character empowered an agenda bent on “fundamentally transforming” the country by uprooting the very ideals that once united it. That includes the belief — once self-evident — that all men are created equal.

RELATED: Self-evident truths aren’t so self-evident any more

  Photo by dzm1try via Getty Images

Many Christians rightly see abortion as America’s greatest moral stain. But I believe God may be using the sin of racism — particularly the left's weaponized version of it — as a means of divine judgment on this land.

A national reckoning

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard recently uncovered a “year-long coup” orchestrated by President Barack Obama and his administration against Donald Trump during his 2016 campaign and first term in office. If proven true in court, these allegations could ignite racial unrest far worse than the George Floyd riots.

Those on the right have marched peacefully to end the evil of abortion; those on the left have paraded peacefully to celebrate homosexuality (in all its mutations and mutilations). But if race enters the equation, groups like Black Lives Matter and Antifa stand ready to turn streets into war zones.

A call to truth

These nefarious elements embedded in the nation’s lifeblood could spell very dark and destructive times ahead. We shall see.

In the meantime, we need to return to what that little button in fifth grade was trying to teach us: Don’t make it up. Look it up. Tell the truth.

We need prayer. Not just for revival, but for clarity. For courage. For love of truth and love of country.

This nation was founded by men who believed in a holy and righteous God — and who believed that truth was worth dying for. We don’t need more lies. We need that kind of truth again.

Editor's note: A version of this article appeared originally at American Thinker.