Civility's Biggest Challenge: The Truth

Political campaigns, candidates, and the media used to have respect for truth. Otherwise, they'd be shamed and lose credibility, votes, and their audience. What happened?

Truth is always the first casualty in politics.

At the beginning of our now-diminishing democracy - a government of, for, and by the people, as Abraham Lincoln famously uttered - a free press (media) emerged before our republic’s founding to help people ascertain fact from fiction. Free and fair, if contentious, elections helped arbitrate things, and we moved along until the next one.

There was even a respite between elections. Those were the days.

On September 17th, 1787, as the Constitutional Convention concluded, Benjamin Franklin was worried that our form of government—“a Republic, if you can keep it”—might devolve into despotism driven by corruption.

A mob doesn’t define truth.

More about that later, but Franklin was right. Sadly and alarmingly, the institutions referenced above and many more are under attack and eroding before our eyes. Few Americans trust Congress and the presidency; even the ultimate arbiters of our law, the courts, are taking hits. Faith in our media and even our elections has descended to all-time lows. We’re playing a football game without timeouts, refs, and frequently ignored or conveniently invented rules. It is no wonder that so many are turned off by the spectacle and refuse to play. They do so at great risk.

This erosion of faith and trust has cancerous consequences for our relationships with family and neighbors, our ability to address (if not solve) problems, and the ultimate victim: truth.

As a young news reporter during and after college, right after the Watergate scandal altered the profession, my mission remains seared in my brain - a relentless pursuit of truth, no matter where the chips fell or where paths led. Done right, it’s not an easy profession. Just ask Don Bolles, an Arizona Republic reporter who investigated real estate corruption in Arizona in 1976.

Even as my career moved from journalism to activism, working in dozens of political campaigns nationwide from the late 1970s to the early 1990s and beyond, respect for truth undergirded our advocacy and debate prep. The last thing we wanted to be accused of was a lie, and our respect for truth and earning voters and the media’s trust were necessary guardrails on everything we did and said.

Both sides tried to respect those guardrails even in the most contentious confrontations and debates. We knew that independent arbiters—often the media—would hold us to account if we didn't. We had knock-down drag-outs with each other and the media reporting events. We let the voters ascertain truth from fiction. We held free and fair elections and moved on.

Occasionally, I go back and watch debates from past presidential campaigns. Candidates were often, if not always, held to account for statements that didn’t ring true or were patently false, such as President Gerald Ford’s infamous “there is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe” quote, when in fact, it very much was. Soviet troops and weapons were garrisoned throughout Warsaw Pact nations. It may not have cost Ford in a very close election - Watergate and his pardon of Richard Nixon were more impactful - but it still hurt.

It was also true that media moderators back then didn’t “fact check” in real-time, other than a follow-up question to get clarification or confirmation. That wasn’t their role, and moderators knew they had failed if they became “the story.”

How “fact checks” and moderators have changed. ABC’s turgid, failed debate featuring David Muir and Linsey Davis last week attempted seven fact-checks of Trump, some of which were demonstrably dubious, if not outright false. I wish Donald Trump had called them out on them during the debate.

Which ones? First, the bizarre discussion of pets being captured and eaten by immigrants in Springfield, Ohio (we still don’t know if that’s true, but the evidence for it seems more credible than a carefully worded denial from a city manager). ABC had never sent a reporter to Springfield to investigate the claims, relying on a single government source like they do in Washington, DC.

Second, Davis should have been challenged for her demonstrably false assertion that in no state are babies who survive abortions allowed to die. Harris’ running mate, Gov. Tim Walz, signed legislation that has allowed eight such children to die in Minnesota. After getting the state wrong, Trump correctly noted that then-Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam almost gleefully explained the procedure in which a newborn is “kept comfortable” while the doctor and mother decide what to do. You can see it for yourself.

This video has been publicly available via YouTube.com since January 2019.

