In recent decades, “morality” has become a bad word. Truth is relative, they say. So what may be morally wrong to you isn’t necessarily morally wrong to others. Indeed, if you mention morality, I’ll immediately suspect that you are an un-enlightened bigot.

That’s all good and fine for morality. The problem is that in our democratic state, idiots on both the Left and Right universally believe that law should be determined by morality. I’ve spoken about this in the past elsewhere; suffice it for me to say now that morality is no better a foundation for law than astrology.

What I want to talk about today is lying. I believe honesty is always the best policy. Some people think I am making a moral statement. I’m not. I am saying that when we deal with others, there is an implied, tacit agreement to deal with others honesty. We do not say, “I’m telling you the truth” every time we start to speak, but it’s implied. When I ask my child if he did his homework, I’m not asking for any response; I’m asking for the truth.

One thing I really hate to hear is that honesty is the best policy because if you lie, you lose all credibility. No matter what the cost benefit analysis, honesty is an entitlement of those with whom we choose to communicate.

But we all lie nonetheless. I certainly do. It bothers me to lie, but I do it in certain cases. Usually when telling the truth would be too painful for the person asking the question.

For example, say you have a girlfriend who fancies herself a good cook. In fact, cooking is her paramount area of pride; an area from which she derives confidence and emotional support.

Within the realm of cooking, let’s say she has particular pride in her veal parmesan. Now suppose she asks you if your ex’s veal parmesan was as good as hers, and the truthful answer would be that your ex’s veal parmesan was the best you’ve ever had – would you answer honestly?

In this case, I do not think the girlfriend is asking for an honest answer. She’s asking for affirmation of her cooking skills. She has assumed that her cooking is superior, and simply wants to hear “yes, yours is the best”.

In this case, I would lie. Indeed, I would. I would not want to cause emotional damage to the girlfriend for the sake of honesty in answering such an inconsequential, trivial question.

When I was a young man, decades ago, I was a hopelessly inept lover. I asked a girlfriend if I was the best she had ever had. She was pained to answer, but did so honestly, and told me specifically that her last boyfriend had been much more adept at love-making. I was extremely hurt, obviously. I can appreciate the honesty of it now, but at the time it the painfulness of the answer was debilitating. I think a more considerate course of action would have been to educate me in love-making and then answer the question after my skills had surpassed those of her previous lovers. Or simply not answer. Or just lie.

Why did I ask in the first place? Considering the pain the truthful answer caused, I cannot think that I was asking for truth in the first place. In my immaturity I was simply asking for affirmation of my value to the girlfriend. Surely I was doing so in an improper manner.

To take it to an extreme, if your 4 year old daughter asks you if she’s the prettiest girl in the universe, when in fact she’s butt ugly, are you going to tell her the truth?

I have a daughter who is quite attractive. In fact a state patrol officer let me off with a warning once stating that it was because my daughter was so beautiful. But even if she were not so beautiful, if she were a four year old and asked me that question, I would tell her she is the prettiest girl in the universe. I would of course raise her to understand that physical appearance is not important. But I think that lying in that case is acceptable because she’s not really asking if she is pretty – she’s asking how much I love her.

Still, it’s painful to put forth an argument that lying is okay in some situations. It seems like a slippery slope. Where does the train stop next? Lying is okay whenever and however as long as nobody is hurt?