{"id":24530,"date":"2014-03-05T10:22:22","date_gmt":"2014-03-05T15:22:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=24530"},"modified":"2014-03-05T10:56:40","modified_gmt":"2014-03-05T15:56:40","slug":"qotd-truthiness-and-the-first-amendment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2014\/03\/05\/qotd-truthiness-and-the-first-amendment\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: &#8220;Truthiness&#8221; and the First Amendment"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>In modern times, \u201ctruthiness\u201d \u2014 a \u201ctruth\u201d asserted \u201cfrom the gut\u201d or because \u201cit feels right,\u201d without regard to evidence or logic<sup>5<\/sup> \u2014 is also a key part of political discourse. It is difficult to imagine life without it, and our political discourse is weakened by Orwellian laws that try to prohibit it.<\/p>\n<p>After all, where would we be without the knowledge that Democrats are pinko-communist flag-burners who want to tax churches and use the money to fund abortions so they can use the fetal stem cells to create pot-smoking lesbian ATF agents who will steal all the guns and invite the UN to take over America? Voters have to decide whether we\u2019d be better off electing Republicans, those hateful, assault-weapon-wielding maniacs who believe that George Washington and Jesus Christ incorporated the nation after a Gettysburg reenactment and that the only thing wrong with the death penalty is that it isn\u2019t administered quickly enough to secular-humanist professors of Chicano studies.<\/p>\n<p>Everybody knows that the economy is better off under [Republican\/Democratic]<sup>6<\/sup> presidents \u2014 who control it directly with big levers in the Oval Office \u2014 and that:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<p>President Obama is a Muslim.<br \/>\nPresident Obama is a Communist.<br \/>\nPresident Obama was born in Kenya.<br \/>\nNearly half of Americans pay no taxes.<sup>7<\/sup><br \/>\nOne percent of Americans control 99 percent of the world\u2019s wealth.<br \/>\nObamacare will create death panels.<br \/>\nRepublicans oppose immigration reform because they\u2019re racists.<br \/>\nThe Supreme Court is a purely political body that is evangelically [liberal\/conservative].<sup>8<\/sup><\/p>\n<\/ul>\n<p>All of the above statements could be considered \u201ctruthy,\u201d yet all contribute to our political discourse. <\/p>\n<p>5. Wikipedia.com, Truthiness, <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Truthiness\" target=\"_blank\">http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Truthiness<\/a> (last visited Feb. 28, 2014) (describing the term\u2019s coinage by Stephen Colbert during the pilot of his show in October 2005). See also Dictionary.com, Truthiness, <a href=\"http:\/\/dictionary.reference.com\/browse\/truthiness\" target=\"_blank\">http:\/\/dictionary.reference.com\/browse\/truthiness<\/a> (last visited Feb. 28, 2014).<br \/>\n6. Circle as appropriate.<br \/>\n7. 47 percent to be exact, though it may be higher by now.<br \/>\n8. Again, pick your truth. <\/p>\n<p>Ilya Shapiro and P.J. O&#8217;Rourke, <a href=\"http:\/\/object.cato.org\/sites\/cato.org\/files\/pubs\/pdf\/sba-list-merits-filed-brief.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">BRIEF OF <em>AMICI CURIAE<\/em> CATO INSTITUTE AND P.J. O\u2019ROURKE IN SUPPORT OF PETITIONERS, <em>Susan B. Anthony List v. Driehaus<\/em><\/a> [PDF], 2014-02-28<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In modern times, \u201ctruthiness\u201d \u2014 a \u201ctruth\u201d asserted \u201cfrom the gut\u201d or because \u201cit feels right,\u201d without regard to evidence or logic5 \u2014 is also a key part of political discourse. It is difficult to imagine life without it, and our political discourse is weakened by Orwellian laws that try to prohibit it. After all, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[57,9,10,41,13],"tags":[186,752],"class_list":["post-24530","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-humour","category-law","category-liberty","category-quotations","category-usa","tag-freedomofspeech","tag-supremecourt"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-6nE","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24530","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24530"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24530\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24539,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24530\/revisions\/24539"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24530"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24530"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24530"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}