The Toll on All of Us of Official Lies

Joseph Goebbels, infamous publicist of Hitler’s Nazi regime, was a fan — some say the father — of The Big Lie. You proclaim an untruth often enough, and loud enough, he said, and pretty soon people come to believe it. And so the Nazis did — convincing Germans that Aryan purity required killing Jews, Slavs, gypsies, gays and political foes.

After the war,…