This is actually one of the easier things to get hold of. The divide here is between Progressives who don’t believe in objective truth, and Conservatives who do.
Donald Trump caused a bit of a ruckus during the recent GOP debate when he opined that former President Bush lied to get us into Iraq. This, of course, was a standard talking-point of the left – “Bush lied, people died”. A host of reasons were put forth for just why President Bush lied, but the absolute assertion, regardless of reason, is that he lied. A lie, of course, is this: a deliberate misstatement of fact, or a withholding of vital information about your plans. If you believe that Fred is at the store, but Fred is actually at the bar, then you making a statement that Fred is at the store isn’t a lie. If, however, you know that Fred is at the bar and you tell someone he’s at the store, then you have lied. The difference is not in the information related but in the intent on your part – are you trying to deceive someone? If you are, then you are lying. If you aren’t, then you aren’t lying even if the facts you relate are 100% incorrect. If you say you want to borrow $100 and imply that the $100 will be to feed the kids, but you blow $50 of it at the track, then you have also lied – you failed to tell your lender just what your full plans were; and revelation of a trip to the track might well have convinced your lender not to lend you the money.
As regards President Bush, there is zero evidence that he lied. You can reasonably believe that Iraq was a horrific mistake. You can believe it was the dumbest decision ever made the leader of any nation in human history – but you’ve got no evidence that Bush, when he made his case for war, was telling people something which he knew to be false at the time he said it. To believe President Bush a liar you have to completely discard everything that happened vis a vis Iraq and the United Stats from 1991 until 2003 – and also lay aside statement after statement by people other than Bush which supported Bush’s contentions prior to Bush’s invasion of Iraq. If Bush lied to get us into Iraq, then he was joined in his lie by gigantic numbers of people, some of whom had very different agendas from President Bush.
But none of that mattered to our Progressives and the fundamental reason for this is that Progressives don’t believe in truth, anyways. You can look it up yourself, if you’ve a mind to and aren’t already familiar with it. Progressives believe that truth is subjective, not objective. This is why we see Progressive Social Justice Warriors claiming, with a straight face, that if they feel they are being oppressed, then they are being oppressed, regardless of the facts of the case. The facts don’t matter – all that matters is how Progressives subjectively view the matter…and, naturally, the Progressive view is always going to be that the Progressive is right and the non-Progressive is wrong. Bush was wrong to get us into Iraq, went the Progressive view, and so it was right to condemn him for it – and if the condemnation required spreading outright falsehoods about President Bush then that was ok.
The problem with this, of course, is that if people are allowed to use falsehood to decide or influence policy, then the policies so decided will be wrong. Understand this – there is no such thing as a “white lie”. There is truth and there is lies and never the twain shall meet…and if you add even the slightest bit of falsehood into an otherwise true statement then it doesn’t become partially true; it becomes entirely false. It is like a mathematical equation, in a sense – you can have your entire equation worked out to a nicety, but if one part of it works out to 1 + 1 = 3, then everything else in the equation will be wrong. What is quite wrong with a lot of how we do things is that we have allowed Progressives to insert bits of falsehood here, there and everywhere – and we let it slide, because we don’t want to fight those particular battles.
Telling the truth can be hard – the truth is often the last thing a person wants to hear. And this goes for plenty of people on the right, as well. We only need see the people who have fallen for the Trump phenomena for poof of this…from what I can gather, in spite of zero evidence to back it up, people have allowed themselves to believe that Trump will some how Make America Great Again…and grand phrase which anyone can fill with whatever mental content they desire (Trump is an excellent advertiser). But what made America great? What steps do we take to get from current non-Great to Great status? These questions are left hanging by Trump because to answer them would call into question his slogan, and that would be disastrous for him. He’s seeking the broadest appeal possible – details would cloud that…just as they would have clouded “Hope and Change” back in 2008. But understand this, just as Obama was de-facto lying to us with Hope and Change, so Trump is very possibly lying to us about Make America Great Again – remember, lying isn’t just saying something that is untrue, it is also leaving out crucial facts from the case which, if revealed, would change people’s view of what you propose. Had Obama run on what Hope and Change actually is, he’d be a Senate back-bencher to this day…if Trump gets elected we might find that by 2019 his plans for Making America Great Again didn’t fit what we thought it would be…and his failure to tell us, now, just what he has in mind would work out to a falsehood in 2016 (and that millions were willing dupes would not in any way relieve Trump of his personal responsibility in the matter…just as the millions of dupes who fell for Hope and Change don’t excuse Obama for not coming entirely clean with us in 2008).
And telling the truth is especially hard when most of the organs of power in the United States are dedicated to obscuring the truth. Our Ruling Class; the MSM; popular culture…all dedicated to making sure that the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth is the rarest of rare birds. But, still, if we want to be Conservative then we have to tell the truth. In the end, I believe that if we do so then the catastrophic defeats we’d suffer for telling the truth will rebound to our credit. This whole system built on falsehood is falling apart – eventually it goes crash. Those who were standing on truth all along will be those the people turn to for redress.
