Lord, Lord, how this world is given to lying!

That came from Shakespeare’s King Henry IV but could have been uttered today, or yesterday or, unfortunately, tomorrow.

It indeed may be our greatest fault, this lying that comes so easily we don’t even flinch when we do it, let alone grow long noses like Pinocchio.

If that were the case, there would be some pretty long honkers in the White House with monogrammed handkerchiefs reading: G.W.B., D.C., K.R., L.L., to name a few runny noses to blow while the investigation continues in the outing of CIA official Valerie Plame.

Of course, there have been plenty of other fibbers in the White House lying about everything from security issues to sex, from cover-ups to covert operations. Just consider the irony in this quote by Richard Nixon:

“The truth is America’s most potent weapon. We cannot enlarge upon the truth. But we can and must intensify our efforts to make that truth more shining.”

Or, another of Nixon’s statements, obviously made before the Watergate scandal and his resignation: “Let us begin by committing ourselves to the truth – to see it as it is, and tell it like it is – to find the truth, to speak the truth, and to live the truth.”

Fast forward to this administration’s insistence on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and the necessity for war. A growing public is expressing “shock and awe” about being so misled. As New York Times columnist Frank Rich wrote July 17: “But the administration knows how guilty it is. That’s why it has so quickly trashed any insider who contradicts its story line about how we got to Iraq, starting with the former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill and the former counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke.”

With so many lies bombarding us from all sides, we are becoming a cynical people. We distrust corporate giants and would like to fell them all with a slingshot. We don’t believe the athletes who deny steroid use. We don’t fall for advertising promotions we consider fraudulent. We no longer hold priests as role models. We don’t swallow the spiels given to us but, rather, roll our eyes and sarcastically say to ourselves, “Right.”

Why is honesty so difficult? After all, as Mark Twain said, “If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything … when in doubt, tell the truth.”

This country needs a strong dose of truth serum, starting at the very top and trickling on down to the lowest bottom.

Telling the truth may in fact be the most important lesson our children or grandchildren need to learn at the earliest possible time.

“Accustom your children to a strict attention to truth, even in the most minute particulars,” wrote Samuel Johnson. “If a thing happened at one window, and they, when relating it, say that it happened at another, do not let it pass, but instantly check them: you do not know where deviations from truth will end.”

In my grade school, when someone was caught cheating or making something up, as we called it, we just ran around pointing and screaming, “Liar, liar, pants on fire!”

That might still be effective.