Perfidy is a word that isn’t in the regular vocabulary of many people. I came across it many years ago, the context of which now eludes me. I’m sure that I first read it sometime in the last century, in some wise writer’s discussion of the slimy politicians who infest our nation. Before exploring how this word has so dominated our modern world, let’s first define the word, perfidy, which comes from the Latin, “perfidia”, which means faithlessness.
Oxford Dictionary: (noun): deceitfulness, untrustworthiness;
Webster’s Dictionary: (noun): the quality or state of being faithless or disloyal; An act or an instance of disloyalty or faithlessness or treachery.
Other definitions for “perfidy” imply a “deliberate breach of faith or trust.
Synonyms for “perfidy” include: treachery, duplicity, deceit, disloyalty, infidelity, faithlessness, betrayal, treason, double dealing. Indeed, the word “perfidy” encompasses the entire gamut of our treacherous or sinful human interactions with each other virtually since time began.
I’ve used the word “perfidy” more frequently over the past several years in my articles here in The Times Examiner. I also use it in postings on various web sites, as I argue and dispute with the purveyors of error and mendacity in the realm of 21st century American politics. Indeed, it is in the world of politics that the act of PERFIDY often rises to the fore. Some historical examples would include:
- The betrayal by the traitor, General Benedict Arnold, of his American countrymen during our first Revolution, in 1780;
- The betrayal by the traitor, Ephialtes, of King Leonidas and his force of 300 Spartans (plus other Greeks) at the epic battle at The Pass at Thermopylae in September of 480 B.C., as the small Greek force stopped the vast horde of Persian invaders under Emperor Xerxes for three days;
- The deceit and treachery perpetrated upon Bathsheba’s husband, Uriah the Hittite, by King David as he sinned with Uriah’s wife and plotted to have him murdered (in battle), ca. 980 B.C.;
- The assassination of Julius Caesar by his relatives and “friends” in the Roman Senate in 44 B.C.;
- The betrayal of our LORD Jesus by His disciple, Judas Iscariot, for 30 pieces of silver, ca. 33 A.D.;
- The treachery, and treason, by COMMUNIST Harry Hopkins, President Franklin Roosevelt’s primary and most trusted aide during much of Roosevelt’s administration, as Hopkins betrayed his country to the Soviet Union over many years (particularly during WW11). Roosevelt, himself, a dedicated far left progressive, was also an experienced practitioner of ‘perfidy’ during his entire administration;
- The disloyalty and treachery perpetrated by COMMUNIST Alger Hiss against the American government and people, as he betrayed us to our Communist enemy in the late 1940’s (as a spy for Joseph Stalin and one of the main instigators of founding the communist dominated United Nations Organization).
This short list could be expanded almost to infinity with examples of “perfidy” on the part of weak, treacherous, deceitful, and disloyal men and women throughout the history of mankind, especially the history of the U.S.A. So much “perfidy” came about during the last decade of the 18th century and all of the 19th century that, as I have written before, it is nothing short of miraculous that our Constitutional Republic survived even partly intact as our Founders envisioned. (See, for example, Art Thompson’s great book, To The Victor Go The Myths & Monuments, available from JBS.org). Increasingly during most of the 20th century and to this very day, the purveyors of perfidy in the ranks of the federal government and in most of the main stream media, in academia, in labor unions, in our banking institutions, and in “big business” became more numerous, and more dangerous, than ever before.
Perfidy, in all of its definitions and manifestations, has been endemic within the circles of the U.S. government virtually since its inception. We all know that there has never been a “perfect” person who walked upon the Earth, with the exception of our Savior—Jesus the Messiah. There has never been a politician who exhibited perfection, except perhaps for George Washington who, in my opinion, came the closest to human perfection of all of our presidents, but even he had “feet of clay”.
U.S. presidents and the gaggle of politicians who enable them and the government to function as they want it to function, have never been remotely perfect, however one might define “perfection”. Some have been boring and predictable, others have been adequate, and who have tried to perform their constitutional duties as well as possible. However, some of our presidents have been downright nasty and dirty and determined to enrich themselves or degrade our republic and betray it to the enemies of freedom that are circling our nation today like great vultures homing in for the kill. President Barack Obama was (and is) one of those despicable and treacherous Marxists who lied and schemed and compromised his way to great riches and power. Pseudo-President Joe Biden is another. In my considered opinion, these two men were, and are, outright enemies of our constitutional form of government, given to us by our Founders. BOTH should be arrested and tried for TREASON!
