Reading: Kinsley on intellectual dishonesty

Everyone's taking a whack at it: Why is it that Rove Republicans just lie and lie and lie some more--and never get called on it in any serious way?

(Yes, yes, of course Dems lie too, but you and I both know they're mere hobbyists compared to the professionals running the GOP and the right-wing media. Be serious.)

I think the answer I find most convincing so far comes from Michael "Kinsley's Law of Gaffes" Kinsley, because--like Hercule Poirot at the end of "Murder on the Orient Express"--he lets no one off the hook: everyone committed the murder.*

The great flaw in American democracy is not electoral irregularities, purposeful or accidental. It’s not money (which, even under current law, cannot in the end actually buy votes). It’s not even the inexplicable failure of all other Americans to vote my way or of politicians to enact my own agenda. It’s not the broken promises and the outright lying, although we’re getting close. The biggest flaw in our democracy is, as I say, the enormous tolerance for intellectual dishonesty. Politicians are held to account for outright lies, but there seems to be no sanction against saying things you obviously don’t believe. There is no reward for logical consistency, and no punishment for changing your story depending on the circumstances. Yet one minor exercise in disingenuousness can easily have a greater impact on an election than any number of crooked voting machines. And it seems to me, though I can’t prove it, that this problem is getting worse and worse. […]

Intellectual dishonesty can’t be banned or regulated or “capped” like money. The only way it can be brought under control is if people start voting against it. If they did, the problem would go away. That’s democracy.

Kinsley's piece is going onto the Reading's list in the sidebar.

*Oh yeah--look out, spoiler alert.