Is Truth Irrelevant?

Townhall.com ^ | January 12, 2021 | Thomas Sowell

[Kaslin]

It is amazing how many people seem to have discovered last Wednesday that riots are wrong -- when many of those same people apparently had not noticed that when riots went on, for weeks or even months, in various cities across the country last year.

For too many people, especially in the media, what is right and wrong, true or false, depends on who it helps or hurts politically. Too many media people who are supposed to be reporters act as if they are combatants in political wars.

Someone once said that, in a war, truth is the first casualty. That has certainly been so in the media -- and in much of academia as well.

One of the most grotesque distortions growing out of this carelessness with the facts has been a removal of Abraham Lincoln's name and statues from various places, on grounds that he saw black people only as property.

Such criticisms betray an incredible ignorance of history -- or else a complete disregard of truth.

As a lawyer, Abraham Lincoln knew that there was nothing in the Constitution which authorized him or any other president to free slaves. But he also knew that a military commander in wartime can legally seize the property of an enemy nation. Defining slaves as property gave President Lincoln the only legal authority he had to seize them during the Civil War. And once they were seized as property, he could then free them as human beings.

But, if the Emancipation Proclamation had based its action on defining the slaves as human beings, with a right to be free, the Supreme Court of that era would undoubtedly have declared it unconstitutional.

Millions of human beings would have remained slaves. Would ringing rhetoric be worth that price?

As for the claim that Lincoln did not regard black people as human, he invited Frederick Douglass to the White House!

Gross distortions of history, in order to get Abraham Lincoln's name removed from schools tells us a lot about what is wrong with American education today.

Many schools are closed because of the coronavirus and the teachers unions. And many schools in minority neighborhoods failed to teach children enough math and English, back when they were still open. So it is incredible that school authorities have time to spend on ideological crusades like removing names and statues from schools.

Unfortunately, too many American educational institutions -- from elementary schools to universities -- have become indoctrination centers. The riots that swept across the country last year are fruits of that indoctrination and the utter disregard for other people's rights that accompanied those riots.

At the heart of that indoctrination is a sense of grievance and victimhood when others have better outcomes -- which are automatically called "privileges" and never called "achievements," regardless of what the actual facts are.

Facts don't matter in such issues, any more than facts mattered when smearing Lincoln.

Any "under-representation" of any group in any endeavor can be taken as evidence or proof of discriminatory bias. But those who argue this way cannot show us any society -- anywhere in the world, or at any time during thousands of years of recorded history -- that had all groups represented proportionally in all endeavors.

In America's National Hockey League, for example, there are more players from Canada than there are players from the United States. There are also more players from Sweden than from California, even though California's population is nearly four times the population of Sweden.

Californians are more "under-represented" in the NHL than women are in Silicon Valley. But no one can claim that this is due to discriminatory bias by the NHL. It is far more obviously due to people growing up in cold climates being more likely to have ice-skating experience.

This is one of many factors that produce skewed statistics in many endeavors. Discriminatory bias is among those factors. But it has no monopoly.

Yet who cares about facts any more, in this age of indoctrination?

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

Is Truth Irrelevant?

The natural disposition is always to believe. It is acquired wisdom and experience only that teach incredulity, and they very seldom teach it enough. The wisest and most cautious of us all frequently gives credit to stories which he himself is afterwards both ashamed and astonished that he could possibly think of believing. — Adam Smith, Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759)

It follows that the relevance of truth is related to wisdom. But that wisdom can be elusive.

sophist

1542, earlier sophister (c.1380), from L. sophista, sophistes, from Gk. sophistes, from sophizesthai "to become wise or learned," from sophos "wise, clever," of unknown origin. Gk. sophistes came to mean "one who gives intellectual instruction for pay," and, contrasted with "philosopher," it became a term of contempt. Ancient sophists were famous for their clever, specious arguments.

philosopher

O.E. philosophe, from L. philosophus, from Gk. philosophos "philosopher," lit. "lover of wisdom," from philos "loving" + sophos "wise, a sage."

"Pythagoras was the first who called himself philosophos, instead of sophos, 'wise man,' since this latter term was suggestive of immodesty." [Klein]

philosophy

A fondness or love for wisdom that leads to searches for it; hence, seeking a knowledge of the general principles of elements, powers, examples, and laws that are supported by facts and the existence of rational explanations about practical wisdom and knowledge.

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

Up until 1964, no court had held that the First Amendment affected pornography law or libel law. Pornography law still stands - but the Warren Court cavalierly (and unanimously!) eviscerated libel law in that year when it handed down its New York Times Co. v. Sullivan decision. Which made the fatuous claim that

". . . libel can claim no talismanic immunity from constitutional limitations. It must be measured by standards that satisfy the First Amendment”

That gives the First Amendment - gives the first eight amendments - too much credit. Obviously the Federalists who proposed the ratification of their unamended constitution took the Ninth and Tenth Amendments

Amendment 9

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

and

Amendment 10

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

as being implied in that document. That is, that the rights mentioned (but not necessarily specifically defined) in the first eight amendments would have been protected by 9A and 10A even if the first eight amendments had not been proposed and ratified.

Rights come with responsibilities, and although you could - with sufficiently specious argument - claim that 2A gave that infamous rifleman the right to shoot Steve Scalise, no one would buy that for an instant.

And in precisely the same way, it was entirely fatuous for the Warren Court to assert that

". . . libel can claim no talismanic immunity from constitutional limitations. It must be measured by standards that satisfy the First Amendment”

Sullivan (unanimously, with enthusiastic concurrences) held that public officials (including judges) presumptively could not sue for libel. Despite the fact that the right to sue for libel existed at the time of the ratification of 1A, that libel is not mentioned in 1A, and that the Christian nation which was the US (do a search for “Sundays” in the Constitution and explain why the first day of the week was taken for granted as a weekly holiday) would not have ratified 1A if they had the slightest thought that it authorized libel against anyone.

And given to cryptoDemocrat nature of establishment journalism, that has meant that journalists feel no obligation to the truth. They will inflate the virtues of Democrats shamelessly - and just as shamelessly libel Republicans.