Merriam-Webster defines "ideology" thusly:

1 a: a manner or the content of thinking characteristic of an individual, group, or culture
b: the integrated assertions, theories, and aims that constitute a sociopolitical program
c: a systematic body of concepts especially about human life or culture
2: visionary theorizing

There's nothing in that definition that requires honesty. That's where too many political ideologies fall apart, as they are contrary to facts. We'll get into some examples, but first, Law & Liberty scribe Theodore Dalyrimple has presented some thoughts on a book that's been added to my reading list: "The Persistence of the Ideological Lie: The Totalitarian Impulse Then and Now" by Daniel Mahoney. First, on the work itself:

In his The Persistence of the Ideological Lie, a collection of connected essays, Dan Mahoney, our best exegete of Alexander Solzhenitsyn, considers both the nature of and reasons for the survival of ideological thinking in the West. There are brief and succinct chapters on figures such as Robespierre, Marx, Dostoyevsky, as well as the crudities of postcolonialism and the so-called 1619 Project. They cohere because they offer a diagnosis (one hopes not a prognosis) for our current cultural, even civilizational, predicament.

I find, sadly, that not many of the younger generations have read Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Every other year or so I force my way through "The Gulag Archipelago" again; it's a long, sometimes tedious work, but the rhetoric and end-goals of communism were very similar in 1945 to what they are now; it's just that modern communists, at least in the United States, don't have the power or the wherewithall to make their fever dreams come true.

And there's one Alexander Solzhenitsyn quip that rings true: “We know that they are lying, they know that they are lying, they even know that we know they are lying, we also know that they know we know they are lying too, they of course know that we certainly know they know we know they are lying too as well, but they are still lying."

That also reminds us a little too much of the American political left, even now - maybe, in the era of Trump, especially now.

Mahoney explains very clearly the process by which lying in a society becomes general. The rulers not only lie to the population—all rulers do that to a greater or a lesser extent—but insist, by means of violence, that the population repeat and glorify the lies. This humiliates and emasculates the population and renders them docile. They end up despising themselves for their cowardice or at least lack of courage. But heroism is not a permanent condition of mankind: people have to live, and very few people can live by heroism alone. They therefore have to compromise with lies and lying.

Remember all those times that internet wags have assembled collections of Democrat politicians, repeating the same talking points word-for-word, with - eerily - the same inflection, the same cadence, the same mannerisms? That's how you know they are dissembling. It's as Ronald Reagan famously said: It's just that there's so much they know that just isn't so - but they keep repeating the lies with robotic synchronicity.

Here's a cogent example:

Let us take the ideology of so-called transgenderism as an example. All of its adherents are perfectly well aware that it is founded on an evident lie, and that a man cannot become a woman simpliciter, or a woman a man sompliciter, no matter how many hormones he or she takes, or operations he or she undergoes. A very simple consideration is sufficient to prove this. While there is controversy as to whether transexual women (men who become “women”) may compete in women’s sports, there is no controversy as to whether transsexual men (women who become “men”) may compete in men’s sports, for the most obvious of reasons. Thus, treating transsexual men or women as if they are men or women is a matter of politesse rather than of belief. At most, it is an act of personal kindness or decency.

I've written a great deal on that topic, especially where sports are concerned; no surprise there, I'm a biologist by education as well as a father to four daughters. And, yes, at some level, even the most rabid transgender ideologue has to be aware of the fundamental flaws of that ideology - and yet, they keep repeating it.

A federal judge just ruled that two fathers can't wear pink wristbands that say "XX" to silently protest male inclusion in women's sports

The judge said the female chromosomes, XX, are a "demeaning and harassing assertion"https://t.co/AKpAovWWQn

— Riley Gaines (@Riley_Gaines_) April 15, 2025

And imagine the parade of ideological dissembling should this come to an actual debate:

🚨 BREAKING: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez now neck-and-neck with Kamala Harris in a 2028 Democratic presidential primary, shock poll reveals

🔵 Kamala Harris: 28%
🟢 AOC: 21%
🟡 Pete Buttigieg: 14%

Yale poll pic.twitter.com/KnvsNX18ml

— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) April 15, 2025

See Also: Al Sharpton Reveals His Abysmal Ignorance of American History, Gets Raked

Clueless Talking Head Scolds Dems for Snubbing Clueless Congresswoman for Leadership Slot

So, what's to be done about the dishonest ideologues on the left? 

You counter bad information with good information. You counter bad ideas with good ideas. And you counter lies with the truth. That requires some self-examination. I remember, as a very young man, my father's comments on honesty, as he maintained (correctly) that if a man will lie, he will steal. I remember my grandmother saying that being honest was like being pregnant; you either are or you are not. That's why the right must focus, not on ideology, not marching in lock-step, but on facts. Now in "experienced truth," but in the truth. Good ideas, good ideologies are based on facts.

We have, only recently, seen the other method operate. We saw four years of a befuddled, corrupt old man installed in the Oval Office, propped up and operated by who, nobody really knows. Democrats in the administration and Congress lied, and lied, and lied about Joe Biden's failing, until they couldn't anymore.

We have to be better people. We have to support our arguments with data. We have to support our statements with facts. We have to be willing, if proven wrong, to change our minds.