Disheartening Truths Cannot Be Ignored

Joe Bell

The September 16 issue of Rolling Stone features a story titled, “The Most Stoned Kids on the Most Stoned Day on the Most Stoned Campus on Earth.” This tale of two students at the University of California at Santa Cruz reveals that their lives, and apparently the lives of many others on campus, revolves around marijuana.

At one point, however, the female student declares, “I like learning, but learning the truth about things is often disheartening.”

The truth is often hard to hear, yet it must be spoken. Without it our lives are meaningless, our policies are irrelevant and our society is chaos. Unfortunately, universities are steeped in moral relativism, preaching a doctrine that celebrates forbearance for all ideas. To embrace such a philosophy is to ignore the truth, which teaches that certain questions have already been answered. Liberals have never been able to acknowledge that some ideas are demonstrably better than others. That is a “disheartening” truth to those who seek tolerance for all ideas.

In 1990, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Strobe Talbot, who would serve in the Clinton Administration’s State Department, wrote, “A new consensus is emerging that the Soviet threat is not what it used to be. The real point, however, is that it never was. The doves in the great debate of the past 40 years were right all along.”

The end of the Cold War revealed a truth that was so “disheartening” the doves could not bring themselves to accept it even after those who languished in the communist swamp told their story.

Vaclav Havel, a tireless opponent of communism, was elected president of Czechoslovakia and then of the Czech Republic. Addressing the U.S. Congress in 1990, he said, “The communist type of totalitarian system has left both our nations, Czechs and Slovaks, as it has all the nations of the Soviet Union and the other countries the Soviet Union subjugated in its time, a legacy of countless dead, an infinite spectrum of human suffering, profound economic decline, and above all enormous human humiliation. It has brought us horrors that fortunately you have not known.”

They were horrors liberals never even acknowledged, and the left castigated those who did. In March 1983 President Ronald Reagan called the Soviet Union an “evil empire.” Refusing to admit the “disheartening” truth that freedom and America were good and communism and the Soviet Union were bad, liberals went into hysterics. For them, the ultimate “disheartening” truth is that right and wrong are not matters of opinion.

Anthony Lewis, of the New York Times, accused Reagan of applying “a black and white standard to something that is much more complex. One may regard the Soviet system as a vicious tyranny and still understand that it has not been solely responsible for the nuclear arms race.”

Even though the Soviet system was “a vicious tyranny” America, in the Lewis lexicon, was also at fault. The next inevitable step in his logic would have been to say: “If America would only refrain from agitating Moscow we could all live happily ever after.”

For liberals, the Cold War was not so much a battle between good and evil as it was about America’s paranoia over communism. They could not discuss the Cold War without giving communism a degree of undeserved legitimacy. In order to make excuses for Moscow’s resolve to subjugate half of Europe, the left devised the myth of “encirclement.” Moscow, they said, was justifiably uneasy because its empire was enclosed by NATO.

The “disheartening” truth was that the unfortunates who suffered under communism wanted to enjoy the freedom and prosperity that bordered them and they hated their communist masters.

Anxious to show that they “appreciate” all sides of every issue, no matter how outrageous or unwise, liberals often exhibit indecision. During his August 30 speech at the Republican Convention, former New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani spoke about Senator John Kerry’s inability to maintain his position on key issues.

“When Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990, John Kerry voted against the Persian Gulf War,” Giuliani said. “Later he said he actually supported the war. Then in 2002, as he was calculating his run for president, he voted for the war in Iraq. …9 months later, he voted against an $87 billion supplemental budget to fund the war… He even, at one point, declared himself an anti-war candidate. Now, he says he’s pro-war. …My point about John Kerry being inconsistent is best described in his own words when he said, ‘I actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it.’ Maybe this explains John Edwards’ need for two Americas - one where John Kerry can vote for something and another where he can vote against the same thing.”

The “disheartening” truth is Kerry does not have a policy compass that is directed by serious reflection; he has a weathervane that rotates based upon whichever way the winds of political opportunism blow. That is the politics of convenience, but convenience rarely leads to truth.

The left was deeply disheartened by the speech given by Senator Zell Miller, D-Ga., at the Republican convention. Focusing on Senator Kerry’s record, Miller pointed out that the Massachusetts liberal opposed the B-1 bomber, the B-2 bomber, the Apache helicopter and other essential weapons systems. Predictably, the left attacked Miller’s speech. Equally predictably, they could not refute his facts.

Mara Liasson, national political correspondent for NPR, merely labeled Miller’s speech “an attack against John Kerry as an individual.”

In the world of the left, stating the record is considered a personal assault.

Liberal political consultant Bob Beckel said Miller’s speech was “rabid.”

For Beckel the truth is not only “disheartening” it is also hydrophobic.

In “The Divine Comedy,” Dante makes the case that truth is knowable, even though it is often hidden by man’s foolishness and passions. Liberals, and evidently students at “the most stoned campus on Earth,” have an aversion to “disheartening” truths. They go to extreme lengths to avoid facing any truth that would shatter their unbalanced view of the world. But while we may ignore the truth, the truth will not ignore us.

Aristotle warned that the smallest initial deviation from the truth would be multiplied many times over. Once men develop policies based upon falsehoods the result of their actions will drive them further from the issues that demand their attention. If we disregard the truth today because it disheartens us, it will surely ravage and ruin us tomorrow.

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Joseph Bell has hosted a radio talk show and is a former editorial writer/columnist for several Connecticut newspapers. A former liberal Democrat, Bell has not been on the conservative side of the aisle for very long. He voted for Clinton/Gore in 1992. Abandoning the convictions that he had held and defended through adolescence and into adulthood was not easy. Sincere soul-searching and a commitment to distinguish fact from fiction compelled him to accept that liberal ideology was bankrupt.

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