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It was the dream of a lifetime for George O'Leary: A chance to coach the world's most prestigious football team—Notre Dame's Fighting Irish. But the dream soon became a nightmare.

The day after he signed his contract with Notre Dame, O'Leary's résumé was sent to the press—a résumé that included "inaccuracies" about his education and college football letters. A few days later, O'Leary resigned in disgrace, the victim of his own long-ago lies.

It's the latest example of what's become an epidemic of lying.

In recent years, politicians and pundits, professors and even Pulitzer Prize-winners have been caught dealing in deceit. One of the nation's most respected historians, Stephen Ambrose, plagiarized portions of other historians' works and—notwithstanding his public apology—seemed hardly disturbed by the resulting controversy.

Historian Joseph Ellis, who won the Pulitzer Prize for his book, Founding Brothers, was caught inventing a Vietnam War record for himself. So was Tim Johnson, manager of the Toronto Blue Jays. Ex-conservative writer David Brock admitted he'd made up sordid details about Anita Hill. Gloria Steinem's claim about the number of women who die of eating disorders—supposedly 150,000 a year—turned out to be a huge feminist hoax. James Patterson and Peter Kim, authors of The Day America Told the Truth, estimate that 91 percent of us regularly embroider the truth. "We lie and don't even think about it," Patterson and Kim write.

Why has lying become so much more prevalent? Some scholars believe the problem arose out of the gradual adoption of a utilitarian ethic—one that began eroding the traditional Christian ethic in the West in the middle to late 19th century. This ethic says the (good) end justifies the means—that if a lie helps more than harms, then we should feel free to employ one.

In the late 20th century, the rise of postmodern deconstructionism on college campuses exacerbated this problem. Postmodernists teach that the truth is not merely irrelevant; they believe it simply doesn't exist.

As Lynne Cheney observes in her book, Telling the Truth, academics "leaped beyond the commonsense observation that people's descriptions of reality differ to the conclusion that there is no independent reality and thus no basis for making judgments about truth—or falsity."

For these academics, truth claims are "the constructs of dominant groups—the creations of the powerful," Cheney writes. "Might makes right, in other words; and so intimidation was a perfectly natural way to try to gain assent."

The assault on truth has spread beyond academia to infect the arts, law, journalism, and psychotherapy—and Cheney points out the grim results. For instance, when it turned out that New York teenager Tawana Brawley had lied about being sexually assaulted by white men, The Nation claimed that "it doesn't matter whether the crime occurred or not" because it symbolizes "what actually happens to too many black women."

Those who maintain that truth exists, and that telling falsehoods is wrong, are increasingly under assault. "Fact fetishists" is how New York University professor Thomas Bender characterizes people who insist on accuracy. When reporters hounded him about Clintonian lies, then-White House aide George Stephanopoulos accused them of "an excess of literalism."

Postmodernism has filtered down to the masses; today, even the man on the street sees little wrong with lying. While Washington Post sportswriter Tony Kornheiser agreed that a religious college like Notre Dame was "completely right in separating itself from George O'Leary," he argued that "some people" will suggest that O'Leary's lies are "insignificant" when compared to his 20-year coaching record.

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March 11 2002, Vol. 46, No. 3