Blogs For Victory 
Mark, you give an excellent description of the difference between a lie and a mistake, but that is a distinction that only matters to people who care that there even IS a distinction. The Left does not care, because they assume the right to merely declare what is “true” regardless of how it may, or may not, relate to reality.
Just look at what the Left has chosen to accept as “true”. That is, as not a lie. They have chosen to accept the lie that an unborn child is not a human being. They have chosen to believe that one can choose his or her gender. They have chosen to believe that one can choose his or her race or ethnic identity, regardless of actual heredity. They have chosen to believe that Michael Brown was a “gentle giant” shot down in cold blood as he held his hands up in surrender. They have chosen to believe that this is a nation of racists. They have chosen to believe that the 40 year history of Hillary Clinton lying and breaking law after law is nothing but a “vast right wing conspiracy”. They have chosen to believe that socialism is not only a practical and reasonable form of governance but that it is pure and noble, not tainted by an unwavering history of failure, brutality and murder.
When you look at the incredibly long list of lies the Left has CHOSEN to believe, flying in the face of fact and documentation and evidence and testimony and absolute fact, you can’t come to any conclusion but the most obvious—that to be part of the Left one has to be comfortable living in, promoting and defending lies.
This is why I have contempt for the Left. Yes, much of my contempt is based on the sheer nastiness of the Left, such as what gets dumped on this blog every now and then when the trolls have some group spasm calling for expelling some of their mental excrement. Knowing they have their own little Lefty sites where they can nestle together in some kind of group hatefest, their obsession with coming here just proves that they can’t even stand each other, and have to get some fresh air by coming over into the light. Unfortunately they can’t just lurk and read and ponder and see how decent people act and think, because they are ruled by their pathologies and are compelled to spew no matter where they are.
But the real scorn comes from knowing that they not only lie, they despise the truth. Truth, to a Lefty, is like sunshine to a vampire. And the more truth they are faced with, the louder they screech that it is those who tell the truth who are the liars. The louder they squeal, the more I know they have been stung.
You can explain the difference between a lie and a mistake every day, all day, but you know what? They don’t care. They simply don’t care. To a Lefty, truth is anything he can hurl at a conservative, the uglier and nastier the better, and a lie is anything that might give him a reflection of how low he has sunk in his mindless pursuit of hatred and spite.
The universe is Conservative – whether by Design or by Accident, the way it works is based upon cold, hard facts…and if you ignore those facts, you’re bound to get into trouble.
And you’re right about the nastiness of the left over this – they oh, so much want the universe to work their way. The universe is, of course, an unsatisfactory arrangement…not least of all because we die. Christians, of course, have an answer for this – the universe is warped, by us, and only by getting back into right relationship with the Creator of the Universe can things be set straight. But this requires patience, sacrifice – fundamentally, a willingness to put the self aside…which is the last thing a Progressive wants to do because Self is the Most Important Thing in the Universe (Solzhenitsyn put it that there are as many centers of the universe as there are people).
Progressives are ever about making Heaven on Earth – but the trick can’t be done. Heaven isn’t here – just hints of it; sign posts, as it were, directing us towards home.
“If you like your insurance you can keep your insurance. Period.”
“Hands up don’t shoot.”
“ISIL is contained.”
It is so amazing the what the weak minded proggies will accept as truth, despite evidence to the contrary.
Just am FYI—-” ISIS stands for Islamic State in Iraq and Syria because the group’s territory straddles the border between the two counties. ISIL stands for Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant.”
In other words, by using “ISIL” you are including Israel as a terrorist nation. When Obama switched from “ISIS” to “ISIL” I thought it indicated an effort to categorize Israel’s defenses against Muslim attacks as terrorism.
“The Left” is not a homogeneous group, all of a mind. There is the upper tier, which is truly ideological. These people study Marx and Lenin, they love the ideology, and they believe in it. When I say “upper tier” I don’t necessarily mean the richest or most powerful, just those who are True Believers. They lie, they cheat, they steal, they victimize, but it is OK because it is For The Cause. Lying for them is just another tool they need to use to accomplish what they want.
With some overlap is the group that recognizes the fact that when a small group rules a large group and can impose its own laws, rules and values, that small group can live quite large indeed. Some of these are also True Believers, some are just opportunists. But when we look at those who have been leaders of Socialist or Communist countries, we see people who have accumulated vast wealth merely because of their positions. These people are inherently dishonest. They lie, they cheat, they steal, they victimize, for personal enrichment. Lying for them is just another tool they need to use to accomplish what they want.
