Maybe the purveyor of the "Straight Talk Express" will capitalize on some issues that will benefit the country and serve the truth instead of the convenient untruths we’ve all been forced to live under.
Two thousand years ago, a man told some local leaders: “The truth will set you free.” Now, those who have been blessed with religious faith understand exactly what He was talking about; yet these words should be universally accepted, even by those in the secular world. After all, only a few hundred years ago, some less worthy but still wise men thought that truth, or truths that were self-evident, were not only important enough to govern a freedom-loving people, but to fight and die for.
So if the truth will set us free, what would the converse effect be? Well, the opposite of truth is deception, and the opposite of freedom is slavery. And if some of our fellow countrymen continue on the path of serving everything but the truth, slavery is exactly where we’re headed. With the heart of the presidential election season right around the corner, maybe the purveyor of the "Straight Talk Express" will capitalize on some issues that will benefit the country and serve the truth instead of the convenient untruths we’ve all been forced to live under.
John McCain could start by doing what liberals everywhere claim to love: emit a loud mea culpa, and admit he was wrong to jump on the global warming bandwagon. Pride aside, this would be easy, as many brave men of science are stepping up to the plate and admitting that the “settled science” is anything but. It’s time that a prominent politician admitted that there isn’t much humans can do to change what God hath wrought other than to embrace it and adapt to it as Man has done from Day One. This is freedom from the slavery of presumption.
Next, he should jump on the nearest rooftop and shout for all the world to hear that America will henceforth take charge of its own destiny when it comes to oil. God has blessed this country with an overabundance of natural resources but apparently, an under-abundance of common sense. Yet this truth is becoming plain even to the average American. The basic laws of supply and demand seem to have finally penetrated the psyche of likely voters, 74% of whom, according to the latest Zogby poll, favor off-shore drilling while 59% would like us to begin drilling in ANWR. This is freedom from economic slavery.
Another area where a dose of truth would go a long way is on the subject of gay marriage. As I wrote a few weeks ago, time is running out for the canard that homosexuals will not have “equal” rights until they have gained control of that very building block of civilized societies. It’s time to admit that codifying the gay lifestyle would be both physically and morally harmful to any such society. This is freedom from the slavery of error.
A good way for McCain to gain the support and admiration of those on the Right would be to make a firm commitment that the party’s "no exceptions" platform position on abortion will not change with him as its head. If one believes that abortion is wrong because life begins at conception, and that any taking of innocent human life is murder, how then can one believe that the violence of rape should be visited on the child as well as the mother? Or that a fetus, if not “terminated” will become anything else than a human being?
We know that the last few decades have seen those who deny truth, try and shape our very language in order to further their deceptions. Consider that Barack Obama has said that he didn’t want his daughters “punished with a baby” for “making a mistake.” As if the precious gift of human life could ever be anything but a miracle of God’s creation. In Obama’s world, the only individual deserving of punishment is the unborn child, the ultimate slave of sexual “freedom.”
This is how far away from the truth a large portion of our country currently is: it has taken a federal court three years to uphold the language in a South Dakota law that requires doctors to inform women seeking an abortion that it would "terminate the life of a whole, separate, unique, living human being." It is sad comment on our country’s state of affairs that many of us are celebrating this as a victory – for a truth that has been understood by men for thousands of years. This is freedom from the sordid slavery of moral indifference.
Two thousand years ago, one man invested with the political power of an empire that ruled most of the known world asked another man, “What is truth?” This is a good question for a GOP nominee who claims to deliver straight talk.
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"Then said Jesus to those Jews which believed on him, If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed; And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." – KJV Bible, John 8:31-32
The truth referenced here is a very specific, yet indemonstrable 'truth' based entirely in faith. In fact, it is faith spoken of in this passage. Jesus is asking his listeners to take on faith he is who he claims to be. He speaks in riddles that never quite reveal who, but we are lead by stages to think he is proclaiming his divinity. The passage has Jesus proclaiming this divinity and then defending it on the basis it is a divine (ergo, unassailable) truth (circular logic); and that it is only acceptance of this particular truth that can liberate men from their sins – it and no other. Personally and as a Jew, I greatly respect the Nazarene rabbi, but do not share in this particular ‘truth’ regarding his divinity; and even suspect his disciples of padding his résumé so as to make spreading the new gospel easier. Nor do I agree there is no path to salvation other than through Jesus; only that he presented the world with a path and started new recruits along it. Even so, the passage was great narration; rich in philosophical sustenance to spiritually starving Greeks and Romans.
In all deference to Ms Fabrizio, not all truth liberates. Truth unmasks the liar, binds the reluctant, humbles the fool, condemns the guilty, and advantages the vigorous over the lazy, timid and unwary (to name but a few). Truth can both liberate and shackle, depending more on how we use it than anything fundamental within it. If you doubt this, ask any successful lawyer. Didn’t the Soviets (who so loved parroting religion the better to riducule it) even co-opt this phrase into their propaganda? Thus, even ‘truth’ can be made to serve lies and injustice. Truth, in the hands of the fair-minded, does tend more towards good than evil; but there is plenty to show even that is not proof against unintended harm. So, something else is missing, and that something is the wisdom necessary to exercise truth in generally positive ways.
