an influential conservative writer named Dinesh D'Souza wrote a column called " Making the Rich Pay " over at. "Our spender-in-chief has outlined another $50 billion in proposed government spending," he began. "That's on top of the $700 billion bailout. And the $850 billion stimulus. And the $1 trillion or so that Obama intends to spend on his environmental schemes. Not to mention the $1.6 trillion slotted for health care over the next decade."

Obama isn't worried about all the spending, D'Souza wrote in the very next paragraph, because the president "wants the whole tax bill to be paid by the rich."

Now, I have an article of faith: Never assume, no matter how strong the temptation, that other people are low-life lying manipulators without a shred of human decency. Years of journalism have taught me that, on the contrary, most people have a reason for thinking the things they think. If you can tap down to that, you can have a meaningful conversation.

So I got D'Souza's e-mail address and wrote him a note.

Dear Mr. D'Souza:

I read your column and I would like to ask you, before I call the column dishonest on the Esquire blog, what your reasoning was. For example, the idea that Obama wants the rich to pay for "all" his spending. This seems flatly wrong since nowhere have I seen Obama call for the elimination of all existing taxes save those on the rich. There are a number of other points I'd like to discuss. My number is...

D'Souza wrote back a few hours later:

Well, the taxes that everyone else is paying are supporting lots of programs that were in place prior to Obama's new spending. So new spending has too be paid for by new taxes, or by eliminating existing tax breaks. And Obama wants that burden to be borne exclusively by the rich.

I wrote back right away:

But that's not what you said. You listed the bailout, the stimulus, health care, and another trillion on unspecified "environmental schemes" (I assume you're referring to bills that may be passed by a future Congress) and said that Obama "wants the whole tax bill to be paid by the rich." So far as I know, nobody has ever suggested that the bailout and stimulus and health care and cap-and-trade would all be paid for by the rich. On the contrary, conservatives like yourself have been quite loud in warning that it would be paid for by "future generations." This would seem to make your statement flatly untrue — in fact, a bald-faced lie. Or perhaps you have another explanation?

This time, I didn't hear back from him. Which is too bad, because the rest of the piece went on to accuse Obama of "outright hostility" to business. D'Souza promised to follow up with a story about "the roots of Obama's rage." This is the theme of the next in a string of frustrating books from D'Souza, and this one made its debut in an earlier Forbes piece called "How Obama Thinks." In it, D'Souza argued that Obama hates capitalism because his father was a Kenyan socialist. The evidence? Obama called his autobiography Dreams from My Father:

Notice that his title is not Dreams of My Father but rather Dreams from My Father. Obama isn't writing about his father's dreams; he is writing about the dreams he received from his father.

By this logic, John F. Kennedy was a gangster because his father ran rum and all the Bushes are Nazis because Prescott Bush did business with the Germans. It's especially puzzling because one of the main conservative attack points against Obama — which appears in D'Souza's lede, for chrissakes — is that Obama and his elitist cabal of Goldman Sachs alumni sold out Main Street by bailing out Wall Street. But if Obama secretly wants to destroy the United States, wouldn't it have been much more effective just to let Wall Street crash?

What I don't understand is this: What's the point of writing such obvious lies? No thoughtful person of either party will ever have any real respect for you, and you're certainly not going to convince anyone who is in real doubt. All you can possibly do is whip up the enthusiasm of the base and sway the more brainless independents.

As it happens, D'Souza's shameless propaganda found an echo in the national news over the weekend after Sean Hannity got caught lying about Obama's Labor Day speech. "The president had a rare moment of honesty during his speech," Hannity said, cutting to a shot of Obama at the podium: "Taxes are going up substantially next year, for everybody," Obama said. Cut back to Hannity throwing out a snarky comment. "I'm sure the Anointed One will make sure that happens."

Only that's not what Obama said, as both Howard Kurtz and Jon Stewart demonstrated on their own shows. Obama's actual quote was, "Under the tax plan passed by the last administration, taxes are scheduled to go up substantially next year for everybody."

In the world I grew up in, this episode of "truthiness" would have ended Hannity's career. It's certainly far worse than the charges that sank Dan Rather just five years ago. And there are

many, many more such examples, from "death panels" to the way so many Republican politicians have encouraged the absurd "birther" controversy.

I don't think there's any equivalent to this on the left. Liberals can be annoyingly self-righteous and swept away by hyperbole — calling George W. Bush a moron, for example — but I don't see much deliberate lying. Certainly nothing on the scale of Fox or Limbaugh.

I have two theories about this. One is that the conservative intelligentsia is deliberately training the Republican base to be irrational. I can almost see them chortling: "If we can get them to believe the earth is only 6,000 years old, we can get them to believe anything!"

But while this theory provides a little consolation, I don't actually think it's true. Far more likely is theory No. 2 — that Republicans have lost all confidence in their ability to convince the American people with honest arguments. Their triumphalism about November conceals a stink of desperation.

Consider the big picture: Conservatives have lost the culture war so completely. They can't even keep military gays in the closet anymore. Their most celebrated evangelical politician — Sarah Palin — admits to premarital sex without a blush or an apology and nobody even notices. Their one useful idea is the old fiscal conservative ideal, which has become so tarnished by their own abuse that they have to tart it up in silly cries of "socialism." (I respect those who would add abortion, but oddly enough that is no longer a Republican preoccupation.) And they're doubling down on hatred of outsiders like Mexicans and Muslims, an ominous sign that is always a sign of weakness.

I don't think the American people are going to fall for it. Sure, Republicans will probably pick up a lot of seats in November. But when they get to Washington, they will either compromise in order to run the country or live up to their rhetoric and wreak havoc, thus revealing themselves as either hypocrites or irresponsible extremists. There are no other choices. And opportunistic liars like D'Souza, the cheerleaders of this episode of madness, will bear much of the blame.

EARLIER: Mark Warren Challenges D'Souza to a Fight ... Twice

This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. You may be able to find more information about this and similar content at piano.io