The next group are the surly, the hostile, those whose attitudes would have been (and probably have been) identified as personality disorders, who have been recruited by the Left. Here their pathologies are validated, here they are told that seething resentment and hatred and wanting bad things to happen to other people are really signs of great intellect and worth. The Left offers a home to these social misfits, and tells them that what the rest of society finds distasteful is exactly what makes them so special. On the Left, as they go out into the world to vent their resentments and voice their hatreds and threaten those who represent an Other to them, they are welcomed and praised. The Left whips them up into mindless fury, identifies an Other, gives it a name (conservative, right-wing, etc.) and sends them out to harass and annoy. This is the group that gets the most enjoyment, the most emotional reward from lying. These are the Rustys and the mersaults.
But the largest group consists of the well-meaning but ignorant. These are people who, for example, think abortion is wrong but it should be allowed to anyone because it should be a “choice” that somehow represents empowerment of women. These are people who feel sorry for those who have less but fall for the shortsighted “solution” of “just give them what they don’t have”. These are people who can’t be bothered with the heavy lifting of thinking, of analysis, to be able to understand why what FEELS right simply will not work. These are people who want to do the right thing, but who act on emotion rather than thought, whose thinking stops at the point where giving away Other Peoples’ Stuff feels “fair”. These are people who only want the quickest “solution” to any perceived problem, who can’t be bothered with actually thinking through to the consequences of that quick “solution”.
They are not bad people. They are, for the most part, good people. They are just easily led. They take the easy way out. It makes them feel good to believe in people they think of as being “on their side” so they do, even in the face of mountains of proof that they should not. It makes them feel strong to disbelieve those they are told, by those they have chosen to believe, that the Other is lying—“See, I am not an easily led sheep, I don’t believe what that _______ says!” Any person or party that makes life easier for them, intellectually speaking, will have their allegiance—and their vote. So if there is an entity that identifies an Other, cloaks it in enough negativity to stir up an emotional response against it, and then offers an alternative that feels better, these people will happily follow along. They don’t purposely lie, they just lack the courage to face the truth when it is in conflict with something they prefer to believe. Casper, for example, is one of these sheeple.
And these are the people whose votes elect presidents.
200 years ago Great Thinkers demanded a government run on rational lines with no reference to Christian morality…well, any Socialist government out there is just that…except that when you divorce Reason from it’s source (God) all you get is rationalization of greed, envy, cruelty, etc. All Lenin ever amounted to was being an opportunist with an astonishing genius for rationalizing his opportunism; he certainly wanted the old system torn down, but what replaced it was just Lenin and whatever he wanted at the moment…and Lenin, being Lenin, was always able to twist things to suit himself…and in such a brazen manner that dimwits never saw the deception while more honest (but weak-willed) men were too astonished to shout out “liar” when he did it.
Sound familiar? Of course it does – because everyone who is Progressive to one extent or another does the same thing. To put on the softest side of Progressivism, let’s look at Bernie. As the Nevada Democrat Caucus is just a few days away, we’re bombarded by Hillary and Bernie ads…the Hillary ads, because they include Hillary talking, are immediately shut off…but the Bernie ads are quite good. He must have some cracker-jack people working in his advertising department. Filled with warm, American imagery (veterans, families, people at work, etc), we get Bernie’s softest voice saying we can fight The Power…and provide free healthcare for all, free college education for all, equal pay for women and a higher minimum wage. Not even the slightest mention of how this is to be paid for, nor an explanation of how he’ll equalize pay between men and women when it is already illegal to pay women less than men. This isn’t, however, Socialism – not as Marx or any Socialist ever envisioned it. It is just promising to bribe the Proles with Capitalist money. It is a way to power, and nothing more. It is a lie.
We’re getting those Bernie ads here in Colorado, which constantly mention that he is a father and grandfather. Well, gee, if that is a criterion, then a few million men are qualified to be president. Every time I hear this I wonder just what demographic is going to be swayed by this.
And then I remember seeing the Sanders supporters and I understand—-they just LIKE him, dammit, and that’s what matters! He says things that make them happy, he is against things that they think make them mad though they can’t be bothered to actually learn anything about them, and he makes them feel safe. He is fatherly, he is grandfatherly, and he says he will pat them on the head, tell them they are special, give them trophies for participating, give trophies for those who don’t participate so they don’t feel bad, he will make the bad guys get off the lawn, and he will wrap them in a paternal cocoon where they don’t even have to buy their own onesies and can play all day on the computers someone else has paid for—what’s not to like?
Seeing the same out here – though the latest, seen today, is Bernie just promising the Moon…Hillary’s ad, though, really caught my eye: in the general, the last thing Hillary wants is for the label “Progressive” to be attached to her campaign…but, feeling the Bern, her latest ad is, essentially, “I’m a Progressive in favor of SSM, dammit!”.
