Lies and History

 

For years before and into the 1960s, there was a version of American history popular in the south and often accepted elsewhere claiming that the Confederates did not rebel in defense of slavery but over some other concerns, that slaves were well treated by their kind and genteel owners, and that slaves were satisfied with their condition. Every one of these assertions is false. These days very few people believe otherwise, and most would agree the history of slavery, the Civil War, reconstruction, and Jim Crow should be understood and taught accurately without such fables.

However we now have a new set of fables in place of the old, one claiming that Lincoln and the union army did not free the slaves who rather did it themselves spontaneously or something, that America and its wealth were built on slavery, that the American revolution was fought to escape from British abolitionists, and that ubiquitous, systemic white racism has resulted in a de facto continuation of Jim Crow into the present. Every one of these assertions is false. Yet they are preached in universities, diversity reeducation sessions, public schools, media companies, and even, for gosh sakes, Disney cartoons.

In accuracy and intent they are on the level of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and should get the same dismissal and contempt. There is no justification for accepting dishonest cover stories that all that is really wanted is to get the full story told. It has nothing to do with that. It is lying to libel this country and an entire race of people.

Creating an Incentive

 With their attacks on “whiteness” , their advocacy of critical race theory and (in the schools) critical race theory that dares not speak its name, and their contempt for notions of color blind interactions among people, “antiracist”  leftists  have lied outrageously, ignored the fact that people’s  character and qualities are individual characteristics not determined by their race, and rejected the liberal principle that judging, condemning, or punishing a person because of his race is wrong. They should stop. Their premises and claims are false, and their doctrines are ethically reprehensible.  

They do not seem to be people who care much about truth or are likely to be influenced by ethical arguments. But they might do well to consider a pragmatic one. If this becomes a country where their premises and conclusions are accepted, then people in every group would have a strong incentive to make sure those representing and favoring their race are the ones in power judging, rewarding, and punishing.  People respond to incentives. 

The Smithsonian Joins the Klan

Note: in the following I am assuming that the story of the document  and exhibit I mention is not a hoax, that the exhibit is real, and  that it is not presented  as a parody or joke but as something those responsible for it mean to be taken seriously.  If my assumption is false, I will  be glad to hear it.

According to the news, an exhibit at the Smithsonian’s National  Museum of African-American History and Culture on the evils of “whiteness”  has a display which listed the following characteristics and beliefs as being particular to white people and whiteness and  by implication inappropriate for or even oppressive to black people :

·       individualism, self-reliance, and autonomy

·       the nuclear family with a father, mother, and children

·       an emphasis on the scientific method  and objective, rational linear thinking

·       the notion that hard work is the key to success

·       jurisprudence following elements of English Common Law

·       respect for property and  authority

·       politeness and civility

·       communicating in writing

·       planning for the future and delaying gratification to achieve goals later.

It is useful,  though disgusting, information to learn that the people running the Smithsonian now think it is appropriate to smear and attack people based on the color of their skin. It is another example of  how bad things are in the country  and how far formerly respectable organizations and institutions have sunk. It is something to keep in mind when considering  whether to support the Smithsonian in any way. When someone goes to the  trouble of giving you formal notice that he is your enemy, it pays to believe him and act accordingly.

While the intent of this item was to show contempt for white people, the result is to show a shocking contempt for black people.  As a list of things particular to white people it could have been prepared by grand dragons of the Birmingham Ku Klux Klan of the 1950s. I have heard bigots claim that black people are too shiftless to be independent and self-reliant,  too immoral to have stable families, too stupid to think clearly and rationally, too lazy to work and become successful, too savage  to be law abiding and respect  other people’s  property, too crude and ill-mannered to behave civilly, too dumb to speak and write well, and too frivolous to set goals and work to achieve them.  It is interesting that the Smithsonian seems to agree, at least to the point of seeing such values and behaviors as white attributes inappropriate for and foreign to black people.

This nonsense probably will not damage many white people. Any white person foolish to take it seriously is probably already fouled up enough that swallowing  a little more propaganda won’t matter. The danger is that a young black person might believe it and reject things that help make a successful and proper life possible.  That is another reason it would make a really hateful old time Ku Kluxer proud.

