The Resurrection of Objective Truth

Among Donald Trump's achievements is one for which he will be especially despised by our postmodern friends. He has, as Glenn Stanton points out at The Federalist, bamboozled those of his critics who scoff at the very notion that there's any objective truth, especially about morality, into tacitly admitting that objective truth does indeed exist after all.

For decades we've been told that truth is subjective and relative, that we live in a post-fact world, that what's true for me isn't necessarily true for you, that the culture in which one lives sets the standard for moral truth and no one can judge anyone else's truth.

But all of that progressive flummery went out the window the day Trump walked down the escalator and announced his candidacy for the presidency. Since then, progressives have touted a standard of truth that a fundamentalist would envy.

Here's Stanton:

Whether he meant to or not, Trump almost single-handedly corrected the left’s false view of the nature of truth. Indeed, if we learned anything from the left and their media partisans these last few years, it is this: Truth is no longer relative.

The notion that each of us has his own equally legitimate take on the truth has been demonstrably demolished by the Age of Trump. Over the last five years, the world was regularly reminded just how illegitimate one particular man’s view of the truth was. And there was to be no debate over that objectively true truth.

The idea, considered axiomatic by the left until Trump strode onto the political stage, that no one can judge anyone else's concept of what's true evaporated like morning mist among journalists obsessed with pointing out Trump's lies.

For all his foibles, Trump couldn’t open his mouth without giving flight to battalions of passionate media elites and Hollywood-types who commissioned themselves the faithful and dogged centurions of this precious new and fragile thing called objective truth. They showed up to work every day to constantly remind us that one particular person’s take on truth was indeed wholly illegitimate.

In a reversal so sudden and sharp that it might've dislocated an observer's cervical vertebrae, the progressive media overnight abandoned their moral relativism and became stout defenders of objective truth. Time magazine, Stanton reminds us, even blamed Trump for the death of truth when in fact Trump was simply a manifestation of the postmodern epistemology that has been regnant in our culture for over fifty years.

Stanton continues:

While both Bill Clinton and Barack Obama were feted as postmodern presidents, Trump represents the post-postmodern president because the idea that all perspectives should be welcome at that table is now categorically dead. Some ideas are indeed evil and must be rooted out and denounced with great fervency.

As “fact-checking” became the secular press’s new religious duty to the world in the Age of Trump, we are all objectivists now — and of a very fundamentalist flavor. Rare were days when we were not “gifted” their services, often in “real-time,” when Trump said or tweeted anything. Did one incorrect statement ever fall from his tongue or fingertips without being dutifully called out? No, even his tiniest falsehoods were catalogued in obsessive detail.

We now know with unquestioned certainty that there are indeed ... certain choices and assertions [which] are forever and always morally and rationally wrong. Our brightest commentators never let us forget how nearly everything Trump ever said or did was fundamentally immoral and unethical.

Of course, our media and academics, being as partisan as they are, shouldn't be expected to apply this newfound knowledge consistently. Doubtless, they'll hold Republicans and conservatives to an objective standard of truth and everyone else will be assessed through a relativistic lens.

Even so, the left has made an important beginning on the road back to moral and logical sanity by recognizing that truth matters.

Stanton concludes with this:

At the very least, Trump served to convince the left that objective truth does indeed exist and it does make unbending claims on all of us. From here on out, whenever someone tries to convince any of us that truth is relative and all perspectives deserve an equal hearing, we only need to ask “Including Trump’s?” to put that silly assertion to rest. For that, we can all be thankful.

Indeed we can.

The next time you hear someone complain about Trump's moral failings ask them whether they believe that moral truth is objective or subjective. They may not answer at all, but if they reply that they believe it's objectively wrong to do the things they criticize Trump for doing, ask them what they believe objective right and wrong are grounded in if not in God. A nontheist will have a difficult time answering this question.

If they respond that they believe that moral truth is subjective or relative to one's own feelings, which are often a function of one's own social setting, class or culture, ask them why they think that anyone else should care about their moral judgments of Trump. Any judgment that's a product of one's own feelings, after all, is simply a matter of taste and can hardly have relevance for anyone other than the person making the judgment.

The irony of the left's embrace of objective moral truth during the Trump presidency is that objective moral truth can only exist if God exists, so when an atheist delivers a moral judgment that he implicitly holds to be objectively true he's tacitly admitting that he's wrong about God's existence.

It must feel very awkward, I'd think.