A Morality Tale

Dear Barack,

I want to tell you a story.

One day the Devil and a friend were walking down the street. About twenty feet ahead of them, a third man was walking in the same direction. Suddenly, the third man stopped in his tracks and bent over to pick up a slip of paper. He glanced at it, quickly stuffed it into his pocket and hurriedly moved on.

“I wonder what that was?” asked the friend.

“It was the truth,” said the Devil.

“I guess that’s bad news for you,” said the friend.

“Oh no,” said the Devil. “I’ll just have him invent an ideology.”

There’s a great deal of wisdom in that story, Barack. Throughout history mankind has placed more credence in an ideology than in the truth. Oh, they all say they are seeking the truth, but let the truth contradict an ideology, and the ideology wins out every time. They prefer the rigid edifice of dogma to the fluid dynamic of truth.

Truth gives us chaos and disorder; an ideology gives us peace, order and stability, and these three are the basis of all meaning because they guarantee a social structure that is conducive to economic expansion.

The reason is simple: peace means not rocking the boat; order means not rocking the boat; stability means not rocking the boat. In other words, the first duty of a free people is to keep their mouths shut.

Ours is a sanitized democracy that eschews the messiness of dissent.

Protecting an ideology is of greater value than morality. Morality weakens and softens; an ideology provides strength and rigidity. Hence, an ideology must be preserved at all costs. Morality is a factor only to the extent that it contributes to the preservation of an ideology. Morality is a marketing tool, and little more. Once morality becomes the basis for policy, the ideology is imperiled and peace, order and stability are threatened.

The bottom line is that the wise leader preaches morality and practices the preservation of the ideology, no matter how many lives it costs.

Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones