In a recent New
York Times opinion piece Justin McBrayer laments how this country has lost
its moral compass. He and his philosophy professor colleagues have observed
that the overwhelming majority of college freshmen in their classrooms view
moral claims as mere opinions that are not true. He makes the point that this troubling
phenomenon is rooted in the Common
Core standards that require that
students be able to “distinguish among
fact, opinion, and reasoned judgment in a text.” For example, using these evolving standards “all men are created equal” and “drug
dealers belong in prison” are considered to be opinions, because these
assertions cannot be tested or proven, and are supposedly subjective
determinations. The implications are not just academic, because if there are no
moral truths how does society prosecute criminal transgressions, or if all
humans are not created equal, then why vote for any political system that doesn't benefit you over others? The corollary of turning opinion into fact is
equally pernicious. Over the last twenty years this country has tolerated what
are simply bold faced lies made to support an agenda or position. "I did
not have sex...”, Mitt Romney was a murderer, Ferguson suspect had his hands
up, Benghazi was about a video, emails lost at the IRS, and the list goes on.
News stories used to be spun depending on the desired impact, these days
stories are simply invented. The result is that younger generations are
rightfully suspicious of any information that may be politicized.
3 comments:
As a follow up, Richard Cohen writes in an Opinion piece on March 24, 2015:
“ We live in a time where facts that do not fit an ideology or grievance are merely disregarded — or alternative ones concocted: Do you think campus rape is a problem not taken seriously? Then pillory the accused, deprive them of basic rights, say your critics are blaming the victim — and fling the dross of questionable statistics into the air.
Do you think black men are casually killed by the police? Then concoct a statistic, as Arlene Eisen has done, and watch with satisfaction as it goes viral. The widely used “#every28hours” hashtag turns out to be a hash of statistics and hunches, all of it infused by leftist cant about “the national security state” and the “perpetual war on black people.”
Do you think that the African American men who are killed by the police are solely victims of racism? If so, then ignore that, in 2013, about 44 percent of the nation’s murder victims were black — and some 90 percent of those victims were killed by other black people. There is a problem here, and it does not go away by yelling “Racist, Racist” at the numbers. “
Jonathan Capehart of the Washington Post has admitted that the “hands up, don’t shoot” narrative that he reported after the shooting death of Michael Brown by Officer Darren Wilson last summer in Ferguson was false. According to the DOJ report there was no evidence to support the claims.
“Investigators tracked down several individuals who, via the aforementioned media, claimed to have witnessed Wilson shooting Brown as Brown held his hands up in clear surrender. All of these purported witnesses, upon being interviewed by law enforcement, acknowledged that they did not actually witness the shooting, but rather repeated what others told them in the immediate aftermath of the shooting.”
Even Attorney General Eric Holder wondered, “It remains not only valid – but essential – to question how such a strong alternative version of events [hands up, don’t shoot] was able to take hold so swiftly, and be accepted so readily.” The Media Research Center blames the media who they claim weren’t interested in telling the truth.
Just to underscore my point on lying, Bret Stephens in a recent WSJ opinion piece titled "Hillary and the Liberal Way of Lying" asserts that for the Clintons if the lying is for the greater good it becomes acceptable. What the Clintons have perfected, has now been taken aboard by the rest of the liberals. When Harry Reid was pinned down on his statements about Romney's charitable contributions, his response was that even if he was lying he had done his bit to tilt the election to Obama.
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