Posted on 06/05/2003 10:53:43 PM PDT by adamyoshida
The Truth and the “Truth”
The modern left has a post-modern definition of ‘truth’. To them ‘truth’ is not a matter of actual facts or information, but one of who can tell the most convincing lies or, failing that, who can blindly pretend to believe things which are obviously untrue. Liberalism exists in an imaginary fantasy-land wherein everything they assert is the truth irrespective of its falsehood. Today leftists live in a world constructed of irrational declarations which is held together only by their own unanimous suspension of disbelief. The world of modern liberalism is no more real, and is probably substantially less authentic, than the Hobbit-land of JRR Tolkien.
Witness, for example, the present controversy over whether Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction exist (or, for that matter, ever existed). Many angry individuals, in the United States and overseas, are furiously demanding that extensive inquiries take place into the intelligence regarding Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction that was presented to bolster the case for war. They claim that President Bush was deceiving the public when he warned that, “Saddam Hussein must not be allowed to threaten his neighbours or the world with nuclear arms, poison gas or biological weapons .” Oh, but wait, President Bush never said that! That was President Clinton. Just as it was also President Clinton who warned the nation that, “I have no doubt today, that left unchecked, Saddam Hussein will use these terrible weapons again.”
Speaking to Pentagon employees, the President Clinton discussed Saddam’s weapons declaration and his assessment of it: Now listen to this: What did it admit? It admitted, among other things, an offensive biological warfare capability--notably 5,000 gallons of botulinum, which causes botulism; 2,000 gallons of anthrax; 25 biological-filled Scud warheads; and 157 aerial bombs. And might I say, UNSCOM inspectors believe that Iraq has actually greatly understated its production.
Now, it is true that I, as most decent people do, believe President Clinton to be an unredeemable liar and scoundrel. But did any serious person ever accuse him of lying about any of this? Was every single member of his Cabinet lying? Was every single top official in the Administration to Bush the Elder lying? In fact, until a few weeks ago, did anyone (excepting, of course, the Iraqi Information Minister and Saddam himself) claim that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction?
No serious person who has studied the issue at all believes that Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction didn’t exist. Certainly Senator (and ever-gallant Presidential candidate) John F. Kerry didn’t believe that when he warned that, “Saddam Hussein has already used these weapons and has made it clear that he has the intent to continue to try, by virtue of his duplicity and secrecy, to continue to do so.” In fact, Senator Kerry considered the issue of the existence of these weapons to be so meaningless that he didn’t even both to address it before warning that, given the chance, Saddam would use them.
If we are to believe that Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction never existed then we must believe that the top officials of not one, but three, Presidential Administrations were successfully able to engage in a conspiracy of lies which, in terms of complexity, greatly exceeds the supposed cover-up of evidence of the existence of extra-terrestrial aliens for not one, but thirteen years! Not only that but, supposedly this conspiracy also includes dozens of foreign nations and the United Nations.
No rational person could possibly believe the lies presently being spewed by the media and the left. Tinfoil-hat leftists have gone from arguing that Iraq should be allowed to have weapons of mass destruction because Israel has them to arguing that Iraq’s weapons were a fiction concocted by the CIA (directed, doubtlessly, by a hidden Cabal of Jews) in less time than it took for Oceania to decide that it had always been at war with Eastasia and never at war with Eurasia. The fact that so many among the supposedly respectable left have accepted these falsehoods with the same alacrity that Hillary Clinton claims to have believed her husband’s claims that he and Monica Lewinsky were “just friends” makes one wonder if, in their desperate crusade to validate their irrational hatred of President Bush, many liberals have slipped the surly bonds of sanity and grasped the face of madness.
That’s the real problem with the modern left. For decades they’ve controlled the media, they’ve controlled the schools, they’ve controlled virtually everything in American society (and, don’t get me wrong, they still control a great deal of it) and, now that they’ve lost a little bit of their control, they’re losing their minds. Conservatives tend to argue with facts and logic. Liberals argue with lies and emotion. When they meet, in a fair fight, logic beats emotion as certainly as rock beats scissors.
