We all know why kids lie. It's a weaselly effort to escape punishment. We also know why businessmen start to lie. We saw that in the crash of 2000 when the masters of the universe at the Enrons and the WorldComs tried to hide the shame of their losses for one more quarter or one more day.

Politics is different, of course, because politicians lie all the time.

You'll recall when President Nixon was caught in a lie, and three senior Republican senators drove down Pennsylvania Avenue to the White House and told the president he had to resign. And you remember when President Clinton was caught in a lie and Vice-President Gore held a pep rally for the president. There's some lesson to be learned from those lies, if you think about it.

We also know why little kids want to change the rules of the game. They do it when they are losing. So we know what Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) was doing by eliminating the filibuster on most administration nominations. Not that anyone could call Sen. Reid a loser.

But never mind the kid stuff. I am trying to think how liberals got themselves into this nightmare situation where they have to lie and cheat to get through the day. How could this happen to the smart ones, to the evolved ones?

Remember how the Dems were going to own the world with their Emerging Democratic Majority, composed of minorities, women, and young people?

So where is the immigration bill for the Hispanics? Where is the health plan you like for the women? Where is the future for the young people mewed up in their student debt and a lousy job market? What is your problem, liberals?

If we conservatives were Marxists, we would know. We would know that liberalism is collapsing from the internal contradictions between its Progressive Era mandarin philosophy and its more recent lefty "progressivism" for the 99%. On the one hand liberals want to be large-minded national technocrats devising rational programs that create order out of the chaos of robber barons and corrupt patronage machines. On the other hand liberals want to be passionate leaders of the traditionally marginalized and fight for the people against the powerful.

In fact, of course, the so-called internal contradictions have nothing to do with it. There are none, not to the members of the over-under Democratic coalition. If you are a liberal one-percenter then the old top-down Progressive Era philosophy of rational large-minded experts deciding everything for the bitter clingers is just practical common sense. Then there is the other kind, the up from below progressives fighting for justice for working people, folks like Seattle socialist Kshama Sawant. Only, of course, Occupy activist Kshama comes from the one percent herself, as an upper-caste Brahmin from Pune, India. Most recently Brahmin Kshama has been making common cause with the Brahmins of the labor movement at Boeing to solidify the caste privileges of the old geezer union machinists. Way to go, Vishnu!

Back at the New York Times they are writing about the fact that Obama and the girls had to hide the redistribution in ObamaCare from us.

"Redistribution is a loaded word that conjures up all sorts of unfairness in people's minds," said William M. Daley, who was Mr. Obama's chief of staff at the time. Republicans wield it "as a hammer" against Democrats, he said, adding, "It's a word that, in the political world, you just don't use."

Hey Bill, I get it. You couldn't help it. You chaps were forced to lie about the redistribution and send the president out to tell everyone that there wouldn't be any cost to handing out free stuff to the uninsured.

But you really shouldn't have punched the whole freelance writer class in the solar-plexus with 50% premium increases.

Remember M. Scott Peck and his People of the Lie? The core of the book was the depressed teenager Bobby, whose parents had given him a gun for Christmas, the same gun his elder brother had used to commit suicide. Those parents absolutely refused to accept that there might be a teeny-weeny problem with a Christmas gift like that.

Now I'm not suggesting that ObamaCare is a Christmas present rather like that gun, an evil hint to go out and kill the health plan you like before the government does it for you.

But all the lying tells us something. It tells us how hard it is for liberals to get up in the morning and tell America the truth about their political agenda.

Liars tend to end up fooling nobody but themselves, Barry. That's why I try to avoid lying; it makes me feel such a fool.

Christopher Chantrill (mailto:chrischantrill@gmail.com) is a frequent contributor to American Thinker. See his usgovernmentspending.com and also usgovernmentdebt.us. At americanmanifesto.org he is blogging and writing An American Manifesto: Life After Liberalism. Get his Road to the Middle Class.