Posted by
Duck Archer on Monday, May 11, 2009 3:51:07 PM
How is it that we've let intentional lies -- even doublespeak -- leads so many people believe things that are patently ludicrous?
A man can say ‘the sky is blue’. Is the man wrong when a white cloud comes, or upon arrival of dark thunderheads? Is the man wrong even when an overcast covers the sky from horizon to horizon? The sky is still there, and it’s still blue, even if the man’s comrades tell him otherwise because they cannot see the sky for the clouds.
Liberals have gotten very good at emphasizing exceptions to the rule. Often they even trip up conservatives, into thinking the exception is the rule. In fact, it was an intentional liberal tactic on talk shows and various debates, until "civil" conservatives made a point to stop taking the abuse of themselves ... and stopped passively witnessing the assault on logic itself.
Note, in the case of tributes to pirates, the USA did on occasion pay tribute. But giving tribute was never the USA’s goal. The opposite, in fact, was always the goal. The USA didn’t always have the means to effect the goal, but never waivered in pointing out the goal and striving towards it. Indeed, the USA was the first to achieve the goal, and did so a full decade before President Thomas Jefferson died. Seeing as how Jefferson was no longer president by a good 6 years, when the USA wrested freedom of the seas in 1815, “Millions for defense, not one cent for tribute!” was obviously not just Jefferson’s personal agenda. That the USA was wildly successful, in stopping tribute in favor of insisting on rights, is attested by the fact that the Barbary Pirates had lost all significant tribute sources by 1840. It was due to USA’s Decatur (and company) fighting for freedom for about a full dozen years, starting with volunteer sailors & marines in 1803 “from the shores of Tripoli”.
All the exceptions in the world cannot change the basic fact.
Other examples abound, such as
- the highly-publicized myths that the Founding Fathers were Secularists, not the Christians they themselves claimed to be.
- the now receding myth that the Treaty of Tripoli was somehow a proof that religion must be banned from the American Experiment, when it was merely a clause trying to explain to Muslim countries that the USA, unlike all other countries of the day, had no officially supported state religion.
“Exception becoming the rule” isn’t just for history. Historical examples are simpler due to Americans’ lack of history education. Modern-day examples are possible due to Americans’ lack of education in mathematics, rhetoric, & logic. Relative Morality is truly evil, since it makes a lie or a murder (or any other evil) into a moral virtue whenever the lie/murder/etc can be arguably seen to advance an agenda.
Several more modern examples:
- War against Terrorism causes the deficit spending. (How, really, since steady-state defense spending is only 20% of federal budget, while ballooning social spending now tops 65%?)
- Evolution is disproved by a rock formation in Texas has all the fossils in reverse order, with oldest on top. (How does one rightfully ignore tectonic uplift & overturning, and the fact that all sediment layers are still in their proper sequence?)
- NBC planting explosives in a Ford to show how nearly all Fords explode on impact (1978). (So, a rigged-to-explode pickup is a valid expose on sparks igniting gas tanks ... how?)
- 60 Minutes rigging visuals to show how jeeps ‘always’ roll over even at very low speeds. (Note how the powerful visual over-emphasizes a very low statistic merely quietly mentioned in the background narrative?)
- Diane Sawyer’s recent ‘expose’ on how being armed in a classroom (or any public venue) would get you killed, but cell phones would save lives. (How does the following filmed play-acting prove anything? The play-acting paintballing perpetrator enters the classroom, shoots the instructor, then somehow zeroes in on the only armed individual. Meanwhile, the armed individual is fumbling to grip an unfamiliar paintball weapon in an unfamiliar location -- while wearing bulky gloves? How does telling the perpetrator 'there is one armed individual' represent reality that there would probably be zero armed individuals in the room?)
Note that in many cases, the exception is actually not an exception, only made to seem like an exception due to being improperly explained. That’s nested lies, one inside another.
The nesting makes a lie into an almost unquestionable assumption, since the questionee is focussed on the actual question. The peperpetrating questioneer 'hides' the lie within a follow-on assertion.
- It's precisely like the immoral courtroom behavior asking, "So, when did you stop beating your wife?" The question uses an unproven accusation as a 'given' within the stated question. An unthinking answerer would self-incriminate, even if he'd never ever beaten anybody.
- Some call this 'nesting' methed noble titles, like 'choosing the battlefield' or 'framing the issue'. It's really an assault on both titles that, when properly used in truth, are valuable. In the assault, it's just plain dishonest.
Making the exception appear to be the rule is quite like making words mean the opposite of what they do mean. Wordsmithing is what Orwell wrote about: how socialists use ‘doublespeak’. But reversing entire ideas is not too far from reversing words. Both have meanings.
President John Adams once said "Facts are stubborn things." Today's liberals have had their way in inventing facts for far too long. It's time for truth to trump Inconvenient Lies!