Take a look at the guy who wants to be in charge of what happens with YOUR money:
http://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/bernie-sanders-the-bum-who-wants-your-money
He is, however, quite a role model for young wannabe bums, never really earning much of anything, mooching off others, till he got into the Senate and started mooching off the government. Even now, with his hefty Senate salary, he has no assets but a boatload of credit card debt.
Let that sink in for a moment: CREDIT CARD DEBT. That is, spending money you don’t have. In other words, a true socialist. I’m waiting for him to run on a platform of forgiving credit card debt.
And, it appears, he has never had a marketable skill. No wonder he wants skilled labor wages for people who have no skills.
The ever fair and Democratic party is not democratic at all. Just look at the count of delegates following a virtual tie and a complete blowout in the first two States for Bernie Sanders. Hilary got most in the caucuses because of coin tosses but there is no explanation for the great loss.
Current delegate count;
Sanders: 44
Clinton: 394
But how can this be? Super-Delegates. The cream of the crop of the Demmicrat party.
Remember this every time you hear “One person, one vote” out of them hypocrites.
The difference between Left and Right goes well beyond the use of the truth as an arbitrary tool. As Matt Walsh pointed out in the piece I linked to in the previous thread, the tendency of the Left is to celebrate evil and attack good, while the tendency of the Right is to celebrate good and attack evil. That’s not to say that a Liberal doesn’t occasionally perform a noble act or that Conservatives don’t occasionally do despicable things, but those are the exceptions rather than the rule.
Once again – divorced from Reason, all we get is Rationalization. It’s funny to see Progressives argue against God because God is the source of the Reason they are trying to use to prove there is no God! It just doesn’t work. But outside of laughs like that, we do get the celebration of evil because, once again, if you aren’t tuned in to Reason, you’ll rationalize your desires…and the unfortunate side affect of that is that your desires will become ever more base, and your rationalizations more shrieking and hate filled.
Another blinding flash of light to illuminate another beloved Lefty lie: emphasis mine
“New Montana Ant Species Emerge From 46-Million-Year-Old Rock
Smithsonian Science News, 1/8/16
Researchers have discovered a 46-million year old queen ant species in a fossil found along the middle fork of the Flathead River in Montana. This winged female ant is the only known member of her species. Her discovery is raising eyebrows among scientists who study ants because they believed living ants evolved more recently. This discovery proves that ants have been around much longer than previously believed. Crematogaster aurora is one of 12 new prehistoric ant species discovered in Kishenehn Formation shale in northwestern Montana by Dale Greenwalt, a paleontologist at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History and ant expert J.S. LaPolla of Towson University in Maryland. All 12 represent species new to science, known only from the locality in Montana. All are long extinct yet some represent genera that still exist. It is speculated that higher temperature climate change 46 million years ago led to the diversification, evolution and appearance of many new species of flowering plants. In the early Eocene it was as much as 15 degrees Celsius warmer worldwide than it is today. By comparing Kishenehn ant species and genera with other North American Eocene fossil deposits such as the Green River Deposit along the Green River in Colorado, Wyoming, and Utah (48 million years old) and the Florissant Formation in Colorado (34 million years old) scientists can gradually piece together the abundance and distribution of North American ants during this period. “
Damned Smithsonian deniers! They should be prosecuted and put in prison! Where are the Thought Police when you need them?
In the early Eocene it was as much as 15 degrees Celsius warmer worldwide than it is today.
That can’t possibly be true. We are constantly told by climate alarmists today that the current temperature is the highest on record, and a projected 3-5 degree increase from present will mean the end of the world as we know it, A temperature 15 degrees higher than today would have ended the world 46 million years ago. Something doesn’t compute. Must be the new, Common Core math.
As the saying goes…
“Don’t tell me about Global Warming just let me know if I am going to have 4″ of climate change in my driveway tomorrow.”
Some of you folks are going to have to adjust upwards for your region.
It is good to see you back, DB—where you been?
I did have 4″ of climate change in my driveway, before it climate changed to 6. Then it climate changed to water. It’s hard to keep up with what to deny………..
Fortunately we have The Donald and The Bern and Hookers for Hillary and a whole circus to distract us from climate change. There is some goofball who insists that Cruz wants to have a national religion, because he says (correctly) that the Constitution says nothing about a “separation of church and state”. Yes, this ignorance will not keep her from voting.
On a lighter note.
All perfectly legal out here in Nevada – bit of a funny story; my father-in-law who lives in Pahrump was invited to a toy drive a couple Christmasses ago and, being a generous sort of man, he decided to participate…it was at a whore house! He had no idea beforehand…and, I guess, neither did anyone else. Pretty much the entirety of his parish was there.
It was all good – the girls were dressed respectfully and it was all about the kids, anyway. He got to donate and they cooked up a good meal for all and sundry.