““What is truth?”
Pilate asked.” John 18:38
Ralph
Waldo Emerson wrote, “Truth is the summit of being;
justice is the application of it to affairs.” US District Courts
administer the following oath to witnesses, “You do affirm that all the
testimony you are about to give in the case now before the court will be the
truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth; this you do affirm under the
pains and penalties of perjury?” The meaning is clear. When you make
statements, tell the truth – the whole truth. Do not lie. Do not withhold
information. If you lie or withhold information there are legal penalties to
pay for deceiving the public and attempting to perpetrate a miscarriage of
justice. As we say in the Pledge of Allegiance, we live in a nation that was predicated
on the premise of “…liberty and justice for all.” Clearly, as Americans we
acknowledge that truth is essential for justice and liberty to triumph.
We
require and expect our citizenry to tell the truth in public matters of
consequence or face penalties for not doing so. So, where along the political way did we stray
from requiring and expecting candidates for public office to tell the truth,
the whole truth, and nothing but the truth? It is a sad indictment of the
American political system that we must now rely upon ‘fact checkers’ to assess a
political candidate’s ability to tell the truth. One of the most popular ‘fact
checkers’, PolitiFact, identifies
itself as a project of the Tampa Bay Times and its partners to help the
American public find the truth in politics. They rate the consistency of public
officials on a Flip-O-Meter using three ratings: No Flip, Half Flip and Full
Flop. If this was not enough, PolitiFact’s Truth-O-Meter rates factual
claims.
According
to the PolitiFact web site, “PolitiFact writers and editors spend
considerable time researching and deliberating on our rulings. We always try to
get the original statement in its full context rather than an edited form that
appeared in news stories. We then divide the statement into individual claims
that we check separately. When possible, we go to original sources to verify
the claims. We look for original government reports rather than news stories.
We interview impartial experts. We then decide which of our six rulings should
apply: True – The statement is
accurate and there’s nothing significant missing; Mostly True – The statement is accurate but needs clarification or
additional information; Half True
– The statement is partially accurate but leaves out important details or takes
things out of context; Mostly False
– The statement contains some element of truth but ignores critical facts that
would give a different impression; False
– The statement is not accurate; Pants
on Fire – The statement is not accurate and makes a ridiculous claim.”
The
Truth-O-Meter attests to the growing confusion between opinion and fact in
American politics. Perhaps definitions would be appropriate. A fact is something that has occurred or is actually the case. Facts
are verifiable. Opinions, however, are beliefs or judgments that rest on
grounds insufficient to prove. Opinions are open to debate or dispute. Generating
public opinion through lies is malicious since telling a lie again and again
does not make it true. So why do political candidates lie, spin, and tell
half-truths? Because, if convincing enough, lies and half-truths successfully mislead
people into believing they are really true. When lies are blindly accepted as
truth, liberty and justice are the casualties.
Some assert
that truth, like beauty, is in the eyes of the beholder, and facts are
secondary to successfully generating favorable political opinions to win
elections. Because we, the people, value liberty and justice, we do not judge our
citizenry by personal opinion. We evaluate facts that lead to truth. We should
judge our political candidates the same way. Telling a lie three times does not
make it the truth, no matter how much we want to believe the lie. Political
candidates are not above the law and we should expect them to uphold the tenets
upon which this nation was established. It is time to hold our political
candidates and parties to the same standard as we do our citizenry in telling
the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth if we truly believe the
United States is still a nation “…with liberty and justice for all.”