   

Progressive Leadership in Virginia

One does not have to be sympathetic when an arrogant, malicious, sanctimonious scoundrel gets a comeuppance, but one should be fair. Racism is the belief that the  members of some races are intrinsically superior or inferior because of their membership in the race. It is not just anything that offends a black politician or some nitwits on social media. Racial prejudice is belief in  judging someone on the basis of his race rather than his individual characteristics and behavior. It is not just  anything that offends a black politician or some nitwits on social media.  Virginia governor Northam’s appearance in a photo in 1984 dressed as either a Ku Kluxer or in blackface as an undignified looking  black man is not proof of either. It could have been only  a  crude and tasteless attempt to be funny. Most of us have tried to be funny in crude or tasteless ways about one thing or another at one time or another, and the 1980s were a far less puritanical and uptight  time than the present.  Northam is a loathsome character even by the standards of his trade, and Virginia would be better off if he were run out of office, but in a sane world he would not be hounded out for this.

Still some of it is  amusing.  There is poetic justice in  is having  a so-called rising star of the Democratic party get taken down for a thirty five year old violation of the canons or political correctness in a yearbook.  It was fine fun  to see those objective,  sharp eyed newshawks at CNN tell their audience that he was a Republican, as was watching other active or potential candidates for the Democrats’ nomination for the presidency in 2020 righteously denounce a possible  rival. It has been a hoot to see him admit he is in the photo and apologize, and then change his mind and deny it when things got really hot.

It also is interesting that the old photo is what caused the commotion among Democrats, rather than his statement seeming to approve of  post-delivery infanticide.  Some people believe abortion is a crime, and some do not, but all civilized people should agree that killing a viable, new born  infant is a crime. That he apparently does not see it that way is a far better reason for pushing him to resign in disgrace than a picture in a yearbook.   That other politicians in his party have not disagreed with him in public on that reveals a lot about them – none of it good.

Useful Information from the New York Times

It should be obvious that racism or  racial bigotry is wrong in itself, irrespective of whether the bigot has any way to act on it.  Powerlessness does not absolve anything. The racial  ideas expressed in Mein Kampf would have would have been no less wrong if the author had never found a publisher for it and had died an unknown alcoholic paper hanger.  It should also be  trivially obvious that there are politically powerless white people and people of other races in politically powerful positions.

It should be obvious but it isn’t to everyone. Many leftists disagree. So the best thing about the case of  Sarah Jeong, her racially bigoted writings about white people, and the New York Times  is that it  has drawn attention  to the leftists’ dangerous doctrine that anti-white bigotry is not really bigotry because its  target is fair game, and that only white people can be bigoted because only they have power in society. It is good for people, especially for those in the targeted group,  to come to understand that a good many American leftists believe that it is okay or even necessary to hate and disparage some people because of the color of their skin.  People  should not laugh this off as the rantings of a few insignificant losers. It is more than that. The Times seems to  accept it. (The paper almost certainly would not have hired someone who had written that stuff about any non-white racial or ethnic group.) It is implicit in the set of double standards of political correctness and in the notion of racial identity politics.  It shows up ever more frequently in the Democratic Party, the entertainment industry, and the traditional media.

This is not good news, but it is news Americans, white or otherwise, should pay attention to.  I am glad the people at the Times dropped the mask and showed how things really stand.  One lesson for all from the 20^th Century is that when people say they hate you and want you destroyed, it is prudent to take them at their word.

As an aside, the Times's  claim that Jeong’s writings  were excusable as overwrought  responses to rude posts directed at her is nonsense.  Her attacks were on white people as such not rejoinders aimed at particular people who may have offended her.  

Not Black Enough

A few weeks ago there was a brief controversy among media people who cover sports over rumors of unrest on the Seattle Seahawks football team because some of the other black players thought their quarterback Russell Wilson was not black enough, i.e. did not display what  the other players thought was appropriate behavior for a black man.  His sin apparently was being educated, articulate, reserved, and gentlemanly – behaving more in the manner of a Peyton Manning than a Jameis Winston. There is nothing unusual in this. For years people have noted the destructive tendency of many black people to ridicule blacks who do well in schools, use correct English, and generally lead responsible, respectable, and successful  lives for acting white or being Oreos. The present day notion of the appropriately black black man as a rough, vulgar, unschooled, undisciplined,  “urban” type  is well established and frequently promoted in the media and is commonplace among many black people.  

