As the latest political scandal broke over the past weeks, the same explanations and reflections were trotted out. “It’s never the indiscretion,” they always say, “it’s the cover-up. If you just come clean, people will forgive you; it’s lying about it that does you in.”

I don’t know about that.

I recall many a public figure that lied through his teeth for as long as he possibly could until the jig was up. And even then, to survive, all he had to do was claim he was too embarrassed to tell the truth.

So it doesn’t always do you in—lying, that is. In fact, sometimes people don’t care if you lie at all; it is often said—or at least reporters often assure us that it is said: “Well, everybody lies some of the time, and everybody lies about that all of the time.”

This last deflection attempts to minimize the lie by downplaying the underlying transgression. In most cases, it’s shamelessly applied in self-interest: e.g.: “Watergate was just a third-rate bit of political espionage—it was the cover-up that brought Nixon down”; or “Monica Lewinsky was just a bit on the side, enjoyed in the oval office—it was the perjury that got Clinton impeached.”

But there are varying scenarios that follow the lies, ranging all the way from utter banishment to outright lionization, so I’m not convinced that lying is so deadly. It depends upon who you are and what you’re lying about. Double standards are common, and the scoundrel who gives it a shot in hopes of riding out the storm has pretty even odds these days. People might not care.

It’s this last business that bears thinking about, because it’s a contemporary trend that’s had a corrosive effect on what we expect of ourselves. With the weekly cavalcade of scandals that stream past our bored and yawning faces, we become inured to lies and even accepting of them.

Because rather than a testament to man’s failure that calls for a recommitment to honor, the standard for truth-telling is itself compromised and ultimately degraded. Instead of a lodestar by which to set our course—however often we may fail to reach it—the whole constellation is called into question. It’s deemed “unrealistic”—a bar too high for any man to reach. Besides, “everybody does it,” we’re told.

That is not true; there are honorable people; many of them, all around, in every walk of life. The fact that they’re seldom heard from is only a testament to their rectitude. But even if it were true, or even if it seems true too much of the time, that we fail our standards is no reason to surrender them, and certainly not on the sophomoric grounds so regularly put forth.

“Everybody does it, so it must be okay” is the tired old ad populum fallacy we were warned about in introductory logic class, with the red hearing fallacy thrown in for good measure. Besides, why should the mob of knaves that infest public life be allowed to change our benchmarks for decency? It’s a sly trick, a rogue’s sophistry bent on tarring those who have found him out. By changing the moral landscape, he hopes to escape censure, and too often does.

One of the common dodges is to call the standard bearer “judgmental,” employing scripture outside context to achieve a private end. But this ploy need cow no one. For it is not judgmental to call a lie a lie, to insist that things be treated for what they really are.

We are not told to recuse ourselves from making moral assessments; their ultimate disposition in eternity is left to a higher set of scales, yes, and none are beyond redemption on this side of that weigh station.

But the silly business of indicting as “judgmental” those who call disgrace what it is should not be countenanced. Our entire justice system, and the foundation of civilized societies, is built upon setting limits to barbarisms—both those that are bloody, like rape and murder—and those that are deleterious, like lying and extorting—and to abdicate their sanction is to work an injustice on all who suffer.

The tactic is the last refuge of the dog in the corner—lashing out at those who hold him to account—but it is a child’s argument, expected from a thirteen year-old, not an adult.

Still, the power of this dodge can be seen in the effect it has on people when they’re asked to stake their positions: “I can’t say anything,” it is often sheepishly said, “because I’ve done the same. I can’t be a hypocrite.”

Another bit of nonsense. It’s not hypocritical to condemn behavior you have fallen short of yourself, as long as you really believe it was wrong. Again, to say you are recused from all moral assessments because you’ve failed in the past is an absurd abdication of reason.

Would a man who stole and went to prison not caution his son or daughter from the same? It would be silly to say he is barred from such advice if his heart has changed; it would only be hypocritical if he cautioned against the conduct while not truly believing it malicious. In fact, it would be immoral not to warn others off the sorrowful road, and the sadder but wiser man has perhaps the most right, and even the most duty, to speak of it.

The hypocrite believes one thing but says he believes another; he is not one whose past beliefs have changed. We are not gagged by our histories.

These distinctions should be at the ready for any whose own integrity is challenged by those that would slip free of their responsibility through one last sleight of hand. Forgiveness, reclamation—they are foreclosed to no one; but it is outrageous to say that justice and accountability are their converse. To paraphrase Bonhoeffer, while grace is free, it can never be cheap.