Americans Have Embraced A Post-Truth Society

“What is truth?” Pontius Pilate once famously asked.

Truth once mattered in America. Our most beloved president, George Washington, was revered as a man who supposedly said, “I cannot tell a lie” when confronted with the childish misdeed of chopping down a cherry tree. Abraham Lincoln, who usually ranks just beneath Washington in the pantheon of great presidents, is remembered as “Honest Abe.” In the past few decades, however, both parties have strayed from the traditional ideal to one that lionizes political figures who have what can only be called a casual acquaintance with the truth.

It is hard to say exactly when our expectations for presidential behavior went off track. Richard Nixon, one of the most infamous failed presidents, is remembered for his proclamation that “I am not a crook.” Nixon’s protest turned out not to be true, but the president’s behavior was not quickly excused or forgiven. Nixon resigned to avoid impeachment in 1974.

President Reagan may have lied about his knowledge of the Iran-Contra affair or he may have purposely kept himself in the dark to maintain plausible deniability. Either way, the Gipper’s image suffered from his end-run around Congress. Bill Clinton certainly lied about his own scandals. He was impeached for perjury, lying under oath, about his affair with Monica Lewinsky, yet Democrats rallied around Clinton and, until recently, he remained a respected elder statesman of the party.

Barack Obama is fondly remembered by Democrats as well, but is closely associated with two lies. In the most well-known example, Obama received “Lie of the Year” honors for his claim that Americans could keep their doctor under Obamacare. The second, the claim that the terror attack on the Benghazi consulate was precipitated by an anti-Muslim video, was not actually spoken by the president, but the idea was widely pushed by members of his administration, apparently with his blessing.

Since Donald Trump burst onto the scene, the situation has only gotten worse. President Trump has kept fact-checkers busy and examples of his falsehoods and exaggerations are too numerous to list here. Suffice it to say that the man who established his political bona fides by questioning Barack Obama’s birth certificate may be on track for a lifetime achievement award in addition to the “Lie of the Year” he received for his denials of Russian attacks on the 2016 election.

The penchant for lying is trickling down to infect members other elected officials. In the past week, there have been two big lies in the news that didn’t even involve the president. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) had egg on his face after claiming that the FBI did not reveal the political bias of its sources in FISA warrant applications against Carter Page, only to admit later that the information was included in a footnote. Later in the week, Ron Jonson (R-Wis.) twisted text messages between Peter Strzok and Lisa Page to claim that President Obama interfered in the investigation to Hillary’s emails. In reality, the text messages referred to Obama’s desire to be informed on the Russia investigation prior to a meeting with Vladimir Putin.

And don’t get me started on liberal lies that attempt to engineer their version of what society should be. While deriding the right as anti-science, the left makes unsupported and outlandish claims that an unborn baby is not a human or that gender is fluid and infinite. The leftist redefinition of common terms is a positively Orwellian lie.

The fact that these claims have been shown to be false won’t change the fact that many of the faithful will still believe them.  Partisans on both sides seem to have embraced the view of Obi Wan Kenobi that “many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view.”

The problem with this approach is that Kenobi’s was defending an outright lie. When he told Luke that Vader killed Anakin, Kenobi knowingly and intentionally misled his protégé and covered up the truth. It is no different when Nunes reverts his claim that the FBI omitted the required disclosure to a claim that the footnote was too vague. Likewise, the liberal claim that a baby in the womb is not a living human is nonsensical, especially considering technological advances that show what life in the womb is like.

Politicians have always lied. What seems to have changed is that voters of both parties no longer seem to care or desire to hold them accountable. Democrats excused President Obama’s lie about keeping your doctor by arguing that Obamacare helped the uninsured. Republicans excuse President Trump’s baseless claim that Trump Tower was “wiretapped” by arguing that the FBI surveilled Trump campaign members… albeit after they had left the campaign.

Information has become disinformation. News has become fake news. Both sides are so guilty that their goal is to obscure the truth rather than to reveal it. The modern goal has become to reveal only enough of the truth to skewer one’s enemies while protecting the guilty on your own team.

The truth is good, bad and sometimes ugly. While it is tempting to cover up the sins of one’s allies, the American people need to see the truth about problems and misdeeds on both sides. Neither side is pure and blameless.

“Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants,” Justice Louis Brandeis once said. People in power who operate in darkness behind closed doors tend to become corrupt. Shining the light of truth on government is the only way to protect our Republic.

It is up to American voters to insist on truth from their elected officials and stop excusing their lies and accepting a society that is, for all intents and purposes, post-truth. The post-truth age we live in is an era where what matters is twisting the facts to fit one’s preconceived beliefs and biases.

“The truth will set you free.”

Originally published on The Resurgent

When is a Christian not a Christian?

There’s an old joke about George Washington’s hatchet, the one that he allegedly used to chop down the infamous cherry tree. The story goes that a museum claimed to have Little George’s actual hatchet. It was totally authentic except for the fact that the handle and the head had been replaced.

It strikes me that some Christians are like George Washington’s hatchet. They remove and replace one doctrine with another until sooner or later they bear little resemblance to traditional Christians except in name.

A look at the Roman Road provides a quick overview of basic Christian theology. First, Romans 3:10-12, 23 makes clear that all men are inherently evil and fall short of God’s perfection. Romans 6:23 states that the penalty for our sinful failure is death. Romans 5:8 brings the good news that “while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” This sets the stage for Romans 10:9-10, 13, which explains exactly what is required to become a Christian: To “declare with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead….” Romans 5:1, as well as several verses in Romans 8, reiterate that it is this faith that our salvation is built upon.

Even this simple formula is sometimes a bit much for our modern minds. The root of the problem for many people seems to be an attempt to reconcile a belief in Christ with unbelief in any unseen, supernatural world.

We’ve been taught that seeing is believing, yet some things cannot be seen. No one can see how the world was created. There is much diversity of thought on the subject, yet Christians can expect to be ridiculed if they state their belief in Biblical creation, sometimes even by other Christians. Similarly, the story of Noah’s flood is also commonly doubted. The idea of a global flood whose only survivors were aboard the Ark seems too fanciful even for some Christians.

If we look to the Bible we can see what Jesus himself believed. For instance, in John 5:45-47 Jesus vouches for the veracity of the writings of Moses. In Exodus 20:11, Moses states that God created the earth in six days. Even more explicitly, in Matthew 19:3-6 Jesus specifically referenced the creation of Adam and Eve. In Luke 11:50-51, Jesus refers to the death of Abel, the son of Adam and Eve, in Genesis 4. In Matthew 10:15, Jesus uses the fates of Sodom and Gomorrah as a warning to towns that would reject the disciples. Jesus even held up the story of Jonah as a foreshadowing of the three days that he would spend in the grave in Matthew 12:40-41.

A close look at the teachings of Jesus in the New Testament leaves little doubt that Jesus knew and believed the stories of the Old Testament. This leaves Christians who doubt the old Bible stories in a conundrum. If Jesus is the Son of God then he is all-powerful and all-knowing. If he is all-powerful and all-knowing then he would not allude to stories that he knew to be false. If Jesus is God then the stories of the Old Testament must be true.

An alternate route is to simply throw out the verses that challenge one’s preconceptions of Jesus. A common claim is that the Gospels cannot be trusted because they were written down so long after the time of Christ. This argument ignores two facts.

The first is that the books of the Bible are not in chronological order. Many of the epistles of Paul and the disciples were put to paper years before the Gospels. Paul is believed to have been killed in AD 64, but the book of Acts closes before his death. Therefore, the year 64 would be the late date for Acts and the Gospels that preceded it. The letters, written earlier than the Gospels, share their message and teachings.

Second, contained within the books of the New Testament are early church creeds that are believed to date back to shortly after the death and resurrection of Christ. One of these creeds, found in 1 Corinthians 15:3-5, is believed to have been written down by Paul as early as AD 54. The creed would have existed in oral tradition long before that.

Skeptics of the supernatural must cut out much of the Bible to fit their worldview. Jesus also spoke about Satan (Mark 3:23), hell (Matthew 5:29-30), demons (Matthew 12:43-45), and his ultimate return as judge of the world (Matthew 24:30-31). Skeptics must choose to ignore Jesus’ teachings on all of these topics. Peter recorded a warning to such “scoffers” in 2 Peter 3:3-10.

