Dishonesty is destroying this society: Integrity in public life

In this post-factual world, it is easy to be glib about how the old, mutually-protective constraints are now at best optional. Clinging to tried-and-tested principles like those, or at least most of them, offered through the Ten Commandments may seem hopelessly naive in a world where the President of America is defined by routine dishonesty.

President Trump’s contempt for the eighth commandment — “Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour” — does not make him unique but it grievously undermines American democracy. Sadly, it undermines our democracy and society too as his flagrant disregard for integrity may convince us, if only by comparison, that we are paragons of angelic virtue. We are so thrown off balance and we cannot see the mote in our own eye. And there are more than enough of them.