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SUNDAY SPECTATOR
February 9, 2003
Truth & power
One of the more irritating phrases through the last few years has been Speaking truth to power. It is what Doctor Johnson referred to as a "canting phrase" -- one which declares nothing but the speaker's own pretension to virtue and piety. "Look at me he is saying, look how wonderful I am standing at the barricades against Big Bad Bush fearlessly speaking the truth to him and shaking my fist like Beethoven!" Does he think Mr. Bush is going to send him to Guantanamo? (Only in his fevered imagination.) Does he think the Mukhabarat will throw him in a windowless cell that he'll be suspended by his feet and have his tongue cut out that members of his family will be picked up in the night and raped and murdered in his presence? (For that is what happened to more than one man who "spoke truth to power" -- in Baghdad.) It takes two sides to make a war and two sides to make a peace. You cannot "speak truth to power" only in Washington. Go then to Baghdad and shake your fist at Saddam. Or if you will not and for obvious reasons then put the fist back in its pocket. In the words of Jeremiah They have healed the hurt of the daughter of my people slightly, saying, Peace, peace; when there is no peace. How deeply that phrase strikes to the black heart of our contemporary "liberal intellectuals" in their vain strutting about the periphery of the world's stage. How telling of the mind that is freed from the shackles of humility and evacuated of religion and good faith; which meets challenge by retreat into mockery and sneering. Or am I being too harsh? It is not the speaking of truth to power but rather from power that concerns me. The freedom and good order of the world will always require this latter. I think a decent man will be much less eager to speak the truth than to hear it. As a journalist digging for information in the departments of the Bush administration I have often enough found myself asking a pointedly na?ve question -- even more for my own curiosity than from any journalistic need -- "Why do you agree to lies?" And not very sophisticated lies but lies anyone with a small amount of hard information can immediately see through. Why for instance do they allow the most astonishing untruths to pass into public information from countries such as Syria and Saudi Arabia which claim to be assisting in the struggle against terrorism when they are more obviously abetting terrorism? Why are the most outrageous bluffs from Europe not called -- such as requests for proofs of Saddam's illicit weapons programmes from the two countries whose pharmaceutical and chemical industries are his principal suppliers? In many cases the immediate tactical the "diplomatic" reason for avoiding a confrontation over fact is clear enough to see. But in almost every case a little further thinking shows that an interest of the longer term is being sacrificed to an interest of the shorter. What is the point of this? Does not this agreement to tolerate untruths even to play into the charade transfer power itself subtly but continuously from the United States to whichever power has told the biggest whopper? Would not the United States itself be in a much stronger position if in each case it said politely but firmly That is not true, according to our information. Here is as much of the truth as we can see. Granted Mr. Bush has been moving the great ship of the United States consistently in the direction of acknowledging hard truths in the time since Sept. 11th 2001. But even on a good day large parts of the CIA of the FBI of the Pentagon and especially of the State Department are working to undercut this -- and usually for motives of personal or institutional self-interest or continuity. Seldom for hard reasons of security. More than thirty years ago at the height of the Cold War Alexandr Solzhenitsyn said this to his countrymen about the relationship of truth to power: "We do not need a counter-revolution. If beginning at sunrise tomorrow everyone without exception will agree to speak only the truth for just one day by nightfall the entire Communist system will have collapsed." Now this was a genuinely provocative naivete. I believe people lie not out of a love for lies but out of personal and institutional cowardice. They can see what the casualties will be the moment they tell the truth but not beyond this. Each fears that the first victim is likely to be himself. In polite society we agree to certain conventional fictions and routine hypocrisies and these to some extent may reduce the level of violence. We tell little white lies to make people feel better -- ourselves chiefly. But even in this everyday life lies are in 99 of 100 cases quite unnecessary. There is a charming way to put it in 66 of those cases in 33 more you just smile dismissively and in the other case well I don't have all the answers. It is a mistake to confuse nations with individual people -- I have noticed that only closet totalitarians are inclined to confuse them. A person can come to a free personal decision but a State decision is imposed on everyone so that when a State tries to behave according to the "oughts" which can apply only to an individual it becomes perforce Leviathan. Notwithstanding the sheer complexity of the State's position requires a higher order of truth-telling than would be convenient in private affairs. It is more not less necessary in a free country if the electors themselves are to confront realities instead of illusions. And the power of that State rests ultimately on its transparency and truth. The U.S. won the Cold War because on balance it told the truth and on balance the Soviets told lies. It would have won it rather sooner telling something like the whole truth on all occasions. And likewise today truth remains the ultimate weapon of free men as lies are the weapons of tyrants. Truth is courage lies are cowardice and the victory is finally to the true. David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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