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Saturday, January 16, 2021

The Death of Truth

So much of our society has failed America:

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.

Too many institutions have been warped in the pursuit of political power. Will the left's Resistance farce lifted from World War II tragedy turn their farcical dictatorship fantasy into American tragedy?

I've noted on this blog the progression of liberal efforts to stop behavior they don't like, such as smoking tobacco. Step one is providing more information so people will choose not to do the bad thing. When that doesn't work, step two is making the bad thing more expensive or harder to get. When that doesn't work, step three is simply banning the bad behavior or mandating good behavior. 

Now the left has decided that tens of millions of people are themselves bad rather than anything in particular that they do. Are we skipping to step three already?

I'm so old that I remember when "liberal minded" meant "open minded." 

UPDATE: I screwed up the second link in the paragraph after the quote so I just deleted it rather than try to find the link. And edited the paragraph to make it clearer without the link.

UPDATE: How many liberals will be that guy:

The tragically powerful story behind the lone German who ...

Too darned few, I imagine. I won't claim I rose to that level of rejection, but in the frightening days after 9/11 I wrote this essay on the coming war on terror. I included this caution:

Above all, vigilance must not degenerate into paranoia. We must trust that our Moslem and Arab neighbors share our values. They or their parents or grandparents immigrated to America because they too cherish our freedoms and way of life. Like most Americans, they are here because someone in their family fled poverty, oppression, or both, to build a better life for their children. They are horrified and angry like all Americans. "They" are our friends and neighbors and are part of "us." Some, whether citizens or residents, will be guilty of cooperating with the enemy or even actively fighting us. This is not new. Fascism and communism had their admirers here even in our darkest hours during those fights. Those betrayers were guilty as individuals and not as members of any religion or ethnic group. Let us not descend into the logic of our enemies that the perceived or actual guilt of one condemns all similar innocents. Our enemies will have won the war in a fundamental and lasting way if we become like the terrorists even as we physically destroy our terrorist enemy.

 Have a super sparkly day.