Truth, Clinton, Fitzgerald, and the Dogmatist

I thought about truth while walking to get my haircut yesterday. I thought about how I use the concept of truth in my routine everyday practical affairs. The question of truth nagged me all the rest of the day, and is still on my mind this early AM as I wash a load of laundry.

I use an unsophisticated and naïve concept of truth almost unconsciously in my everyday affairs. I have a belief, make a statement based on that belief, and my statement either accords or does not with a reality that contains a matter of fact about the matter.

When I am particularly perplexed about a matter of fact, I turn to a naïve coherence theory of truth. I consider my opinion an hypothesis, try to discover how it fits with the things I know, and insert it into my belief system or not depending on its consistency with other beliefs. I modify my beliefs sometimes because I believe my hypothesis is true. I try to make my belief system consistent. This method does not work as well as the correspondence theory when I have to think on my feet and on the spur of the moment.

When correspondence and coherence fail, I turn to a naïve pragmatic theory of truth. I decide what is important for me to believe and what is not—those things to which I do or do not have an emotional attachment. I believe this is my method of last resort, but I know that this is the point where applying truth to statements and beliefs rests on dangerous ground.

I know that beyond my naïve beliefs about truth lie powerful unconscious frameworks and world views that condition what I believe. When I am confronted with a fact I find disagreeable, I tend to discard the fact rather than perform archaeology on my belief system to discover whether some of my strongly held beliefs are false in light of the new fact.

I turned on C-Span’s BookTV when I arrived home from getting my haircut. They were broadcasting live from the Texas Book Festival in Austin. Former President Clinton gave a lecture I found very interesting. I always find Bill Clinton interesting.

I thought about the press conference Patrick Fitzgerald gave the previous day on the Libby indictment while I was watching and listening to President Clinton. A reporter asked Fitzgerald whether the charges of perjury and obstruction of justice were not minor since Libby was not charged with outing Valerie Plame Wilson. Fitzgerald made it very clear that telling the truth to a grand jury was at the heart of the U. S. justice system. He commented that without the requirement for a witness to tell the truth to a grand jury, he might as well hand in his job.

That is what got President Clinton into so much trouble—lying to a grand jury. I concluded that impeachment proceedings were justified against President Clinton given Fitzgerald’s disquisition.

President Clinton concluded his presentation with a few choice words about the Religious Right. He calls them the people of the nine commandments. Golly, which commandment is missing? He said that people who did not want to take the Religious Right head on, needed to find something else to do besides politics. I was energized by the comment. I can’t wait to see how Senator Clinton will do with this strategy during her Presidential run.

The truth, in all it’s complexity, matters. There are people who firmly believe that the truth has been delivered once and for all time. Too many people feel the truth doesn’t matter if a falsehood doesn’t touch them personally.

A dogmatic and doctrinaire belief system is always accompanied by inconsistency and hypocrisy. Many people have suffered and died because certain groups want to suppress any dissent from dogmatic and inconsistent sets of beliefs. Democracy and rights are supposed to be a curative for this happening. American history is replete with abuses to both democracy and rights.

Protecting the pursuit of truth ought to get more attention in American politics than it does. Some people care about the truth; others find it odious when it doesn’t fit their need to control everyone’s lives.

It is always a good time to play good old fashioned smack down with those who think they own the world and truth. The heart of a coward and intimidator beats inside many a dogmatic soul. Running roughshod over them without remorse is often the best policy.