Recently, the AIER’s Senior Editor James Harrigan asked rhetorically, “When was the last time a politician of any description used the phrase ‘sacred honor’ with a straight face?” Jefferson, Harrigan pointed out, wasn’t “inventing the Declaration from whole cloth,” but instead, he was capturing “the American mind.” In his evocative Fourth of July essay “The Harmonizing Sentiments of the Day,” Harrigan concluded, “So we are left with one important question in our own time: What are the harmonizing sentiments of our day?”

Once foreign to the “American mind,” dishonor and deceit are essential “harmonizing sentiments” in totalitarian societies. In a society controlled by force, lying is a way of life for the government and its citizens, who harmonize to survive.

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