Knee deep in June
The sixth month of the year is celebrated in poetry and song. James Whitcomb Riley penned “Knee Deep in June” and Oscar Hammerstein’s lyrics have June “bustin’ out all over!” This June, truth is “bustin’ out all over!”
Of all the players on the national stage, it is the brash billionaire Elon Musk whose surprising chess game with Twitter is reacquainting the social media giant with our constitutional right of free speech. Musk’s frank definition of free speech is born of personal experience. ‘’Free speech,” he says, “is when someone you don’t like says something you don’t like.” Not only is Twitter’s overt censorship being challenged, but the platform’s padding with fake accounts is being exposed. Censorship on the scale of Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram is un-American and at odds with generations of Americans who sacrificed their lives for our freedom.
At this same time, Special Counsel John Durham is unveiling the truth of the criminal conduct behind the so-called Steele Dossier that cost American taxpayers nearly $32 million. Those in positions of public trust who compartmentalize their lives to accommodate falsehood for personal gain may appear to win for a season, but time is their enemy. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was the perfect counterpoint to this Machiavellian gamesmanship. The means, King extolled, must be consistent with the ends.
Author Hannah Arendt’s description of Nazi Adolf Eichmann’s behavior as the “banality (commonplace) of evil” may be instructive to help us understand the pervasive prevarication and deceit among today’s ruling elites, especially the mainstream media. She made this observation: “Evil comes from a failure to think. It defies thought for as soon as thought tries to engage itself with evil and examine the premises and principles from which it originates, it is frustrated because it finds nothing there. That is the banality of evil.”
If we are to teach our children anything in these challenging times, we must teach them the ethic of telling the truth. Even more importantly, we must teach them to be faithful, honest seekers after truth; for if it is wrong to lie in a court of law, it is wrong to lie in the court of public opinion. Thankfully, it is the buoyancy of truth that is our saving grace. It will always rise to the surface of our conscience as a free people. Ever the voice of conscience, Dr. King often quoted poet William Cullen Bryant: “truth crushed to earth will rise again.” And so it is in this month of June, 2022.
Cameron S. Brown is president of the Kalamazoo Abraham Lincoln Institute and a former Michigan State Senator. Follow him at www.HistoryFrontiers.blog.
This article originally appeared on Sturgis Journal: Opinion
