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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 9365234" data-attributes="member: 6790260">For my part: One should avoid intentional deception, except in the case of dealing with an outright enemy. But "outright enemy" does not exclusively mean "literally in the field of combat right now, weapons out, currently attempting to end the life of myself or my allies." It also includes things like "you are a law-abiding Hutu whose Tutsi neighbor is hiding in your basement, and the genocidal government's goons come a-knocking." Such people--those actively engaged in behavior that is utterly unacceptable, regardless of whether they have laws behind them or not--do not merit being told the truth. Their conduct has forfeited that, and duty requires you to protect the innocent.Now, if possible, you should still stick to the truth, and ideally without varnish. However, if the choice is between speaking the unvarnished truth and preventing objective evil, you should do the latter, while putting effort toward not needing to do that in the future. Likewise, varnished truth is better than outright speaking falsehoods. Careful avoidance of inconvenient facts and intentionally shaping a particular impression, without ever actually telling a falsehood, is preferable to just straight-up telling a lie. But, again, if the choice really, truly is "tell a lie to a wicked person in order to protect the innocent and victimized, OR tell the truth and let an innocent person get murdered", you should 100% of the time tell the lie and make penance for it later.Being lawful does not require blind adherence--not even LN, though it comes closest since LN passes no judgment about what laws are for, and merely about whether they do what they're made to do. Being LG requires being meticulous; it's the expectation that all of your (morally-relevant) actions have a clear, reasoned, consistent justification. A revolutionary can be LG to the hilt, but their reasoning, choices, and manner will be radically different from a CG or even CE revolutionary. LG is not "what happens when you are torn between being LN and being NG." It is its own distinct thing.The woman who takes up arms against her King only after having failed to achieve change by any reasonable (and perhaps even some unreasonable) patient means, is not somehow less Lawful for the doing. She is Lawful; she has merely determined that the institution is no longer capable of supporting Good law, and thus, being Lawful Good, it is her duty to abolish that system so that a new system may be constructed in its place that lacks the infirmities preventing Good law.The actions she takes as a result of that determination will be very different in many ways from the actions a CG person would take. She is likely to remain respectful of, and friendly toward, the King and other authority figures, so long as they surrender. The CG revolutionary? Who the hell knows!</blockquote>

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