The question is why would a believer in God not be able to believe that he would be able to create and intervene in the world. If God really is God then creation, the virgin birth, the resurrection, and all of the other stories of supernatural intervention are not hard to believe. If they are unbelievable, then do we really believe in God?

Becoming a discerning internet user

Anyone who has spent any time on the internet knows that there are an abundance of fraudulent claims, hoaxes, and conspiracies. Cartersville, Ga. was the centerpiece of a 2008 hoax about rigged gas pumps and countless Georgians have received variations of the Nigerian email scam. The proliferation of such lies means that internet users need to learn how to separate fact from fantasy.

There are steps that that internet users can take to become more discerning about the information available on the internet. The first and most obvious step is to distinguish between trustworthy and unreliable websites. When looking for factual information, be leery of blogs and other websites that do not meet journalistic standards.

Wikipedia is a popular online encyclopedia site, but its articles can be edited by users. There have been several cases of false or unreliable information on Wikipedia. Wikipedia can be useful for an overview of a topic, but information found there should be verified elsewhere. Fortunately, Wikipedia entries are often footnoted with links to the source information.

Other websites have no such saving graces. World Net Daily is a news website that is less than credible. It is associated with a wide range of conspiracy theories including questioning Barack Obama’s birth certificate. The websites of Alex Jones, Infowars and Prison Planet, are notorious for propagating outlandish conspiracies on topics from 9/11 to UFOs. Documentaries posted on Youtube or other internet sites should also be treated with skepticism unless the creator of the piece can be determined to be credible. Articles by mainstream political groups and politicians may be so slanted that the truth is barely recognizable.

As a general rule, information should not be believed unless it can be independently verified by more than one source. In many cases, this can take a little searching. Sometimes this can be accomplished by following links in the article to the source. In other cases, it will involve using an online search engine such as Google or Bing.

Internet users should hone their innate BS detectors. If something sounds either too good or too outlandish to be true, it probably is. Atlanta consumer talk show host Clark Howard offers a list of resources for use in cases of suspected financial fraud. For internet rumors and conspiracies, there are several resources as well. The most famous of these is Snopes.com, but the Urban Legends page on About.com and Hoaxbusters.org are recommended as well. Politifact and Factcheck are good resources for political claims, but both of these sites sometimes lean left.

Even on reliable sites, it is important to distinguish between commentary and factual reporting. For example, the Atlanta Journal is usually considered to be a fairly reliable source, but its columnists and bloggers merely state their opinions. Therefore, news items from AJC.com can generally be trusted. On the contrary, statements by its famously left wing editorial writer Cynthia Tucker (who recently left to teach journalism at UGA) should be taken with a grain of salt.

Another clue that a website is unreliable is a fixation on how one group is conspiring for nefarious purposes. This could include racial groups, religious believers, corporations, or the government. Jews, Catholics, and Freemasons are favorite targets of conpiricists. The Illuminati, the Bilderbergers, UFOs, the United Nations, and a shadow U.S. and world government are also frequent topics on conspiracy sites.

In one recent example, the Atlanta Conservative Examiner was sent a link that purported to show recently unclassified National Security Agency documents detailing how extraterrestrial messages were decoded by government cryptologists. These documents immediately set off the BS detector because of the incredible claim that aliens had contacted Earth and that the government had decoded their message, published it on the internet, and all this had somehow been missed by the major news outlets. Googling the author of the report and the report’s title yielded only links that referred back to the original source document as proof of alien contact. Snopes and the debunker sites had no information.

Finally, an article on Open Minds (admittedly not a first tier site when it comes to credibility) was found several pages into the search results. It detailed how the messages were part of an NSA cryptology exercise from the 1960’s. As Sherlock Holmes said, “When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”

Don’t believe everything you read. Use common sense and look for verification from objective, reliable sources.

 

Read this article on Examiner.com:  http://www.examiner.com/conservative-in-atlanta/becoming-a-discerining-internet-user

Photo credit:  Stuart Miles/ http://www.freedigitalphotos.net

The truth about the September 11 attacks

As the U.S. approaches the tenth anniversary of the attacks on September 11, 2001, it is time to put to rest the myriad of conspiracy theories that have surrounded both the attacks and the U.S. response. Radicals from both the extreme right and left have sought to propagate these theories in order to further their own aims. Not coincidentally, many of these conpiricists have also made handsome profits from books and films that purport to dispel the lies about 9/11.