Muir and Davis teamed up zero times for fact checks on Kamala Harris, who told numerous and blatant falsehoods from Trump authoring the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 to supporting “abortion bans” (no state or federal law bans all abortions) to claiming that there are no troops stationed in combat zones anywhere in the world. That last one invited even the following “fact check” from combat-deployed troops. My oldest son, a National Guard officer, was combat-deployed in 2022. Those from New York replaced his Virginia Army Guard troops. She repeated the “fine people on both sides” Charlottesville Hoax, debunked months ago by none other than Snopes. No pushback from the moderators. Zilch. Nada.

The blatant disregard for truth by at least one candidate and ABC moderators bothered me more than anything else I’ve seen in this campaign. The more I hear or watch the debate, the angrier I get.

We seem to have devolved from respecting and searching for truth to converting opinions to “my truth” or “your truth.” There is no such thing. There are your opinions and mine, and we’re entitled to them. What used to be respectful disagreement devolves further into shouting matches, and worse, when neither communicant has enough humility, intellectual curiosity, and self-awareness to realize they can learn something and even change their minds, led by a never-ending search for truth.

The most valuable conversations often involve questions more than answers. Or “fact checks.”

Even the Christian faith allows for disagreement without being disagreeable. Hank Hanegraaf, host of the “Bible Answer Man” at equip.org and a noted apologist (defender of the faith, not an “apologizer”), notes that Christians should unify in the essentials of the faith, liberty in the non-essentials, and all things, practice charity. That strikes me as an ideal model to discuss and debate public policy issues in America. Unfortunately, we can no longer agree on the “essentials,” like the Constitution and basic biology.

Even Pontius Pilate displayed a modicum of humility and self-awareness in his famous dialogue with Jesus Christ, as outlined here in the Gospel of John, Chapter 18:

Pilate went back into his HQ and said to Jesus, “Are you the king of the Jews?”

Jesus said, “Do you say this of your own accord, or did others say it to you about me?”

Pilate said, “Am I a Jew? Your own nation and the chief priests have delivered you over to me. What have you done?”

Jesus said, “My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting, that I might not be delivered over to the Jews. But my kingdom is not from the world.”

Then Pilate said, “So you are a king?”

Jesus said, “You say that I am a king. For this purpose I was born and for this purpose I have come into the world–to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice.”

Pilate said to him, “What is truth?”

There’s no record of Jesus’s response, probably because they were interrupted or a cynical Pilate wasn’t interested in the answer. While Pilate was a pawn, notice that everything Pilate said here, followed by demonstrably absolving himself of demands from religious leaders of the day to crucify Jesus, was in the form of a question (some Bible translations differ slightly).

Today, too many politicians are crucifying the truth to fulfill ambition in a quest for power. No lie is too big if it can be sold to gullible people set on a narrative that feeds their confirmation biases, and the media is all too happy to play along. Maybe we’re all guilty, some more than others, that we believe so much that isn’t so.

The ends justify the means.

Confirmation bias has replaced intellectual curiosity as the guiding light in our election, and I hasten to add social acceptance. Critical thinking skills are going the way of the dodo bird.

However the election turns out, unifying our country around a set of ideals or elements of an agenda will take a lot of work. That’s the consequence of tossing a respect for truth out the window. The Charlottesville hoaxes, false threats of “abortion bans,” and the like will continue to fester and infect our nation and render our ability to solve problems mute. The can will be kicked down the road for another day. The quests for power are strong.

Our legacy media used to at least try to play that role. Now, they’re picking sides and helping peddle propaganda. Many people on the right are just as guilty as those on the left, and scores of self-proclaimed “fact checkers” are no better. A craft that used to provide us with information on which to make our judgments now instructs us what to think.

This situation will worsen until individuals and institutions begin to hold our would-be elected leaders to account—that means you. It’s long past time to stop feeding the beasts that are ruining civil society with our dollars and our eyes. I’ve terminated my relationship with all things Disney, the owner of ABC. Have you?

