Tag: truth

Through a Lens, Darkly

Matthew A. Sears, SJW, Social Justice Warrior, University, dialectic, truth, argument, protest

The “best debates” are ones in which one side shouts down the other side and threatens violence.

Well, that is what a Washington Post essay implies. In “Why ‘social justice warriors’ are the real defenders of free speech on campus,” Matthew A. Sears, an associate professor of classics and ancient history at the University of New Brunswick, offers a bizarre take on current campus controversies.

After two years of bizarre antics from leftist student bodies in colleges and universities all over the country, academics as diverse as Steven Pinker, Jordan Peterson, and Camille Paglia have denounced the intentionally disruptive and even violent tactics of student mobs. We need to go back to the Socratic method and “the disinterested pursuit of truth,” as Jonathan Haidt, the author of The Righteous Mind, put it.

Sears counters this by defending the “social justice approach” as better than a “disinterested pursuit of truth.” Instead of “constituting an attack on knowledge, the social justice lens reflects new ideas generated by academic disciplines and experts within them, and generally encourages expanding our knowledge and opening up subjects to new perspectives, much like Socrates advocated.”

Conflating Socratic “dialectic” with the screaming matches and overt force used by the social justice students who have shut down lectures, seminars and fora featuring non-leftist figures such as Ben Shapiro, Heather Mac Donald and Charles Murray, is more effrontery than enlightening.*

And about that “social justice lens”? Lenses refract, mirrors reflect — and Sears’ argument, you will notice, defends bad behavior out of his classroom by focusing on how he teaches in class.

We don’t need mirrors or lenses to see the deflection here.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* It was heartening to read most commenters on the page engaging in a merciless “dialectic” against the author.

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Tags argument, dialectic, Matthew A. Sears, protest, SJW, Social Justice Warrior, truth, University

Accountability general freedom national politics & policies responsibility

The First Casualty

Trump, Vietnam, truth, adviser, Johnson, McNamara, lies, war, advice

Former Marine Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, President Trump’s current national security advisor, is the author of Dereliction of Duty, a look at how President Lyndon Johnson conducted the Vietnam War.

Last Sunday, the Washington Post’s Carlos Lozada reviewed the 1997 non-fiction book, noting that McMaster hadn’t minced words.

McMaster argues, for instance, that LBJ had a “real propensity for lying.” McMaster also takes Defense Secretary Robert McNamara and the Joint Chiefs of Staff to task for not telling Johnson hard truths about the war, and going along with what they knew were poor policies.

Life-and-death policies.

“McMaster explains how a culture of deceit and deference, of divided and misguided loyalties, of policy overrun by politics, resulted in an ever-deeper U.S. involvement in Vietnam,” Lozada reports.

Lozada then compares the dishonest bubble within which LBJ made decisions about Vietnam to the people around President Trump today, fearing they too will fail to tell the president inconvenient truths or dare risk his wrath by opposing his policy whims.

That tilted Trump focus is the 24/7 obsession of the national press corps.

But this problem isn’t new with Trump. It’s universal.

The wise have long understood that truth is the first casualty of war. If not taken out before hostilities even begin.

It is critical to find people of integrity to work at the White House and tell presidents the unvarnished truth. And even more critical is to pick presidents with integrity to tell the American people — the ultimate decision-makers — the truth.

It’s long past time that U.S. foreign policies be publicly discussed — and decided — by an informed electorate.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Whisper cc photo by Jamin Gray on Flickr

Tags advice, adviser, Johnson, lies, McNamara, Trump, truth, Vietnam, war

Accountability folly ideological culture media and media people moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies too much government

Almost Right

Politifact, Snopes, facts, fact check, bias, propaganda, lie, truth, interpretation, analysis

The popular fact-checking sites, such as Snopes and Politifact, cannot stick to the facts.

When Sen. Rand Paul (R‑Ky) predicted that a recent repeal of “three regulations” would save “hundreds of millions of dollars and tens of thousands of jobs,” Politifact rated the statement “Half True,” on the grounds that, well, not all experts agreed.

In 2015, objecting to a reported low figure for the Clinton Foundation’s grants to other groups that actually did things, PunditFact gave a “Mostly false” judgment despite admitting that the statement was “technically true.”

NBC engaged in a similar move, admitting to the technical truth of a claim about unemployment, but said it was “extremely misleading.”

Snopes found reasons to tag a “Mixture” rating onto the simple fact that Omar Mateen, the Pulse nightclub mass murderer, was a registered Democrat. He was*.

The funny thing is, these sites are “Almost Right”: fact checking isn’t enough.

Facts can be true, but deceptively used.

Unfortunately, these “fact-checkers” repeatedly fail to clearly distinguish matters of fact from matters of context. They could offer a double analysis and double rating: True/False for the factual; Clear/Caution, to cover interpretations and implications.

Why don’t they?

Perhaps for the same reason the CIA is planning a Meme Warfare Center — to provide a “full spectrum meme generation, analysis, quality control/assurance and organic transmission apparatus”** — instead of a Center for the Analysis of Popular Argument: the idea is not to increase knowledge.

It is to maximize influence.

Which leaves us on meme patrol, ever vigilant.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* What Snopes did was speculate that the terrorist perhaps changed his mind after initially registering a decade before the shooting.

** I wrote more about this in Sunday’s Townhall column (from which this Common Sense foray is adapted; see relevant links here), and first broached the goofy/ominous CIA proposal with Saturday’s featured video.

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Tags analysis, bias, fact check, facts, interpretation, lie, Politifact, propaganda, Snopes, truth

Accountability folly ideological culture media and media people national politics & policies political challengers

Bigly Truthiness

truthiness, Trump, propaganda, lies, truth, journalism, journalist, The Economist, rhetoric

“Journalists should be tough when powerful people say untrue things,” writes the Books and Arts columnist for The Economist.

I’m with “Johnson,” that pseudonymous author, except for one thing. In calling President Trump a Big League liar, he himself seems to miss the whole truth, nothing but the truth.

At the very least, The Economist scrivener proves himself rather obtuse … especially for a column de plume tipping the hat to the great Samuel Johnson. Many of the Trumpian falsehoods he mentions are indeed whoppers. No doubt. But a few cry out for a more subtle reading.

After distinguishing between falsity, lying, and fantasizing, “Johnson” speculates that Trump may actually believe “his own guff.”

But then, about Trump’s murder rate statements, Johnson quickly runs off the rails: “Mr. Trump said something wildly wrong about something easily checkable, leaving an adviser, Kellyanne Conway, flailing to cover for him.…” But Conway did suggest that Trump may have been speaking about certain cities wherein the murder rate has gone up.

Trump often speaks as hyperbolist: murder has gone up in a few major cities; he relates the fact as if murder had gone up generally. This annoys sticklers. Me, included. But Trump’s been using the rhetoric of exaggeration.

You could call it the rhetoric of inexactitude.

It’s how he trolls.

Trump could also be charged with “truthiness,” comedian Stephen Colbert’s signature 2005 coinage about confidence in factoids for intuitive reasons, sans evidence.

But so might this “Johnson.” When subtle men miss homespun subtleties, one has to wonder whether they might miss it for … intuitive reasons.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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