The attacks, which were the worst attack on U.S. soil since Pearl Harbor, resulted in the deaths of 2,996 people. Several Georgians were also killed in the attacks. Maynard Spence of Douglasville, Harshad Thatte of Norcross, Adam White of Atlanta, and Claude Michael Gann of Roswell died in the World Trade Center. Leslie Whittington of Atlanta died when American Airlines Flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon. U.S. Army Maj. Steve Long of Georgia died in the Pentagon.

Five years after the attacks, Popular Mechanics released a definitive analysis of many of the conspiracy claims. Much of the information in the book “Debunking 9/11 Myths: Why Conspiracy Theories Can't Stand Up To Hard Facts” is now available for free online at PopularMechanics.com. The website 911myths.com also debunks many of the conspiracy theories around the attacks.

The Popular Mechanics report notes that only 14 American fighter planes were on alert in the 48 contiguous states on the morning of September 11. Further, intercepts of civilian aircraft were not common for air defense fighters. In the decade before the attacks, the one and only civilian aircraft intercepted by fighters in U.S. airspace was the Learjet carrying golfer Payne Stewart, which flew uncontrolled from Florida to South Dakota before crashing after the cabin depressurized. PM reports that it took an F-16 one hour and 22 minutes to make the intercept.

In answer to the skeptics’ claim that the damage to the World Trade Center buildings was too widespread to be caused by a single aircraft strike on each tower, PM responds that thousands of pounds of jet fuel atomized on impact and traveled throughout the buildings. The burning fuel spread flames through elevator and utility shafts. Flames reportedly exploded through the elevator doors in the lobby moments after impact. The 1500 degree flames from burning jet fuel was not strong enough melt steel, but it did reduce the steel frames of the towers to about ten percent of their normal strength.

PM notes that at least one conspiracy site cropped seismology charts to support the notion that controlled demolitions toppled the towers. The full charts clearly show the impacts of both aircraft followed by the collapse of the towers. Extensive damage to surrounding buildings also lends credence to the fact that the collapse of the towers was a chaotic, catastrophic event.

Conspiracy theorists have charged that the Pentagon was hit by a missile rather than an airplane, citing the small size of the hole in the wall. PM points out that both wings of the aircraft were sheared off by the impact and that the 75 foot wide hole that is consistent with the size of the airliner’s fuselage. A separate 12 foot hole was likely made by the landing gear.

In contrast with conspiracy claims that no aircraft wreckage was recovered at the Pentagon, there are both photos and eyewitness accounts of

aircraft wreckage. Allyn Kilsheimer, a structural engineer and blast expert who arrived on scene shortly after the crash, is quoted in the PM article, “I picked up parts of the plane with the airline markings on them. I held in my hand the tail section of the plane, and I found the black box. I held parts of uniforms from crew members in my hands, including body parts. Okay?"

In Pennsylvania, where United Flight 93 crashed, a white jet reported in the area is revealed to be a business jet that was descending into nearby Johnstown. Air traffic control asked the jet’s pilots to investigate Flight 93 and they subsequently orbited the crash site at 1500 feet.

PM reports that the debris pattern of the Flight 93 crash site is consistent with a surface impact given the flight path and wind direction at the time of the crash. Lighter debris was thrown up and carried downwind for several miles. Similarly, an engine was found 300 yards downrange. This is consistent with the mass and velocity of the engine at impact.

Reports on a conspiracy radio show that claimed an F-16 pilot shot the airliner down were revealed to be lies. Ed Jacoby, director of the New York State Emergency Management Office, was with the pilot reported to have fired the missiles at Flight 93. The F-16 and pilot were tasked to return Jacoby from a meeting in Montana to Albany, N.Y. where he could coordinate the emergency services response to the attacks. Jacoby categorically denies that the pilot, Lt. Col. Rick Gibney, shot down Flight 93.