But there’s more to it than canceling subscriptions, putting your money on the alternative economy, and turning to friendly sources on the internet. It’s not just about winning elections but about governing in a way that restores our Constitutional republic and renews the American spirit of freedom, innovation, and strength. Our constitutional system of government only works with civility, as Ronald Reagan proved with the central tenets of his economic and foreign policy agendas 40 years ago. Reagan once famously opined that an 80 percent friend is not a 20 percent enemy.

The basis of civility is respect for truth, humility, and self-awareness, which help you realize that you’re not the only fount of wisdom and knowledge. It’s a foundation built on humility, the willingness to learn, and the confidence to discuss competing points of view, even changing your mind and admitting that you’ve learned something new.

It is too easy—lazy—to throw insults from a keyboard. Living in alternative universes or bubbles like the Acela corridor with little respect or openness to truth cannot resolve conflicts and restore civility. The media has taught us at least that much.

Here’s an opinion that I think qualifies as a truth: America thrives best when we have a robust two-party system. There are forces at work to make America a one-party state, and if you’ve seen what has happened in California and a few other places, one-party control often turns out horribly. When you seek to destroy instead of defeat your opponents, treating them as enemies, truth, character, and ethics exit.

I wish I could mandate debate in high school. It teaches you to argue opposing points of view on a single proposition. Remember, Lincoln was a lawyer who famously said that for every hour he spent on his arguments, he spent two hours learning and understanding the other side. If I could wave my magic wand, I would make this next year’s debate question: “Resolved: there are two genders.” Wouldn’t that be fun? Unfortunately, high school and college debate programs have been hijacked by the same forces making a long march through our institutions.

The phrase is used to describe the intellectual takeover of a society without need to resort to a military conflict. Instead, the strategy focuses on slowly winning over the chief institutions that determine the direction of a culture and thereby creating a soft revolution from within those institutions. So, the focus was on the universities, then the unions, the arts, the K-12 schools, the media, then corporations, and finally the society as a whole. - Bobby Harrington

In the meantime, go ahead and cancel your Disney Plus account, and forget feeding The Mouse in Orlando. You have other options. Fortunately, we still have options. But your work is only getting started. Isolating yourself in the alternative economy alone is no way to save our republic. But it’s good to stop rewarding those seeking to undermine truth, justice, and the American Way.

Back to Benjamin Franklin. Then, age 81, the frail Franklin stood and handed the text of his final speech at the Constitutional Convention 237 years ago tomorrow, September 17th - Constitution Day - to fellow Pennsylvania delegate James Wilson. He read the speech aloud. Addressed to the convention chair, George Washington, Franklin warned (emphasis added):

I agree to this Constitution, with all its Faults, if they are such: because I think a General Government necessary for us, and there is no Form of Government but what may be a Blessing to the People if well administered, and I believe farther that this is likely to be well administered for a Course of Years, and can only end in Despotism as other Forms have done before it, when the People shall become so corrupted as to need Despotic Government, being incapable of any other.

We are well on our way to what Franklin prophesied and feared. You can see and hear examples of it every day, from the doctors who take money under the table to provide “prescriptions” for medical marijuana in states where it is not yet legal, no questions asked. Or, running to Planned Parenthood if you’re in a state like Virginia that requires a doctor’s approval for a late-term abortion. That is no problem, Planned Parenthood will tell you; they’ll find you a doctor. Or the constant challenges of fraud in federal spending programs, such as the billions pilfered from relief programs during the pandemic, with California’s unemployment agency leading the way. Its incompetent director, Julie Su, is now the acting Secretary of Labor in the Biden-Harris Administration. Talk about failing up.

And don’t get me started on our elections, including the registration and voting of non-citizens. Yes, it happens. Dead people are voting, too, especially in states that don’t clean their voter rolls as they should, such as Pennsylvania and Illinois. I love the argument that the problem is “small” or “insignificant” or doesn’t impact elections. Until it does.

Even people who lie to their bosses and others to get their way.

So cancel those subscriptions and services from companies that do evil. Then, take a good look in the mirror and those around you and start taking and administering some accountability. It starts with us and a reverence for truth.