The Disappearing Relevance of Truth

I sometimes get the feeling that if Viewpoint were devoted purely to bringing Left-wing dopiness to our reader's attention we could work at it full time and still not exhaust the riches that are out there to be mined. The Honolulu Star-Bulletin, for example, reports on Ward Churchill's recent speech at the University of Hawaii. In the speech Churchill finally acknowledged that he's not an Indian after all:

Churchill did address the issue of his ethnicity, admitting that he is not Native American. "Is he an Indian? Do we really care?" he said, quoting those he called his "white Republican" critics. "Let's cut to the chase; I am not," he said. His pedigree is "not important," Churchill said: "The issue is the substance of what is said."

Ah, yes. After years of passing himself off as an Indian, after having secured his chairmanship of Colorado University's ethnic studies department under the pretense that he was an Indian, now it doesn't actually matter whether he is or not. The objective facts are of concern only to those who still think in the categories of an obsolete worldview, one in which the word Truth meant something other than one's own personal preference.

What really matters to Churchill and his epigones is not whether he's an authentic Native-American, but that he's an authentic America-hater. The man has been lying all his life about who he is, and now he's telling people that all that matters is what he says about American tyranny and the condign deaths of the financial wizards in the WTT on 9/11.

There's an important lesson here, I think. Truth just isn't what it used to be. For the Left, especially, truth is purely pragmatic. Whatever works to achieve one's agenda, to gain power for one's group, to advance one's cause, is true. Anything which hinders these is false. For the Leftist a lie is truth if it promotes the destruction of imperialist Amerika. The lie becomes true, and virtuous, because it is useful. The objective facts surrounding the lie are irrelevant. All that matters is whether it promotes the agenda.

It's important to bear this in mind when reading or listening to anything those on the left side of the ideological divide write or say. Their concept of truth and the moral virtue associated with it are not what they are for most of us who suffer from never having attended a major university.

As if to illustrate the point, at the end of the article we read this disturbing passage:

UH student Kirsten Chong said her professors assigned her to listen to the speech. "He was humorous and he certainly didn't pull any punches," she said, adding that because she is native Hawaiian, she agrees with much of what he said.

Ms Chong agrees with Churchill not because what he says is "true" but because she's a native Hawaiian. We may wonder what her ethnic heritage has to do with the truth of Churchill's words, but the answer is it really doesn't matter. He was talking, presumably, about alleged American imperialism, and she's an ethnic Hawaiian so what he said had "purchase" with her. Don't look for a logical connection because none is needed or desirable. His words charmed her, resonated with her on some visceral level, and that's all that's necessary for them to become her "truth" as well as his.

If this is what colleges and universities all across the United States are churning out year after year, Lord help us.

For more on Churchill see here.