Posted on 08/11/2021 3:33:28 AM PDT by Kaslin
We are a democratic republic. Have been since 1789. What should be more important — the freedom to put forward your point of view or someone deciding if that opinion is true or not? That is the crossroads where we find ourselves today. For anyone who claims to be a conservative, this should not be a tough choice. Any way you slice it, freedom beats the truth police every time.
To be sure, it would be great if what we absorbed from the multitude of available platforms — mainstream media, avowed opinionated media, social media, etc. — were able to be determined, in advance, to be truthful and accurate. The problem is as simple as this: as the famous saying goes, truth is often in the eye of the beholder. To allow one set of "beholders" to be the arbiter of what you and I are allowed to see is contrary to every fiber of what has defined our nation from its outset.
It is not as easy as those who would block us from seeing disinformation or misinformation claim. For these information police, it is as though, at every point in time, there are three categories of information — truth, untruth, and lies. It is true that there are such things as facts, items that can actually be measured. However, the conclusions to be drawn from these facts do not neatly divide themselves into those three categories.
For our benevolent betters, the truth is what is factually accurate and correct. They would have us believe, on matters great and small, that ascertaining the truth is not so hard. In addition, people should be protected from information that does not meet their test of accuracy and correctness.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
Democratic Republic?
Hmm. No.
Horrible Headline: There is only one Truth, and the Left does not get to define it.
Headline should have read “Freedom vs. Truth Commission” or something that would not make it seem like those choosing Freedom are objecting to Truth.
When ‘conservative’ publications cannot get the language right, we have already lost.
I didn’t like the headline either. Thought it should at least be Freedom vs “Truth”
Any person or government that reduces ‘debate’to that level has forced all parties to act against their own conscience. At that point, all bets are off!
Centralized determination of what is true does not work any better than centralized control of an economy. Nobody has the competence to do it well, and fairly soon the goal of doing it well will be subverted down to using the power to benefit those in control.
"Freedom vs Ministry of Truth" would work as well.
“block us from seeing disinformation or misinformation “
And it’s also helpful to understand something. In the terminology of the DC occupation government, disinformation and misinformation does not mean false. It can quite literally be true information which they do not try to disprove. It is information that impedes their effort.
An example is a study that shows lockdowns and masks do not work, and that a bandana really does not work. No matter the facts, This would be viciously suppressed as disinformation because it creates resistance.
“The choice for mankind lies between freedom and happiness and for the great bulk of mankind, happiness is better.”
― George Orwell, 1984
Maybe it should say Freedom vs Truthiness.
*** When ‘conservative’ publications cannot get the language right, we have already lost.***
We have already lost.
Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. Spells it out pretty well. The three are intertwined and cannot be separated.
I think the real difference is the dilemma between faith, truth and bias. Freedom is all about knowing the difference between them.
I’m descended from a Quaker tradition.
A true conservative has faith positions - a Christian conservative does not require scientific standard levels of concrete proof that there is a God, but also accepts that Man has translated the Bible from its original language and added layers of interpretation over and over to the point where it is compromised.
Books got dropped from it that were inconvenient to the established church authorities (including King James), and words got changed. There are even direct contradictions between accounts of the same events, in the Gospels.
The Truth in the Bible isn’t buried in these, though - it’s in the Commandments, the Parables, the Admonitions, the Sermons. So it’s important not to get too defensive or too distracted by the technical impurities.
Don’t take my word for it - look at what Jesus said to the Pharisees and to his disciples.
The same can be said of politics. There are faith positions - “what should be”; fundamental truths - “what is”; and there are facts that go for and against both.
A true conservative is not scared off by the knowledge that some facts will go in their favor and other facts won’t. A true conservative respects “neither fear nor favor”. A true conservative doesn’t cherry pick the evidence that fits and ignore the evidence that doesn’t, or weed out inconvenient truths from helpful ones. That’s Orwellian. It’s self censorship.
A true conservative looks at how the Founding Fathers and the Pilgrims before them observed what works in practice, what doesn’t, what’s convenient and what’s inconvenient, when drafting the roadmap. They weren’t all signed up to one person’s ideology, or drawing inspiration from a Ted Talk.
Conservativism is inherently calm, rational, cautious and well-informed. I don’t think a lot of angry, frightened, zealous people who call themselves conservatives really understand what it means to be a conservative. They’re hysterical, and hysteria is not conservative.
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