An examination of the timing of the attacks backs up Jacoby’s story. The North Dakota Air National Guard operated F-16Bs. The straight-line distance between Bozeman, Mt. and Albany, N.Y. is 1,857 miles. Using the fighter’s top speed listed on the plane’s Air Force fact sheet, 1,345 mph, the trip would take less than an hour and a half, which would barely give Gibney time to get in position to shoot down Flight 93 at 10:03 a.m. if he took off from Bozeman immediately after American Flight 11 crashed into the WTC at 8:46 a.m. Eastern Time. But, according to the Air Force, the F-16B’s range is only 1,407 miles and that range could only be achieved by flying at slower speeds. It is likely that Gibney had to rendezvous with an aerial tanker, which would further slow down the flight to Albany. It is also highly unlikely that Gibney was ready to launch immediately after the first WTC attack. In fact, Gibney first had to fly from his base at Fargo, N.D. to Bozeman to pick up Jacoby. There is simply no way he could have been over Pennsylvania in time to shoot down Flight 93.

Logically, the conspiracy theories do not add up. An obvious reason is that the government and the military were clearly caught by surprise. According to the official timeline on National911Memorial.org, President Bush, who was visiting students at a Florida elementary school, was notified that a plane had crashed into the WTC at 8:50 a.m., four minutes after American Flight 11, the first hijacked airliner, had crashed. United Flight 175 crashed at 9:03 a.m. and the president was notified two minutes later.

The Secret Service did not evacuate Vice President Cheney from the White House to a secure bunker until 9:30, one minute before American Flight 77 hit the Pentagon. The nationwide ground stop for all flights was issued at 9:42 a.m. and the White House and Capitol were evacuated at 9:45, an hour after the attacks began. The last commercial flight in U.S. airspace did not land until 12:16 p.m.

In the years after the attacks, President Bush faced much criticism for his slow reaction to the attacks. If the U.S. government were complicit in the attacks, the reaction of all levels of government, including President Bush, would have been much more swift and certain. When the president left Florida aboard Air Force One, he was taken to Offutt AFB in Nebraska after a stop in Louisiana. The president’s location was kept secret for much of the day due to an anonymous phone call that was interpreted as a threat against Air Force One. President Bush did not make his memorable address to the nation until later that night.

Equally illogical is the culprit behind the 9/11 attacks. If, as some charge, the attacks were a smokescreen to justify an invasion of Iraq, then why implicate Osama bin Laden, a Saudi exile that few had ever heard of, and the Afghan Taliban? If Iraq were truly the target of the conspirators, it seems that the evidence would have pointed toward Saddam Hussein, a known supporter of terrorists. As it was, the invasion of Iraq did not take place until March 19, 2003, a year and a half after September 11.

Finally, 9/11 conspiracy theories can be compared to a real government conspiracy, Operation Fast and Furious. Fast and Furious was an operation carried out by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, ostensibly to track the smuggling of weapons to Mexico. In reality, ATF allowed criminals to make “straw purchases” of thousands of weapons, which were then taken to Mexico where ATF lost the trail. Weapons from the program were used to murder a U.S. Border Patrol agent in December 2010.

In contrast with 9/11 conspiracies, there is ample evidence of the government’s culpability in Fast and Furious. Whistleblowers came forward almost immediately and a congressional investigation was begun. If government workers objected to the cover-up of one death in Fast and Furious enough to risk their jobs to bring out the truth, it is likely that a conspiracy large enough to cover-up the hijackings of four airliners and that resulted in the deaths of thousands of innocent civilians would also generate a large number of whistleblowers seeking justice. No whistleblowers have come forward and investigations are limited to members of the political fringe such as professional conspiracy monger Alex Jones and Cynthia McKinney, a former Georgia congresswoman turned Green Party presidential candidate who is perhaps best remembered for striking a U.S. Capitol police officer.

In truth, there was a conspiracy around the September 11 attacks. It was conspiracy between Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda terrorists. The

very date of the attacks, September 11, is prominent in Muslim history as the anniversary of a catastrophic defeat of the Turks outside the gates of Vienna, Austria in 1683. The defeat ended Turkish dreams of controlling Europe and marked the beginning of the decline of the Ottoman Empire. Bin Laden and his zealots hoped that September 11, 2001 would be the beginning of an Islamic jihad to throw Americans and other westerners out of Muslim lands as a first step in establishing a worldwide Islamic caliphate.

