The Truth Versus The Lie

Not Very Much Feck At All

Douglas Wilson
Blog & Mablog

Introduction

What have we learned in the COVID panic? Or, closer to the point, what have some of us learned, and what should the rest of us be learning shortly?

We have learned that the establishment is bankrupt. We have seen that the scientific establishment is bankrupt. The public health system is bankrupt. The media is bankrupt. The educational system is bankrupt. Our politicians are bankrupt. The end result is that the general public has been fed the most shameless lies, and (thus far) are still largely willing to have it so.

There was a time, early on, when the lies had at least a veneer of plausibility, but now, the whole mendacious scam is out in the open, naked and covered with goose bumps. The falsehoods are now so apparent that we are in a position to count the goose bumps.

The stupidity has grown to epic proportions, and I believe that as time goes on, we will discover that we are just now beginning to catch a glimpse of merely the half of it.

It is time to drop all references to coronavirus or COVID-19, but not because the virus was imaginary. It was really there, but it was not really doing what the authorities said it was going to do. Rather, we should start referring to this tangled series of events as simply the Panic of 2020. What set everybody off is not the central item of interest right now. The main thing is for us to recognize that it was in fact an irrational panic, and not an apocalyptic pandemic. What set the chain of unreason off in the first place is a matter of lesser importance. This is because the real story is found in why we were all so spookable — when a people are that spookable, pretty much anything might do it.

A Climate of Lies

I think we all understand what goes into the making of an individual lie. Someone does something he ought not to have done, the voice of authority asks an awkward question, and the easiest way out appears to be that of lying about it. But what are the ingredients when we find ourselves living in a climate of lies? When lying appears to be as natural as eating, or sleeping, or walking? When lies and lying are the very air we breathe?

Letter From America (About Respectable Mendacity)

Why Hillary Is Never Held Accountable for Her Lies

The media excuse her mendacity because it serves the progressive cause.

By Victor Davis Hanson
National Review Online

Everyone rightly catalogues Donald Trump’s fibs, distortions, and exaggerations: his assertions about his net worth, his charitable contributions, his initial supposed opposition to the Iraq War, or his “flexible” positions on illegal immigration. After all, he is flamboyant, right-wing in his present incarnation, and supposedly bends the truth either out of crass narcissism or for petty profiteering. So the watchdog media and popular culture have no problem with ridiculing Trump as a fabricator.

But not so with Hillary Clinton, whose untruths far overshadow Trump’s in both import and frequency, but are so often contextualized, excused, and forgotten because of who she is and the purpose her outright lying supposedly serves.

Lying in America has become not lying when “good” liars advance alternative narratives for noble purposes — part of our long slide into situational ethics and moral relativism.

Every new bad idea in America today can ultimately be traced to the university. And it seems to take only about 30 years for academia’s nihilism to filter through the elite institutions and make its way into popular culture. So it is with our present idea of truth as a mere construct.

Empty Sophistry

Why Our Children Don’t Think There Are Moral Facts

By Justin P. McBrayer

New York Times

 

 

What would you say if you found out that our public schools were teaching children that it is not true that it’s wrong to kill people for fun or cheat on tests? Would you be surprised?

I was. As a philosopher, I already knew that many college-aged students don’t believe in moral facts. While there are no national surveys quantifying this phenomenon, philosophy professors with whom I have spoken suggest that the overwhelming majority of college freshmen in their classrooms view moral claims as mere opinions that are not true or are true only relative to a culture.

What I didn’t know was where this attitude came from. Given the presence of moral relativism in some academic circles, some people might naturally assume that philosophers themselves are to blame. But they aren’t. There are historical examples of philosophers who endorse a kind of moral relativism, dating back at least to Protagoras who declared that “man is the measure of all things,” and several who deny that there are any moral facts whatsoever. But such creatures are rare. Besides, if students are already showing up to college with this view of morality, it’s very unlikely that it’s the result of what professional philosophers are teaching. So where is the view coming from?

A few weeks ago, I learned that students are exposed to this sort of thinking well before crossing the threshold of higher education. When I went to visit my son’s second grade open house, I found a troubling pair of signs hanging over the bulletin board. They read:

Fact: Something that is true about a subject and can be tested or proven.

Opinion: What someone thinks, feels, or believes.

Hoping that this set of definitions was a one-off mistake, I went home and Googled “fact vs. opinion.” The definitions I found online were substantially the same as the one in my son’s classroom. As it turns out, the Common Core standards used by a majority of K-12 programs in the country require that students be able to “distinguish among fact, opinion, and reasoned judgment in a text.” And the Common Core institute provides a helpful page full of links to definitions, lesson plans and quizzes to ensure that students can tell the difference between facts and opinions.

So what’s wrong with this distinction and how does it undermine the view that there are objective moral facts?

What is the Truth?

Just the "Framing" Ma'am

Why is truth important?  Well, in everything but a Christian society it's likely not. Telling lies, gilding the lilly, burnishing a narrative, propaganda for the cause are all perfectly acceptable in the worldview of secular materialism.  It's the narrative.  It's the framing.  It's the vibe of the thing.  That's what's important.  At least Muslim ideology is candid about it.  Its doctrine of taqiyya justifies lying in a number of "circumstances".  In Hindu belief, since good and evil are part of the panoply of deities, both truth and lies are equally ultimate.

It is becoming more and more acceptable in the West to "lie for the cause".  The most recent example is a completely false story of an alleged gang rape at the University of Virginia perpetrated for ideological reasons.  The gullible were gulled--as expected.  Rolling Stone published the sensational story whilst the Chattering Classes ululated into their Chardonnay.  Dramatic stuff.  But . . .

Letter From America (About Lies, Lies, and Intimidation)

When Truth Dies, Justice Is a Fast Follower

by Ben Shapiro  
28 Nov 2014
BreitbartNews

 

On Monday night, after the release of the grand jury verdict rejecting indictment of Officer Darren Wilson in the Ferguson, Missouri shooting of 18-year-old black man Michael Brown, President Obama took to the microphones. “We need to recognize that this is not just an issue for Ferguson, this is an issue for America,” he said. “[T]here are still problems and communities of color aren't just making these problems up.”

Obama was wrong, at least in the case of Darren Wilson. In viewing thousands of pages of FBI interviews and grand jury testimony, it becomes eminently clear that many members of the local community did make up the story about Michael Brown being executed by Wilson – and pressured others to lie to police or keep silent.

According to the St. Louis County Police Investigative Report, the mob mentality took root almost immediately after the shooting. By the time detectives arrived at the scene of the incident, there was “a large crowd of bystanders and a large uniformed police presence at the scene when detectives arrived.” That crowd included both Brown’s mother and his stepfather, according to witness testimony. The police report states, “Many individuals were clearly upset and were expressing their frustration, by at times yelling obscenities and threats, and attempting to encroach on the crime scene itself.”

It got worse: