The “big lie” is the name of a propaganda technique, originally coined by Adolf Hitler in Mein Kampf (1925), who wrote, “The great masses of the people ... will more easily fall victim to a big lie than to a small one.” Sixteen years later, Hitler’s propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels, actively promoted the big lie as the key principle of the Nazi propaganda machine.
Sadly, lying has become so commonplace in our society that the truth often appears or is portrayed as a lie, and outright lies are given legitimacy by many of our political leaders, our courts, our institutions of higher education, and our religious institutions. In short, tens of millions if not hundreds of millions of people are living in a lie-filled and lie-believing state of mind.
There has been a dramatic decline in church and synagogue attendance. U.S. church membership was 73% when Gallup first measured it in 1937 and remained near 70% for the next six decades before beginning a steady decline around the turn of the 21st century. It has since been between 63% and 37%, with those not in attendance professing no particular religious preference. Thus, growing millions of people are now believing the lie that there is no God, or at least have taken the agnostic position.
This is a dismal rejection of the truth that the universe and our world in particular were created by a Supreme Being and that we owe Him worship, honor, and thanksgiving, for the moral law at the very least, and ultimately for the salvation of our souls.
The noticeable emptying out of many churches is evidence that belief in God is on the wane and that denial is a rapidly spreading lie. Imagine: There are growing millions who believe we evolved from a Big Bang or from amoebae or from primates even though there is not one piece of fossil evidence of an intermediate stage between monkeys and humans. The creation narrative is deemed a myth because of the general credibility of science based on its achievements, but there is no verifiable paradigm or controlled experiment that can lend any credibility to the creation hypotheses offered by science. Do I need science to know that a chair is not the floor? In a parallel cognitive format, do I need science to know the difference between the human self and the One who created that self? Denial of the latter is a lie.
In a survey taken only two years ago, it was found that 57% of American adults believe that gender is based on the sex “assigned” at birth, whereas 43% say a person could change his gender later in life. Two in five Americans (40%) think a person should be able to legally self-identify as a gender different from the one assigned at birth, whereas just as many (38%) disagree. There are political divides as well on the topic of transgender issues. Incredibly, two thirds (67%) of Democrats believe that a person should be able to legally self-identify as a gender different from the one he was assigned at birth. Far fewer Independents (33%) and Republicans (17%) share this view.
On this issue, there is a clear biological and scientific standard. Females all have XX chromosomes, and males all have XY chromosomes. Males might enjoy dressing up as women or assigning themselves women’s names or taking puberty-blockers, but they remain males. The same applies to females. Gender is not assigned at birth, but is a biological reality designated on birth certificates. Any other basis for “designation” is a lie. Further, the Bible declares homosexuality a sin and therefore inconsistent with faith in God.
The lie may be the result of a strong delusion, or it may be purposeful or cynical. But a lie is a lie. In 2 Thessalonians 3, we read, “For this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie. ... Therefore, brethren, stand fast, and hold the traditions which ye have been taught, whether by word, or our epistle.”
The acceptance of the distortions produced by gender “identity” has become another sufficiently popular lie that has disrupted U.S. relations with societies around the world by disrupting our credibility. Insisting on lies is incompatible with leadership, although in the short run, it may have appeal to certain segments of the population.
The final lie to be discussed is the lie that the brotherhood and sisterhood of humanity is denied by the existence of the nation-state. World government proponents believe that the nation-state defies the inherent unity or oneness of the human race. Decades ago, this writer was an undergraduate at the University of Pennsylvania, and while walking with a chemistry professor, Charles Price, across campus, the professor asked me if I had heard of the United World Federation, which he was president of. His goal was that the U.N. would become our one world government.
I had read the United Nations Declaration of Universal Human Rights, which was published and signed by the U.N. member-states at the end of WWII, and there was no mention of world government in that document. Rather, the word “rights” was emphasized in almost every section. As an American, I had come to understand “rights” as belonging first and foremost to individuals, and that through the U.N., after WWII, the USA was in a better position to share that vision with the rest of the world. However, after many years, the U.N. changed its focus from rights to world governance in its Agenda 2015, which was updated to its Agenda 2030, where “meeting needs” became a central concept (not unlike the Communist Manifesto of 1848) as well as global governance.
The shift from promoting and enhancing rights to meeting needs as the legitimate basis for government and for world government is another lie promoted to demote and derogate the worth of the individual. The American principle is that the state is upheld by and exists to promote the worth of the individual. It is not that the individual exists to justify and uphold the existence and worth of the state. That reversal is the third lie this essay seeks to expose. The centrality of the individual is the unique American gift to the world and to Western civilization. Europe, since the French Revolution, has been drawn to different forms of statism rather than toward individualism, and thus that difference between Europe and the U.S. remains a tension within Western civilization.
If we reject the lies delineated in this article, we will have the basis for moving forward successfully into the future.