I do not disagree with the premise truth liberates (it can), but it is one of those truisms applied too liberally (so to speak) rebounds tritely and is all too easily overturned.
Comment by Bob Stapler | July 4, 2008
Dear Lisa,
I always love your articles. However, I do take issue with you on the question of “no exceptions” abortion.
Taking an ‘innocent’ life is always a serious decision, but I think there is a world of difference between taking a life created because someone wants to indulge their primitive instincts, and where a woman is brutally (or even gently) raped.
But if we proceed on the basis that taking an ‘innocent’ life is ALWAYS wrong, we run into some uncomfortable considerations.
For example, if a terrorist, or even an unscrupulous neighbor, holds an innocent child as hostage while he tries to kill one of my children, what should I do? Let him kill my child? Or do I kill that innocent child in order to save my own child, or even my own life? I would have no hesitation killing even an innocent child where the life of one of my own children is in question, or even my own life (because I need my life in order to support my children).
This is not some unlikely scenario – it happens almost every day in war zones around the world. Terrorists regularly hide amongst innocent civilians in order to inflict death on others. What should those threatened with death do? Sacrifice their lives because someone is so unscrupulous as to use an innocent child as a shield?
And when it comes to rape, I see the exact same situation. Please, just imagine a loving family when suddenly the mother and wife is raped. The wimp husband supports her decision to keep the ‘innocent’ child. After serving his 3 year sentence (or perhaps less), the rapist insists of seeing his ‘child’. In today’s PC world, I expect the courts will be falling all over themselves to inflict such humiliation on the innocent family.
I am afraid that I find it offensive, even perverted, to contemplate a woman (especially a married woman) keeping a child inflicted upon her by a rapist. And I will be brutal about this – if ever my wife were raped, and insisted on giving birth to the child of such scum, that would be the end of us. In fact, I would have no hesitation in carrying out the abortion myself!
This tolerance of even the vilest of acts, and the effect it would inflict on the innocent children of the family, is simply an example of Liberal Fundamentalism gone mad!!
Otherwise, I agree that McCain is a buffoon!
Joseph BH McMillan http://www.freedomvrights.com
Comment by Joseph BH McMillan | July 5, 2008
I would also remind this particular discussion regarding the truth of Jesus' identity is continued in John 18, the passage in which power-wielding Pilate asks the "What is truth?" question. We Jews have, for much of those 2,000 years, suffered the enmity of Christians and Muslims as ‘Christ-killers’ largely on the basis of this one passage. This provides a perfect example of how one group’s ‘liberating-truth’ can libel and bind others. Whatever the ‘truth’ or guilt of those Jews in that time, this particular truth has been revisited on countless ‘innocent’ Jews leading to the Holocaust and still exploited today.
Pilate’s question is a literary device meant rhetorically. However, in the context of this article, I feel compelled to ask it again and un-rhetorically. There is a warning in Pilate’s remark, perhaps meant for himself alone, but often lost on those who read John out of context. He has been asked to judge Jesus; and, so, he asks “What is [the] truth?” regarding Jesus and perplexed he may be condemning an innocent. ‘Be careful with the truth’, he seems to say, not cynically “What is truth?” that he can exploit it to satisfy a howling mob. He’s treading thin ice and knows it. Pilate goes on to ‘wash his hands’ of the matter, not because he has manipulated the truth, but because he’s the one trapped by both Caiaphas and Jesus; both of whom are telling the truth as they see it. Yet it is Jesus and not Caiaphas who manipulates, because Jesus understands both his own truth and the truth (logic) under which Caiaphas and Pilate must operate.
Was it all Jews who condemned Jesus, or just temple and court Jews who saw in him a dangerous precedent? What then of his followers, most of whom were steadfast Jews who remained so even after the abuse of their messiah? For decades after Jesus’ death, becoming a Christian entailed converting to Judaism; further belying a Jewish enmity and establishing Christianity as a Jewish (though maverick) sect. The idea of Jewish ‘guilt’ evolved only later out of the rivalry of Christianity with mainstream Judaism; with the gospel ‘truth’ of John turned to sectarian propaganda. The Christians were having recruitment problems tied as they were to Judaism (many would be Christians balked at circumcision). For that, and other reasons, the sect distanced itself from Judaism. Much later, in the middle-ages, the libel was used to disenfranchise, rob, and push us from one place after another. During the Crusades, anti-Jewish sentiment was so strong we were sometimes butchered rather than risk ‘Jews left behind’ with so many knights away. So, what may have begun innocently as a ‘white lie’, in time became something much darker.
Truth by itself is insufficient. What you do with the truth is just as (maybe more) important.
Comment by Bob Stapler | July 5, 2008