  

What is not noticed or mentioned enough, however, is how closely this view of authentic blackness resembles  the old stereotype of the ignorant, crude, unreasoning, irresponsible, un-teachable, dangerous black brute  propagated  by racists in the days of Jim Crow. The hypothetical man from Mars, the observer who looks at the facts alone without any preconceptions, would have trouble telling them apart.

In its effects, however, the new one may be worse.  While black people and leaders tended to resent the earlier  stereotype and often saw it as something to overcome and disprove,  too many  people of all races today embrace the new one and accept it as a norm for behavior from and expectations of black people. Charles Barkley said it well in commenting on the controversy over Russell Wilson. “For some reason, we have been brainwashed to think, if you’re not a thug or an idiot, you’re not black enough.” It is sad that so many black people have fallen for this. It is despicable that so many people – most of them white -  in the media, the entertainment industry, and politics are willfully doing the brainwashing. They do black people no service by positing so low a set of standards and expectations. 

 

Race, Hypocrisy, and Basketball

There are various types of wrong opinions about race.  Racial prejudice consists of disliking, refusing to associate with, or disapproving of or liking, wanting to associate with, or approving of a person on the basis of his race or ethnic group. The error and the unfairness of this lie in judging a person on the basis of something irrelevant to his character, behavior, and capabilities and over which he had no choice. Racial bigotry is the practice of attributing bad or good (though usually bad) characteristics to members of a race or ethnic group indiscriminately  – such as claiming all Jews are mercenary and crooked or all  blacks are  brutal and stupid or all Englishmen are cultured and well educated. Racism is the doctrine that members of a particular race or ethnic group are necessarily and intrinsically inferior or superior to others on the basis of their membership in the race or group. 

It is not pedantic to make distinctions among the three, because the differences  matter.  Each of the second two is worse than the one(s) listed before it, being both more unreasonable and foolishly wrong and also liable to produce worse consequences. Racial prejudice alone, unless it is very pervasive within a society,  usually stops with bad, rude, and boorish individual social behavior.  Bigotry when widepread  in a society can lead to  large scale violence, systematic invidious discrimination,and  unjust laws, and even when uncommon often stimulates conflict and criminal activity. Besides all the wrongs associated the first two, racism can lead and has led to caste systems, race based  enslavement, and mass murder and even when  lacking many adherents and politically powerless inculcates brutal and inhumane attitudes and behavior. 

At present the apparently quite unpleasant owner of the Los Angeles Clippers of the NBA is being castigated for some rude things he said in private about black people. The man’s comments and opinions as reported fall into the category of boorish racial prejudice,  perhaps tinged with a touch of bigotry. A little while ago in the news,  famous rapper and associate of the president Jay Z publicly announced his affinity for people and opinions explicitly racist in the exact sense of the term.

It is useful to consider the two cases together. While assorted media and political queens of hearts are screaming for the team owner’s head or at least his property, there was scarcely a peep about the rapper’s saying something far worse by the standards espoused by those attacking the other man.  People operating fairly on the basis of thought out principles usually do not behave with that much inconsistency. Hypocrites, parroting ignoramuses, and phonies, on the other hand, do it all the time. These two cases present  another illustration that, while the Victorians may have had their hypocrisy and inconsistency on sex, our age’s treatment of race matches them and perhaps then some.  Future generations may  get the same sort of good laugh from it. 

Professor Williams' Klansman

The economist Walter Williams  has said  a Klansman wanting harm black people could scarcely have come up with a more effective means of doing so than the government schools attended by many black children.  With a nod to Professor Williams,  let’s try a  thought experiment along the same line. Suppose you are a grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan fifty years ago in 1963.  You and your  colleagues detest black people and wish to see them held back from achieving prosperity, kept poor and ignorant, and separated from the mainstream of American life.  You, however, are smarter and more observant than your comrades and realize that the days of Jim Crow laws and direct oppression are numbered. So you start trying to find more subtle ways to accomplish your objectives.  The first thing you come up with, after noting the importance of stable, two parent families to the development and later success of children is to create perverse incentives favoring single parent households headed by indigent women.  Then, considering  the importance of learning to read, write, calculate, and understand something of the world for success in life, you hit on the idea of destroying schools which serve black children by turning them into useless holding tanks - overrun with thugs and trouble makers, staffed by ineffective time servers, and teaching the average student very little.  Next, realizing how the qualities of thrift, prudence, grooming, ability to plan ahead and defer gratification, sustained effort toward  self improvement, and honest enterprise contribute to success, you come up with the idea of fostering a cultural milieu among black people that  devalues and dismisses those things, and tags black people who display them as pathetic, contemptible copies of whites. Since you certainly do not want black people feeling self confident and able to deal with life, you think of ways to inculcate  a sense of weakness, despair, radical separateness, and victimhood among them and make as many as possible helpless wards of the state. Finally, as the last thing you want is harmony between whites and blacks, you plan to encourage black people to resent and hate whites, to offend their sense of fairness by demanding and getting quotas and special favors from the government, and to display behaviors and attitudes tending to confirm white people’s worst stereotypes of blacks.  Along these last lines, if you were perverse enough, you might even invent hip hop.  

