218 Global Ethics for Leadership
16.2 Are Lies Necessary in Politics?
We have discovered that there are lies in in politics as in daily life.
People in politics are not from another world, they are lawyers, teachers,
husbands, mothers. Lying in politics will be investigated and exposed
more thoroughly than lying in private life. Actually, there are examples
where, in the public interest, only a half-truth can be said, or even none
of the truth. If a government pays a ransom for hostages, then it usually
denies it, untruthfully. The legitimate purpose is to avoid encouraging
further hostage-taking. When a government negotiates with another
state, it cannot reveal its tactics to its own voters, because these would
then be known to the government with which it is negotiating. This leads
to statements that are not true. A justification for such “lies” must al-
ways be offered later in the form of a detailed explanation so that the
matter can be understood. There are also lies that are accepted in daily
life as “white lies”. The ideal of open and honest coexistence, of com-
mon endeavours for the environment, of an act in good faith according
to the motto “do nothing to others you would not have done to you” is as
possible in the public arena as in private life. And most people seek to
keep to the point in a dispute and not to denigrate or lie to the opponent.
As much as in family life we try to follow the Sermon on the Mount as
closely as possible, so in public life we strive for good governance, try
to act correctly and to comply with the ethical demands that we as hu-
man beings seek to follow.
16.3 Machiavelli Reigns^189
Whatever the values we believe in—whether liberal, national con-
servative or social democratic—once we take up a position in govern-
189
The author wrote this part 16.3 in 2015, in partial critical distance to parts
16.1 and 16.2