I got an e-mail from Ira Glass last week. I found that odd, because I don’t believe I’ve ever received an e-mail from the host of the popular NPR show This American Life. It was a mea culpa. They had discovered that one of their most popular shows had contained numerous fabrications, and he wrote to apologize. The week’s hour long episode was called “Retraction.” I heard most of it and found it a telling metaphor for modern liberalism’s tenuous relationship with the truth.

The gist of the story was a one man theatrical show put on by Mike Daisey called The Agony and Ecstasy of Steve Jobs. In it, Daisey conveys his experiences on a visit to China of seeing the allegedly deplorable working conditions in Apple’s production facilities. It turns out much of what he speaks about in his theatrical monologue and on the “This American Life” episode about it, never happened. Ira Glass considers himself a journalist and his show journalism, so selling lies as truth is a no-no.

But in his show and in his defense, Daisey claims that what he said and says weren’t in fact lies, because even though those events may not have actually have happened, they get to the essence of the truth of what Apple allows to happen to their workers in China. This, even though Apple states that it monitors these working conditions and when they find a problem address it.

You can read many perspectives on the web about this situation, but one headline I read at The Daily Beast sums up much of the left’s perspective on such things, “How Mike Daisey’s Zeal Got the Best of Him.” And the sub title is even more revealing: “His stories of Apple factory horrors were based in truth, even if the details were lies.” Get it? If your ends are noble, means are not so important; at least it mitigates the lies you have to tell to get at the truth. And the author believes in Apple factory “horrors,” so Daisey gets some slack.

Why would so many people want to believe what Mike Daisey was peddling, including Ira Glass and the producers of This American Life? Because they wanted to believe it. And why would they want to believe it? Because at heart every good modern liberal hates and distrusts capitalism and free markets. They have no problem with Big Government, whose purposes are always righteous and good; Big Business on the other hand is always suspect and driven by greed and could care less about the welfare of its workers. I wrote a piece here recently about how Hollywood views businessmen and women. And why does Hollywood view business people with such disdain? Because Hollywood is filled with liberals, leftists and progressives, but I repeat myself.

In one way this is kind of surprising, because Apple is the darling corporation of our modern secular intelligentsia. But their scorn for business is obviously greater than their love for their cool Apple gizmos.

If all this sounds familiar, it is. You might remember a similar recent incident where a climate scientist’s “zeal” got the best of him. This Christian Science Monitor title says it well: “Climategate sequel? Scientist lies to get Heartland Institute documents.” Of course “Climategate” refers to another episode where truth was a victim to a supposed scientific “consensus.” And I’m sure we could come up with numerous examples of liberals playing fast and loose with the truth, because their purposes are so noble and so important, they think.

A few off the top of my head: How about Michael Moore, that very rich anti-capitalist? He made his fortunate and respect on the left on lies and distortions told in documentary format. Or Hollywood movies about the war in Iraq? Or the movie about the Valerie Plame affair called “Fair Game.” Even the Washington Post, not exactly a right-wing rag, took the movie to task with an editorial titled, “Hollywood myth-making on Valerie Plame controversy.”

Modern ideologically committed liberals are a strange breed. While only 20% of the American public self-identify as liberals (half as many as conservatives), they hold a disproportionate share of the influence in American culture because they command the heights of professions that mold opinion and shape worldviews.  I say strange because all of them would have no problem being called progressives, and for such people progress is their calling card. What they believe by definition is progress, and if anyone believes something different they are obviously fans of regress. And God knows, they think, that we definitely need to progress from America’s backward founding by a bunch or racist, misogynist slaveholder rich white guys.

And they are a people of the left, which goes back to the French Revolution. According to Wikipedia: ”The political terms Right and Left were coined to describe the major political division caused by the French Revolution, and were a reference to where people sat in the French parliament. Those who sat to the right of the president’s chair were broadly supportive of the institutions of Ancien Régime: the monarchy, the aristocracy and the established church. The Right invoked natural law and divine law to justify social inequalities.” Thus the left wanted nothing to do with traditional morality and religion. We know how that revolution turned out. On the other hand, the American Revolution and founders believed very strongly in the benefit of traditionally religious inspired morality and that a Republic would not be successful without it. A self-governing people must govern themselves and without religion, they believed, that was impossible. In that late 18^th Century religion pretty much meant Protestant Christianity.

Those who embrace the ideas of the right historically speaking are the enemy, and they must be defeated. In this war, truth is a casualty they can afford.