Of course this is only a mental exercise.   No real Klansman, no matter how much he hated black people, would have had the power to do those things.  Yet they all happened, and the country is worse off for them. One has to wonder why. It was not inevitable.  People working for civil rights in the 1950’s and early 1960’s did not expect these things, nor did trends at the time suggest them. Politicians and bureaucrats, opinion makers in the  traditional media and entertainment companies, so-called civil rights leaders, teachers and administrators in government schools, and others made these things happen with their decisions and actions.

The usual explanation is that this was an unintended consequence of well intentioned efforts or at worst the result of simple blunders and venal politics. Those explanations  certainly would have been true in many cases. Yet the effects have been so obviously pernicious, and  there have been so few attempts to change direction and make corrections  that a person has to wonder if that is  the whole story.  It is fair to ask if all the powerful and influential people who contributed to creating the present situation did  so innocently or inadvertently or if some were motivated by anti-American malice or a need to maintain a large, politically  reliable underclass. 

President Sharpton

It has long been clear that Barack Obama is a very bad president with a very harmful set of plans and policies for the country and a dangerous disregard for the rule of law. It has been equally clear that he is an immensely arrogant, petty, power mad, and dishonest human being. However his performance Friday in his comments about the case of Trayvon Martin  and George Zimmerman displayed such a stunning combination of cynicism, blatant dishonesty, rabble rousing,  and a vulgar demeaning of the office he holds as to be in some respects a new personal low for his time in office. He came across less as a president than as just another bitter, bigoted, classless, graceless race hustler. It really does not matter whether he was revealing truly held feelings of resentment and racial hatred or manipulatively trying to stir up black voters and deflect the public’s attention from his administrations failures, crimes, and scandals or both (which seems the most likely to me). He has crossed a line, making a mockery of his position and destroying the last part of any claim he might have had to respect based on it. You can’t claim the respect due to a Dwight Eisenhower or John Kennedy while behaving as an Al Sharpton. 

Race and Guilt

Various thinkers have written about the harm done to people by guilt and its attendant sense of unworthiness. Some have noted particularly the crippling effects of inappropriate and undeserved feelings of guilt on decent people who  haven’t done anything wrong and thus the desirability for would be tyrants of making those they wish to tyrannize feel guilty and sinful.   We can see a mild example of  this in this country with regard to race where a big part of the dishonest game being played by politicians, their allies in the traditional media,  and so called civil rights leaders depends on white people’s being guilt ridden enough to accept their impositions, rules, and demands cravenly and uncritically.

This requires getting  people to accept blame  for something they never did.  Jim Crow segregation laws and government rules were abolished over time in the United States in the two decades following World War II. By 1964 they were gone completely.  The voting age at that time was twenty one. So no one under the age of seventy today voted for segregation laws or the (almost all Democratic) politicians who created and maintained them because none of them could have,  and a majority of the people now over seventy did nothing to support Jim Crow either. They  have nothing to feel guilty or blameworthy about on the issue and should realize it. (In fact the only government imposed racial discrimination in the adult lives of anyone born after World War II  has been the direct, explicit, and systematic discrimination of the last forty years  in favor of blacks and, to some degree,  Hispanics and against whites and others in the form of affirmative action quotas, rules, double standards, and mandates. That this discrimination has been nowhere nearly as damaging or severe as that which black people endured under Jim Crow does not make it right.  It just makes it less bad.)

