Truth in Politics: "...with liberty and justice for all?"

““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.”