Beautiful lies about Evil are more effective than ugly lies about Good

Used to be, the Father of Lies told lies that were not simply false, but lies that looked ugly.

The Nazis proclaimed, for example, that Jews were miserly, baby-sacrificing vermin. Such lies achieved, in the terrible short-run, their intended impact, but, from a rhetorical point of view, the tactic of ‘uglifying’ the good suffered from the flaw that eventually derails all lies so crudely launched, namely, their own off-putting ugliness.

Seriously, who, having seen one of Goebbels’ propaganda films, wants to recall images of rats running through dank sewers or defecating in sacks of grain? The disgust engendered by such images made their hateful message too revolting to recall, or at least, too nauseating for most people to dwell on for very long. Ugly lies collapse (if only in the long view of history) not only because they are false, but because their very ugliness flees in face of the patent beauty and goodness of those whom they purport to describe. The staying power of an ugly lie is not able to sustain evil over the long run. The Father of Lies has figured that out, I suggest, and has changed tactics.

Today, Evil does not tell ugly, viscerally off-putting lies about Good; instead, Evil tells beautiful, attractive lies about itself. And nowhere is this more the case than with abortion propaganda.

A Students for Life of America webpage, scoring tax-payer funded abortion propaganda now on at the University of Michigan, shows a typical pro-abortion image (albeit with a superfluous red X drawn thru it).

Look first at the picture: warm sunlight peeking between a flowering horizon and soft clouds offering life-sustaining moisture. That visual image has absolutely nothing to do with abortion, of course, but it sure looks attractive.

Now read the words on the pro-abortion image: abortion is A GIFT FROM GOD. Wow, a gift from God! What could be better than a gift from God?

Now read the quote from abortionist Dr. Susan Wicklund (also gently pictured): “Abortion is about life, quality of life for infants, children, and adults everywhere and in every sense of the word. Life, not death.” Every phrase, friends, every warm, wonderful, heart-tugging, empathy-demanding, sun-shining phrase is a lie. But what an attractive lie it is.

Gone, I think, are the days of Evil telling ugly lies about babies (like the abortion advocate who referred to unborn babies as “parasites”—I thought I was listening to Goebbels’ granddaughter). Babies are too cute to curse, and everyone knows it.

So, instead of telling ugly lies about babies, the Evil One tells beautiful lies about abortion.