 Things are even clearer with respect to slavery. The last surviving former slaveholder has been dead a very long time. Most died over a hundred years ago.  No one alive today bears any responsibility for the crimes of slavery. The supporters and defenders of slavery (again almost all Democrats) paid for their crimes with death and destruction in the Civil War.  Much of the wealth stolen by slaveholders from the labor of slaves, which wealth was never spread widely among southern whites, was destroyed in that war. Today’s white Americans  are no more to blame for slavery than today’s Italians are for  Caesar’s conquest of Gaul.

None of this is meant to ignore or diminish the wrongs done to black Americans in the past or to deny that the some of the harm done in the past has had lingering effects.  Rather it is to say only that innocent people should not accept guilt or punishment when they have done nothing wrong. Americans need to reject both the punitive policies of the politicians and bureaucrats and the strictures of hypocritical political correctness. News and events of the last few days illustrate the need to do so.  

Hokum and Taboo

There is a small political stink going on in my town over a  couple of the pro-Obama  political signs that were defaced recently. It is not known whether the work was done by opponents or pro-Obama agents  provocateur, but the local Democrats are up in arms with one of their perennial candidates calling for an investigation by the hate crime police.  The reason for their and the local newspaper’s going into such a tizzy is of course that the vandalism took the form of writing the word “nigger” on the signs.

It is indicative of a strange  cultural phenomenon, where a word is held in such dread that it is rarely printed or spoken (except by black people, oddly enough), but rather referred  to fearfully and  surreptitiously as the “N-word”.  The term is after all  only a vulgarism, one of many offensive words in the language that polite people avoid using. Yet many people these days treat it as some sort of dread tribal taboo, almost in the manner of the superstitious savages in an old movie fearing  some  forbidden utterance will cause the gods to make the volcano erupt. It reaches a point where the silliness of it  all can make one wonder whether a lot of one’s fellow Americans are thinking  all that much more clearly than the savages with the volcanoes.

It is also interesting to consider trends of  fashion with respect to taboo words. A few decades ago, “fuck” was a word that may not be spoken, while the usage of “nigger”, though considered vulgar and low class,  was not taboo in the same sense. Now that is reversed. This may reflect the fact that while the sanctimony and  hypocrisy of the former time were often  centered on sex, the sanctimony and  hypocrisy of our time are  often focused on race. 

Dimwitted on Race

Jim Brown was one of the best football players of all time. After a very successful career in the NFL and a fairly successful second career in the movies, he has settled down in his old age as second tier “activist” specializing in race - not a first string hustler such as Sharpton or Jackson, but someone who can get his name in the papers from time to time. He made the news last week by criticizing Tiger Woods for not having the right kind of social consciousness, i.e. for not being a political activist in the manner of Jim Brown. Afterwards, various half- (and smaller fraction) wit sportswriters and talking heads from TV and radio weighed in on the issue of Woods’ alleged failings. One writer, fretting over the fact that Woods did not endorse Obama even though they are both half black, went so far as to worry that Tiger might have been for the Repubs in the last election. (He was able to comfort himself, though, with the hope that the silence had something to do with Woods’ endorsement deal with Buick.)

It is easy just to laugh this stuff off as the usual drivel of fools, but it is a mistake to do so. This sort of thing reveals a serious and deeply held racism in society and in the traditional media. Consider that almost no one would have thought of taking Jack Nicklaus or Larry Bird to task for not being involved in left wing politics. And today there seems to be little interest in the political philosophies or activities of Peyton Manning , Tom Brady, or any other famous white athlete . People are mainly interested in these men as sportsmen. What , if anything, they do as citizens in the political arena is generally considered to be their business and not of any particular interest to the public. Yet Tiger Woods and Michael Jordan are frequently attacked and judged wanting for not being activists and for lacking a sufficiently enlarged social conscience. The difference of course is that they are black men. The implied premises are that for black people race is the thing that matters most, that all proper black people must hold the appropriate and correct beliefs, and that a black person who chooses to believe and behave differently is at best wrong and at worst a race traitor.

