Here’s another example. The Claremont Institute was founded with two principles: a reverence for statesmanship and a belief that America’s Founding documents were demi-biblical Truth. Today, the people at Claremont are so dismayed by the left’s “existential threat” to America that they published “The Flight 93 Election,” apologized for the most unstatesmanlike president America has ever had, and now openly question the wisdom of the Founders while suggesting that the Constitution be reimagined. The students of Lincoln’s statesmanship and Crisis of the House Divided now reject Lincolnism because tHe LeFt Is So BaD. Eliot Cohen reminds his students that the danger is not from politicians who lie. All politicians tell lies from time to time, some venal and some mortal. Your alarms should go off, however, when the politicians convince themselves that their lies are true to relieve their consciences from the guilt of lying. Because when that happens, they will be able to use the lie to justify anything, be it foolish, or self-serving, or wicked. Today Republicans have convinced themselves that their big lie about the existential threat of the Democratic party is true, and so they have justified a great many actions which are, at best, ignoble. They believe their own lie so deeply that they have become an existential threat to the republic themselves.