On Dec 22, 2005, at 7:08 AM, Doug Pensinger wrote:
On Thu, 22 Dec 2005 05:30:07 -0600, Robert Seeberger
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
But only reported through one source (AFAICT), hence the disclaimer.
It would bear a lot more credence if the same story were being told
via at least one other independent source.
Don't have time to go through these this morning but it looks as if
the story is being told elsewhere:
http://tinyurl.com/axo8j
A casual perusal of the items on that list suggests that most, if not
all, take the original piece from the avowedly anti-Bush Capitol Hill
Blue as source. I found a fine entry by a blogger who addressed the
single-source problem for this quote by writing to her congresscritter:
http://www.livejournal.com/users/kyrillandra/63023.html
No answer yet from her Senator.
This brings to mind the relationship between factuality and truth.
I've been thinking about it in the context of Christianity and
Biblical interpretation, but it obviously applies well beyond that
narrow context.
Western cultures equate truth with factuality. Nonetheless, myths,
legends and other _stories_ have tremendous truth-value despite their
being possibly apocryphal and sometimes provably unfactual.
The story about how George Washington "chopped down a cherry tree and
did not tell a lie" is a _founder's_myth_ that is accepted as _true_,
even if it is probably not factual. It tells us something about
George Washington and what we like to think about ourselves as a nation.
The _truths_ of the Washington story -- that our first President was
an honest man, that we imagine our national character to be truthful
-- do not depend on its being a historical event. The story, attached
to a vaunted founder, has doubtless helped generations of parents and
teachers underline the value of truthfulness in their children. (At
least one person in a class at my church commented on the irony of
using a "lie" to teach about "honesty", which probably says something
about the commentator's concept of truth and factuality.)
The "GD piece of paper" story -- factual or not -- resonates with
what is for many people the _truth_ about George Bush: that his
actions show that he thinks that the Constitution places undue and
burdensome constraints on his freedom to act, and that he may go as
far as to consider it "just a GD piece of paper".
Dave
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