The girls went willingly believing that he would make them stars.
His comfortable voters may willingly believe bogus reassurances that no harm is done.
It seems that they all went into the church willingly, believing that they were entering an ark that would save them from some catastrophe, and take them directly to heaven.
In fact, when the drug agency contacted him again in October 2008 to invite him to another meeting, he went willingly, believing that the Americans wanted to continue the discussions they had with him in Washington.
As C. S. Lewis put it: "I willingly believe that the damned are, in one sense, successful, rebels to the end; that the doors of hell are locked on the inside" (Lewis 1944, p. 115).
It is bad enough that somebody out there is busy whipping up this stream of mendacity to skew the political debate; it is worse that so many millions of Americans willingly believe this lunacy because they cannot accept that Obama is a legitimate, real American president.
You either willingly believe every piece of drivel fed to you by the religion (for example, believing that the earth is only 6,000 years old) or you can recognize that many parts of religion are nonsense but believe it to be infallible all the same.
But Jesus submits to it -- willingly, Christians believe -- for the sins of all.
But the kind of populism Day supports is backlit by a grim view of the people themselves: "It is no accident," Day asserts, "that for 300 years our people willingly, I believe -- maybe even joyously -- slaughtered their way across this continent, enslaved Negroes, drove out Mexicans, broke more Indian treaties than Hitler ever bothered to make".