When conservatives were driven to the margins of society they clawed their way back by developing a rational critique of liberalism. Liberals, who forgot how to fight a long time ago, have largely responded by claiming their critics were ‘extremists’ who wanted to ‘turn back the clock.’ When that didn’t work they began to resort to the worst sort of base slander and lies they could imagine, accusing then Governor Bush of being responsible for the brutal slaying of James Byrd because he didn’t support ‘hate crimes’ laws (this despite the fact that, in George Bush’s Texas, two of the three men who killed James Byrd were sentenced to death and the third was sentenced to life imprisonment). However, as habitual liars often do, liberals eventually came to believe their own lies. Suddenly, for them, the truth became “the truth”, with whatever other liberals said being accepted as being true, even when it was evidently false.
It was this sort of mass psychosis which allowed Democrats to simultaneously claim, during the Monica Lewinsky scandal, that they believed Bill Clinton when he insisted that he had not had “relations” with “that woman” and that, at any rate, it was all, “just about sex.” It was this sort of insanity which allowed Al Gore to claim that Clinton was one of the greatest Presidents in history without laughing out loud.
The most amazing thing about all of this is there is a real concern for liberals to worry about. What happened to Saddam’s weapons? Where did they go? Who has them?
I don’t think that most people understand the sort of scale we’re talking about here. The next time you’re in a supermarket take a look at a pallet full of large bottles of Soda Pop. One of those things can hold an upwards of one thousand litres worth of liquid- and that includes all of the packaging and empty space. It wouldn’t take too many fifty-five gallon barrels to ship out a substantial arsenal of weapons.
But the left doesn’t want to look into this because, if we do, then we’ll find out where the weapons went and we’ll have to take them out and overthrow the government that has them and, in the left’s book, the only thing worse than Republicans winning elections is the successful use of military power. That’s the real reason for this post-bellum effort to discredit the reasons for the Iraq War- the left know that, sooner or later, these weapons are going to show up in Syria or Iran or wherever and they want to set up their arguments against those wars far in advance. In effect the left is telling lies today in the hopes that they will make its lies tomorrow more convincing.
After Saddam’s nuclear materials and anthrax show up in Iran, countless Professors of Middle Eastern Studies (AKA Terrorism Apologism Studies) will be trotted out to tell us that Ba’athist Iraq would ‘never’ have given its weapons to Iran (just like they didn’t give most of their Air Force to Iran in 1991).
They will continue telling these lies, not because they believe them to be true, but because they have nothing else they can tell the decent people of the world. Deep down, I think, even the most deluded leftists knows what they’re saying isn’t true but they hold on to it because that’s all they have left to fight with. If they were to tell the truth, what they really believe, most normal people would demand that they be exiled to Antarctica.
I've written about Zero-Issue Politics before -- mounting opposition simply because the idea or candidate comes from the other party rather than yours. Given that the political Left is everywhere on the defensive today, that it has no rational excuse for its many failures, yet lacks both the moral courage and the strength of stomach to say "We were wrong" -- about anything -- we can expect its pattern of distortion, denial and evasion to continue and accelerate for some time to come. And of course, as "the best defense is a good offense," we can also expect the Left to take every opportunity, no matter how thin, to denigrate and defame the spokesmen and candidates of the Right. To the extent they can get us defending ourselves, they'll get a respite from having to defend themselves.
Pretty tawdry, I know. But keep this in mind: sometimes it works. The American people have been fooled before, as little as we like to admit it.
Freedom, Wealth, and Peace,
Francis W. Porretto
Visit The Palace Of Reason:
http://palaceofreason.com
"Truth is the recognition of reality." -- Ayn Rand
"Truth is the secret of eloquence and of virtue, the basis of moral authority; it is the highest summit of art and of life." -- Henri-Frederic Amiel
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.