Category: Truthfulness
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There is No Truth, Only Bullshit
Thus the Dustin Hoffman character in Hero. "There ain't no truth; all there is, is bullshit." (HT: Vlastimil V.) This very short video clip would be a good way to get your intro to phil students thinking about truth. Some questions/issues: 1. Is it true that there is no truth? If yes, there there is…
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Truth Decay
'Truth decay' aptly describes the growing lack of concern for truth among influential players in our society. I got the phrase from Douglas Groothuis. Truth itself, of course, cannot decay, but truthfulness can and is. We are in trouble, deep trouble. Victor Davis Hanson collects some examples in Lying, Inc.: Everyone knows that “Hands up, Don’t…
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Obama the Liar Update
This just in: Obama lied about the bin Laden raid. Fits the pattern. No surprise. A master of the multiple modes of mendacity. And Hillary is poised to out-Obaminate him. She is practicing hard to see how much she can get away with. We really ought to start demanding basic truth-telling from our elected officials.…
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Hillary’s Presidential Bid as an Exercise in and Referendum on Cynicism
Another penetrating column by Bret Stephens. Excerpts: All of which means that Mrs. Clinton’s presidential bid is an exercise in—and a referendum on—cynicism, partly hers but mainly ours. Democrats who nominate Mrs. Clinton will transform their party into the party of cynics; an America that elects Mrs. Clinton as its president will do so as…
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Hillary the Fabulist
It has been said of Bill Clinton that he'd rather climb a tree and tell a lie than stand on the ground and tell the truth. Hillary continues the family tradition. One of her latest untruths is that all four of her grandparents came to the U.S. as immigrants when only one of them did. …
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How About a Six-Month Suspension Without Pay for Barack Obama?
It's a funny world. NBC anchor Brian Williams lied about a matter of no significance, in an excess of boyish braggadocio, though in doing so he injured his credibility and, more importantly, that of his employer, NBC. We demand truth of our journalists and so Williams' suspension is as justified as the Schadenfreude at his…
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Do Communists Lie?
I just now found this at the CPUSA website: Communists are not against religion. We are against capitalism. A communist who is not against religion would be like a Catholic who is not against atheism or a teetotaler who is not against drinking alcoholic beverages. What we have here is further proof that truth is…
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Obama the Disaster
My man Hanson: The only mystery about the last six years is how much lasting damage has been done to the American experiment, at home and abroad. Our federal agencies are now an alphabet soup of incompetence and corruption. How does the IRS ever quite recover? Will the Secret Service always be seen as veritable…
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The Party of Pinocchio
The Democrats ought to retire the jackass as their totem and adopt Pinocchio, the better to represent the depths of mendacity into which they have sunk. I now hand off to Ron Radosh. Related: Obama as Bullshitter As Dennis Prager likes to point out, truth is not a leftist value.
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How to Tell the Truth without being Truthful
Mainstream media accounts of Michael Brown of Ferguson fame repeatedly refer to him as an "unarmed teenager." You may recall Rodney King and the repeated press references to him as a "motorist." Trayvon Martin, we were often told, was a "child." Was Brown an unarmed teenager, King a motorist, and Martin a child? Yes, but…
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Victor Davis Hanson on Obama the Mendacious
Here (HT: Bill Keezer): [. . .] Barack Obama is once again lamenting the charge that he is responsible for pulling all U.S. peacekeepers out of Iraq, claiming that the prior administration is culpable. But Obama negotiated the withdrawal himself. We know that not because of right-wing talking points, but because of the proud serial…
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Orwellian Mendacity and Blatant Distortion at The New York Times
Left-wing bias at the NYT is nothing new, of course, but the following opening paragraph of a July 8th editorial is particularly egregious. But before I quote it, let me say that the problem is not that the editors have a point of view or even that it is a liberal-left point of view. The…
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Lost IRS E-Mails?
This from the AP: Congressional investigators are fuming over revelations that the Internal Revenue Service has lost a trove of emails to and from a central figure in the agency's tea party controversy. The IRS said Lois Lerner's computer crashed in 2011, wiping out an untold number of emails that were being sought by congressional…
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Towards a Typology of Untruthfulness
The discussion of lying a few weeks ago proved fruitful. But lying is only one way to be untruthful. A full understanding of lying is possible only by comparison with, and contrast to, other forms of untruthfulness or mendacity. How many different forms are there? This post takes a stab at cataloging the forms. Some…
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Why Would Obama Say He is not Ideological?
Ed Rogers speculates: The president’s belief that little of what he does is ideologically driven suggests he is living with a pampered, unchallenged mind. He has been told he is so smart for so long that he sees only clarity in his actions and unchallengeable reason in his conclusions. The president’s belief in his own…