The years since the end of WW11 were mostly good times for the American people, but less than satisfactory for the office of the Presidency of the U.S. Most of our post-war (have we ever been in a true “post war” existence since the end of WW11, the LAST war the U.S. won?) presidents were experts in the art of perfidy to one degree or another, and it made little difference if there was an “R” or a “D” after his name. President Dwight Eisenhower was a “war hero” in the minds of most Americans of that time, but great pains were taken by his supporters and enablers to conceal his sordid part in “Operation Keelhaul”, in which near the end of WW11 and for two or three years thereafter, thousands of Soviet dissidents who had defected from the tyrannical grasp of Joseph Stalin and had escaped to various Eastern European countries, and many that had never lived in the Soviet Union, were brutally rounded up and shipped, in box cars, back to “Uncle Joe’s” tender mercies to be killed or tortured and sent to Soviet gulags, courtesy of help from the U.S. Army and approved by Supreme Commander Dwight Eisenhower. (I’ll be writing a multi-part article on this despicable betrayal of those innocents later this year.) “Ike” also tried hard to conceal his “dalliances” with a young British woman during WW11 who was not his wife. Faithless? Disloyal? Hmmmmm?
President John Kennedy was young and popular with the American people. A war “hero” who let the PT boat he commanded during WW11 be rammed and sunk by a Japanese warship, he was also an incorrigible womanizer who was faithless and disloyal to his wife. President Richard Nixon was a veteran anti-communist much loved by our people, until a breach of trust—lies upon lies and a lust for power—took him down and forced his resignation. President Lyndon Johnson was the archetype of a sleazy politician who learned early in his political career that utilizing the votes of dead people won elections (something that equally sleazy Pseudo-President Joe Biden discovered in our November, 2020 election). Johnson also committed our young warriors to an UNCONSTITUTIONAL war in Viet Nam that he refused to let us win. He was also a virulent racist who had no qualms in using (and abusing) a minority population in order to win their votes—“For the next 200 years”. That minority has never been the same since.
Who can forget the perfidy of President Bill Clinton (CFR), as he used his powerful office to lie right in the faces of the American people, being impeached by the House of Representatives, and insisting almost to the end of his term that he did not commit adultery with “that woman…”. Even “Saint” Ronald Reagan succumbed to duplicity when he promised to greatly reduce federal spending but did just the opposite, and when he promised to control or end the invasion of illegal aliens into our nation, but then allowed millions of them to stay legally in the U.S. Of course, President George H. W. Bush (CFR) was caught in his lie of “no new taxes”, as he shamelessly signed off on big tax increases; and George W. Bush was caught in his own duplicity when he assured the American people that Saddam Hussein had large numbers of “weapons of mass destruction”, which allowed him to organize the UNCONSTITUTIONAL invasion of Iraq in 1990. Of course, NO weapons of mass destruction were ever found in Iraq, but it allowed Bush Jr. to invade a country that was NO threat to the U.S. and expend the lives of thousands of young warriors who trusted him, to their peril. For what reason? Government power? The self-glory of a “victorious” leader? Regime change to new puppets more amenable to the dictates of “the new world order”? Who can say?
Perfidy in all its ramifications has thrived in recent years in the U.S. Its “capital” appears to be Washington, D.C. (the District of Criminals & Corruption), but New York City comes in a close second. I would venture a guess that many who “serve the people” in “our” government understand the principles of perfidy all too well. Comrade Barack Obama, for example, a most unsatisfactory president in the opinion of most conservatives/Americanists, has been a deceitful anti-American Marxist progressive all of his life, and was a despiser of our Constitution during his eight year tenure as POTUS. In one of his State of the Union addresses to the Congress, Obama threatened to violate the Constitution and rule by decree. A large grassroots movement to impeach Obama sprang up, particularly when never-ending scandals emerged during his two terms, i.e. the unlawful NSA espionage carried out against Americans by Obama; the despicable “Fast and Furious” gun running to drug cartels scheme and the continuous cover-up of it; unconstitutional wars; support for Islamic Jihadists in the Middle East; the IRS targeting of conservative organizations and individuals; the treasonous Benghazigate that killed several brave Americans; “green” energy corruption and expensive failures by Obama’s pet “green” projects; spying on journalists; refusing to enforce our laws. Oh yes, Comrade Obama practiced perfidy like a master.
Which brings us, finally, to the man who appears to have been a well-practiced “Disciple of Perfidy” for his entire 50 year career in D.C. politics, Comrade Joe Biden, liar extraordinaire, experienced plagiarist, disgusting racist, a molester of women and a “dirty old man” around young girls, and today our socialist/Marxist Pseudo-President. I would suggest that at least half of the American population believes that Biden became POTUS due to massive voter fraud, illegal election law changes in multiple states, rigged and dishonest voting machines, and ballot box “stuffing” so blatant that the corrupt politicians of the past would be demanding recounts of many state election results for November, 2020. (Let’s hope, and pray, that the Arizona vote recount/audit exposes the cheating and lying that characterized the November, 2020 “election”).
The disciples of perfidy who control the U.S. government today, and who pull the strings of the present mentally challenged, aging occupier of the office of the presidency, have agendas which require the destruction of our venerable constitutional republic, and its replacement by a collectivist/socialist/Marxist “Peoples’ Republic” where they are the masters and all the rest of us are obedient and fearful serfs. We have long known that we can’t expect perfection from any man, especially from a politician. But neither should we tolerate governmental leaders who seem to major in subterfuge, mendacity, and perfidy. “We, the people”, are supposed to be the real masters of all of our governmental levels. We allow them to trample our rights at our own very real, and very dangerous, peril!