Editor’s note: Ian Hodge is a regular columnist for Business Reform Magazine, the leading Christian business magazine with over 100,000 readers. Each issue of Business Reform features practical advice on operating successfully in business while glorifying God.
Sometimes you wonder what depths highly paid academics will go to in offering the public the latest in academic research.
Now a Reader in Politics at a British University claims to have discovered something the ordinary citizen has known all along. Politicians lie.
This extraordinary finding comes upon examining mainly US politicians ? Watergate, Irangate, The Lewinsky affair. Apparently these incidences prove the politicians in a democracy lie to the people.
Now some of us have been trying to say this for years. Without much success, but now we have the backing of a fully funded research project to establish the case.
However, there is a strange twist in the conclusions of this report. It seems our researcher makes lying a virtue, rather than a vice. “Lying is to democracy,” he said, “what manure is to rhubarb.”
Such an incredible conclusion is beyond comprehension. For those of us reared in an age where manners and character were important, lying was an unforgivable activity, ? under any circumstance.
Now, we are expected to roll over and bless the fact that our politicians lie to us as a means of preserving democracy.
If this is the case, may heaven preserve us against both democracy and lying politicians. Not to mention the protection we need against academics that find it hard to encourage eternal virtues.
On the other hand, our academic researcher has equated lying with manure ? which is not a bad illustration of what lying does to a culture. Rather than fertilize, its aroma rises to high heaven very quickly, and when people see it on the road, they step around it with the realisation that manure in the wrong place ? like lying in politics? is hardly a favoured commodity.
It can truly be said that manure, when treated properly, makes people flushed with pride ? at its disposal, not its continuation. And while public manure can be a sign of chronic illness, so too lying can be a symptom of chronic verbal diarrhoea.
If lying is a sign of a healthy democracy, so too is the dishonesty that is evident in the business community. And if our politicians can lie to us, why not our business managers, our financial controllers, and those whom we trust in positions of leadership?
And we wonder why we have a problem with integrity in our culture today. Look no further. Here’s the answer, supported by academic research.
If we need to defend lying by saying it is a necessary sign of a healthy democracy we have reached a very low bottom in our thinking of everything that is good and noble. And, when all is said and done, virtues are what make community possible.
There is little wonder that our culture is in disarray when our politicians lie, our academics defend it, and our clergy sit silently on the sidelines.
Ian Hodge and Business Reform are able to offer a range of services that will educate business owners in all aspects of management, services that include our very own do-it-at-home (or at the office) study material. The first series of lessons on finance is now available. For further information, send an email to [email protected]. Learn to develop and maintain management practices that will give your business every chance of success
