Would you like Lies with that?

Sorry my title is completely stupid but life is short. Anyway, as we move on to the new topic of lying I have noticed the the arguments are very similar to state violence. We once again have two two ways of looking at it the problem. The first is the idealist model that lying is almost never permissible or if lying is used a politician will need to come clean about it after the fact as Bok proposes. From that it is argued that lying is not very advantages to a democratic system and also how public interest is too amorphous to justify government lying/deception. On the other hand is the Pasquerella and Killilea argument that sometimes lying is not that bad of a thing and the "Just Lie" does exist. They use the Weather's example to show that lying can and should be used for the common good. These shape up to be kind of similar to Sullivan and Krauthammer. I think the "Reflections on the 'Just Lie'" article already did a good job showing some of the problems of Bok argument but it was flawed because they used only one example to justify the point and also ignored the good points raised by Bok.

I'm sure that there are probably more examples of the "Just Lie" working but I also feel that there are likely a much greater proportion of lies used for personal gain and that lies cause much greater problems. A few major examples would be Watergate or the Johnson campaign. I would even also assume at the time these officials felt they were doing the right thing by lying and it wouldn't be that big of a deal later. I agree with Bok that people in power have their vision narrowed to give whatever their agenda is more significance and by doing that they become more willing to lie to get it passed. Many on the P and K article points were a little unfair. Wasn't the example of the energy study created by another illegal action? I honestly question how lying to cover-up the leakage of information should be seen as the success of the "Just Lie." In that very specific case lying was beneficial but only to cover-up bad supervisors and the illegal action of the contractor forcing Weathers to hire a distrustful and more expensive contractor. So although I don't think the government should just clam up about everything as Bok implied, I think lying is a symptom of other problems as well as a means to more bads results than good.