PRESIDENT BUSH CAN HANDLE THE TRUTH

National Review Online ^ | 01/15/04 | Mark Goldblatt

[jocon307]

An excellent round-up of all the falsehoods promoted by the left today, and, in contrast, rejected by Bush & Co.

[Cicero]

I deal with this stuff all the time, and he's absolutely right. The only name I would quarrel with is Thomas Kuhn. Kuhn's theory of paradigm shifts in the theory of science became highly influential among scholars in the humanities, but they abused his argument for their own purposes. Kuhn himself was very unhappy at the way his book had been misused.

I think you could take Kuhn of the list and add Nietzsche instead. Also Sartre, who was unfashionable among the poststructuralists but nevertheless influenced them strongly.

[woofie]

bump

[Snake65]

The idea that truth could be determined politically, rather than rationally, gave George Orwell the screaming horrors. Thus 1984.

[expatpat]

I support your switching Kuhn and Nietzsche. The latter's nihilism is closely allied with 'epistemological pessimism', and the latter was probably derivative of it.

[MJY1288]

Excellent read,

Thanks for posting this

[CasearianDaoist]

As Auden said:

"And when the young Immanuel Kant
Was asked to kiss his aunt
He obey the categorical Must,
But only just.

[jwalburg]

Nice clear explanation for Bush-hating and liberal world view. But then, those who believe in objective truth usually do think more clearly than the deconstructionists.

[expatpat]

Yes, and it even spread into the semi-soft sciences, as in the global-warming controversy. The hard sciences are, or at least were, based on the fundamental axiom that there IS a scientific truth, and that, through careful theorizing and comparison with careful experiments, we can converge on that truth, though slowly. This approach is what pulled us out of the superstition of the Dark Ages, and IMO its abandonment is starting to push us back.

[visualops]

ping for you. Great post

[expatpat]

those who believe in objective truth usually do think more clearly than the deconstructionists.

Yes, a good analogy is being able to carry out some difficult physical task when on a fairly sound footing, compared with trying do so standing on a slippery mess.

[Cicero]

The Unknown Citizen
W. H. Auden

---

(This Marble MonumentIs Erected by the State)

He was found by the Bureau of Statistics to be
One against whom there was no official complaint,
And all the reports on his conduct agree
That, in the modern sense of an old-fashioned word, he was a
saint,
For in everything he did he served the Greater Community.
Except for the War till the day he retired
He worked in a factory and never got fired,
But satisfied his employers, Fudge Motors Inc.
Yet he wasn't a scab or odd in his views,
For his Union reports that he paid his dues,
(Our report on his Union shows it was sound)
And our Social Psychology workers found
That he was popular with his mates and liked a drink.
The Press are convinced that he bought a paper every day
And that his reactions to advertisements were normal in every way.
Policies taken out in his name prove that he was fully insured,
And his Health-card shows he was once in a hospital but left it cured.
Both Producers Research and High-Grade Living declare
He was fully sensible to the advantages of the Instalment Plan
And had everything necessary to the Modern Man,
A phonograph, a radio, a car and a frigidaire.
Our researchers into Public Opinion are content
That he held the proper opinions for the time of year;
When there was peace, he was for peace: when there was war, he went.
He was married and added five children to the population,
Which our Eugenist says was the right number for a parent of his generation.
And our teachers report that he never interfered with their
education.
Was he free? Was he happy? The question is absurd:
Had anything been wrong, we should certainly have heard.

[Snake65]

If you haven't read Crichton's January 17, 2003 speech on that very subject, do yourself a favor and check out his Caltech lecture.

[Old Sarge]

And another high-brow article that, evenb though it makes perfect sense, will never be seen by the sheep.

[Old Sarge]

And as Cleese said,

Immanuel Kant
was a real pissant
who was very rarely stable...

[NutCrackerBoy]

The last several decades of academic philosophy have been dominated by epistemological pessimism — that is, the belief that propositions cannot be judged against an independently existing reality because reality doesn't exist independently of what we think or say. -Mark Goldblatt

The application of epistemological optimism/pessimism to Bush and his critics in academia makes a nice column, but I don't find it to be a very profound insight. Jonah Goldberg has a much better three-dimensional understanding of 20th century philosophy.

The author does not even credit Martin Heidegger for the seminal insight that language is constitutive of (shared) reality. These insights are critical for the post-Cartesian understanding of thought. I agree Derrida and Rorty et al have been barfing up the wrong trees. But the author does not scratch the surface of explaining why.

[expatpat]

Thanks. Yes, I've read Michael Crichton's talk -- he's great. He's written some mediocre novels, but some very good ones.

[auboy]

Bump

[Zipporah]

The chocolate ration has been raised to twenty grammes a week....

[jla]

^