These premises are of course very close to those of the bigots of the Klan. They too believe that, when it comes to black Americans, race is what matters most. They too have a set of opinions and actions in mind as the only correct and appropriate ones for black people. They too oppose the notion of a black person freely choosing his beliefs and path in life apart from the constraints of society’s prejudices or the requirements of group identification. The things that make them wrong are the same things that makes Brown and much of the left wrong. Every human being is a free individual. One’s race should not dictate one’s views, beliefs, habits, or proper place and activities in society. There are no intrinsic demands placed, requirements imposed, or virtues or vices bestowed upon a person because of his race. To believe otherwise is, well, to engage in some form of racism. Tiger Woods is no more required to share Jim Brown’s opinions and agenda than an American of English descent is to share Gordon Brown’s.

News and Politics

The market has just taken out the lows of the 2000-2002 bear market and reached dozen year lows. This is completely understandable in term of a set of risks that are starting to resemble those of the 1970’s. In the short run we have a monetary crisis and a nasty recession that is pretty much worldwide. For the medium term we have a federal government that is operationally hostile to economic growth and the creation of wealth, as its tax, regulation, “fairness”, and “green” policies and proposals already clearly show. And in the long run we have a massive increase in the national debt, due to war and “stimulus”, just at the time when, because of the retirement of the boomers, we can least afford it. The last is particularly dangerous. In the 1970’s the government repudiated a large fraction of its debt through inflation, decimating the citizens’ savings of the post-WWII prosperity in the process. It then confiscated more of people’s savings by creating and taxing high nominal (though low or negative real) interest rates on those savings. There is every incentive for them to do it again now, particularly given that the party in power does not see savers or investors as part of its constituency. It is also important to remember that the inflationary depression of the 1970’s ended only when we got an inflation fighting fed, a pro-growth administration in Washington, and the explosive development of new companies and entire industries, many driven by innovations in technology. None of these things is on the horizon right now.

There is a lot of discussion about a crisis for people who are under water with their mortgages, and I find it puzzling. I understand the problems of those who are delinquent in their payments on mortgages, but I cannot see a crisis for most of those who are under water, but still making their payments. It is certainly unpleasant for a person’s house to be worth less on the market than the amount he owes on it. It makes the household balance sheet look bad, but unless a person sells the property, he does not have to cover any actual cash losses. He has the house he agreed to buy at the monthly payments he agreed to make. Eventually, as he pays down his debt and the real estate market turns, he will be above water again. After all, despite anything politicians or realtors might tell us, there really isn’t any natural or Constitutional right to annual appreciation in real estate.

The government announced last week that it was putting the squeeze on UBS to reveal names of its American depositors to the IRS. The news led to the usual bleating about “tax cheats” and “those not paying their fair share costing the rest of us”. Most of this is unseemly nonsense. A cheat is someone who defrauds another person or who breaks a rule of fairness or conduct to which he has agreed. Running from bandits or hiding from the tax collectors is not cheating. The question of whether to pay taxes is an almost purely pragmatic question, not a moral one. (There is a ethical issue about paying one’s share of the legitimate activities of the government and not being a free rider, but for most taxpayers that issue does not come up, because the government claims enough by withholding and through W-2’s and 1099’s to more than render that concern moot.) To claim otherwise is to assert that a government has an unlimited moral claim over people’s lives and efforts and that whatever it decides to take from them is right, solely because it has decided to take it. The point about “cheaters” increasing costs for the rest of us is no more valid. We need to remember that the problem for members a herd of gazelles being chased by a pack of hyenas is the hyenas, not the faster gazelles. We suffer harm at the hands of the tax collectors, not from our more nimble countrymen who avoid them. Besides, as a practical matter, does anyone believe that, if this government miraculously collected what it wants from all the “cheats”, it would lower taxes on everyone else? There is not much plausibility for that one.

Also last week, one our politicians admonished his fellow citizens for being cowards on the issue of race. He is of course right, though not in the way he meant. Our culture is deeply dishonest about race. Future generations likely will consider our hypocrisy and perversity on the question at least as harshly and ironically as many now view the attitudes of the Victorians on sex. We could take steps to become more honest. We could be sure we really do rate persons by their individual characteristics and not their ancestry. We could realize that one may criticize or even condemn a person’s acts or attitudes without having racial prejudice against him. We could reject undeserved guilt. The crimes of slavery and Jim Crow were egregious. No one alive today had anything to do with slavery. Only a few, in places such as the U. S. Senate, who played a role in Jim Crow are still alive. Those who had nothing to do with it need to refuse to accept guilt for something they did not do. That would make for more honesty, though probably not of the kind the politician wanted.