Pontius Pilate made the history books, and scored a big role in the Bible, partly because he asked an always pertinent question, "What Is Truth?"
I happen to believe that there is such a thing as "truth." In other words, I believe that it is possible to discern - and then "believe in" - something that is "real," that is (and that can be "proven" to be) "true." Things like that - "truths" - are what help us to define (and accept) "reality." As an example, a declaration that the Earth is round (spherical, really) is now generally accepted as the truth about Planet Earth. However, even this "truth," or what we sometimes call "the facts," is not something that is universally accepted. There are some people who believe that the Earth is flat.
What "authority" is there that can state "the truth" in a way that "everyone" accepts it? Really, there is no such authority. Again, consider, those people who believe that the Earth is flat. Actual pictures taken from space have not convinced everyone of something that I am personally willing to assert is indisputably "true"!
Acute readers will notice that the example I have just used (that the Earth is spherical) is a "truth" that pertains to the World of Nature. Scientific formulas, scientific experiments, and even mathematics are "authoritative" for almost everyone, and are accepted as "proof" that certain things are "true."
Of course, I would like anyone reading this to know that the "Natural World" is only one of the "Two Worlds" that I believe we simultaneously inhabit, and the differences between which I believe we should acknowledge and understand. Scientific "laws" demonstrate, pretty authoritatively, what is "true" in the World of Nature. Example: the "Law of Gravity" prevails and defines certain truths about life on this planet. The laws of math and physics are authoritatively able to make statements that are demonstrably and provably "true." Experiments bear out the truths that math and physics claim.
We also have "human" laws, however (as a lawyer, I am familiar with those), and our human laws are the "laws" that define how things work (or are supposed to work) in the "Human World," a "world" that I generally call the "Political World." The "Political World" is created by human activity, and in the "Political World," there are no indubitable "truths." Human-created laws don't state what must and will happen. Human laws are statements about what we "want" to happen, not what will happen, without fail. In the "Human World," there are no absolutely provable "truths." Instead, there are "opinions."
Is our current president a narcissistic, self-interested, intellectually inferior person; or, quite to the contrary, is he probably the greatest president our nation has ever had, intellectually brilliant, with the kind of personal courage you have to have to face down a government that has run amok, a president who can root out a "Deep State" that is imposing tryrannical and outrageous limitations on the freedoms to which we believe we are entitled and which our Constitution is supposed to guarantee?
He can't be both, right? But who can "prove" what is right, so that everyone accepts it, as almost everyone accepts that the Earth is spherical? There is no "authority" that can definitively say that one of these things is "true," and the other one is "false." People will differ in what they think, and as we so painfully know, there is a deeply-divided split opinion on what kind of president we have. While those on each side cite to different "authority" to support the claim that their view is "true" and the other "false," it remains obvious that neither "side" is willing to accept the "authority" cited by the other.
Our Constitution does not establish a methodology that will allow anyone to proclaim that their political views are the "truth." The "truth" is that there are differing "opinions," and that's it.
The Constitution does, however, establish specific procedures that will allow one "side," or another, to use the powers of the government to implement that side's view of what is "true," and to act upon the basis of that side's "opinions."
If we want to have a political system that recognizes the fundamental nature of our "Political World," we need - from all "sides" - to adhere to the procedures that the Constitution specifies. In other words, the "procedures" specified in the Constitution generate the "authority" that will be properly used to support one view or another. We have different "opinions." If we follow the "procedures" set out in the Constitution (and in the laws that implement it) the system will determine which opinion will prevail, and which "side" will be given the power to act as if its "opinions" were "the truth."
The procedures specified in the Constitution allow "power" to be given to one side or another, subject to periodic (two-year) reviews, but things can go wrong if those given certain "power" claim that they are entitled to more power than has actually been granted. Congress, basically, makes the "laws," and the president "executes" them. The president is an "executive" officer, and does not, properly, get to say what the laws are. If the president claims that his election as our chief executive entitles him to abolish entire governmental programs or departments that were established by the elected Members of Congress, he is claiming "authority" to which he is not entitled.
When that happens - and it appears to have happened, already, in the first weeks of the new presidency of Donald J. Trump - the Members of Congress must require that the correct "procedures" be followed. Want to get rid of USAID - the Agency for International Development"? Get the Congress to change the law to do that. If we don't follow the "procedures," then it's pure power, all the way down, and it is "power" not "truth" that will determine which "opinions" will be used to build the "Political World," and to establish the "reality" of our life together.
Considering what is happening - and there are differing opinions about what is happening - we need to insist that the "procedures" specified in the Constitution be followed. Congress makes the laws, the president "takes care that the laws are faithfully executed."
That's how we decide what the government will do in our name. That is not what is happening now!
Image Credit:
Well said!
ReplyDelete