 

Note:  With the exception of the 9/11 memorial engraving, the photos are from the September 11, 2001 Attacks collection on Wikimedia.org.

 

Read this article on Examiner.com

http://www.examiner.com/conservative-in-atlanta/the-truth-about-the-september-11-attacks

 

 

Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth

The inconvenient truth is that Al Gore's movie is way off base. The film has lost enough of its credibility that a British court recently ruled that it cannot be shown in schools without a disclaimer detailing its political bias.

The most damning scientific flaw in Gore's movie is his claim that of a link between global temperatures and carbon dioxide levels. There is a link, but, unfortunately for Gore's believers, it is not as he suggests. In truth, increased carbon dioxide levels come about 800 years after increases in temperature. If the temperature changes first, then how can CO2 be the cause of the temperature change?

In fact, carbon dioxide isn't even the most prevalent greenhouse gas in our atmosphere. Water vapor actually causes from 36-70% of the earth's greenhouse effect.

Gore's claims that the earth is hotter than ever before also do not bear scrutiny. Environmentalists have cited NASA data that showed that 1998 was the warmest year on record, but that was recently revealed to be untrue. Steven McIntyre, of the Climateaudit blog, determined that NASA's algorithm used to determine the hottest year had been corrupted by the Y2K bug. NASA corrected their figures (without a press release of any kind) and 1934 is now officially the hottest year on record. Five of the ten hottest years are now known to be before WWII.

Further giving lie to Gore's claims is the Medieval Warm Period. The Medieval Warm Period occurred from AD 800-1300. In this era, the glaciers shrank enough that the Vikings were able cultivate parts of Greenland. Parts of North America suffered severe droughts. Radiocarbon dating from the Sargasso Sea showed sea temperatures 1 degree celsius warmer than today. Alaska has been through three separate warm periods in the last two thousand years.
Following the Medieval Warm Period, the world entered the Little Ice Age. During the Little Ice Age, the Sargasso Sea was about 1 degree celsius cooler than today. This ice age lasted until the middle of the 19th century when the world entered a warming cycle, which we are still in today.
Gore also ignores the scientific advances of the last fifty years. Certainly there are more cars and factories operating today than in past decades, but today's technology makes them burn more cleanly than the fewer cars of old.

If man made carbon dioxide emissions are not causing the earth's warming, then what is? The answer may be the sun. A 2001 article in Nature describes the relationship between the sun and the ratio of oxygen-18 to the more common oxygen-16 molecule. Over a period of 3000 years, the authors of the study found a direct correlation between the intensity of cosmic rays striking the earth's atmosphere and the earth's temperature (http://www.hillsdale.edu/news/imprimis/archive/issu e.asp?year=2007&month=08). It would seem that the sun is responsible for the cyclical heating and cooling of the earth's climate.

When considering climate change, ask yourself several questions. Based on what we can see locally, the earth is getting warmer, but is it a true global change? Data from surfacestations.org casts doubts on data from improperly located automated weather stations. Stations located in urban areas may falsely report higher than actual temperatures.

If so, is the warming caused by man? As stated earlier, carbon dioxide cannot cause temperature change because carbon dioxide levels change 800 years after the temperature.

If so, is it reversible? Even if global warming were caused by man, it is highly unlikely that the whole world would agree to the draconian cuts on CO2 emissions that Gore and the environmentalists want. The US is not the problem. China and other developing countries have lax environmental standards and are set to pass the US in CO2 emissions in the next few years.

Is global warming bad? The earth is constantly changing. Warm periods in our history have typically been prosperous due to longer growing seasons for crops and require less energy for heating homes. Some areas would benefit and some would not. Even the UN report on climate change does not support the more hysterical environmental claims of catastrophe. Even if all of the ice caps melted, for instance, sea levels would rise less than two feet. Rising seas would not flood all low lying areas as Gore and company claim.

Finally, if the environmentalists are so concerned about greenhouse gas emissions, then why don't they support nuclear power? The French have proved that nuclear power can be a safe, clean, cheap source of electricity. Why not promote its use worldwide as an alternative to carbon based sources of energy?

The jury is still out, but the science used by the environmentalists is seriously in question. It is always a good idea care for the environment, but not at the cost of destroying our economy.