Truth & Justice

On Truth and Justice

By Roy D. Follendore III

October 16, 2003

If you happen to be a baby boomer then you are part of the television generation. You no doubt remember the old black and white television program staring the original Superman. There was the super part that talked about "Faster than a speeding bullet...." There was also the part that talked about the nature of Superman's alter ego. "A mild mannered reporter..." The conclusion of this famous introduction of Superman was the rational for Superman's existence. "...fight for truth, justice, and the American way." As a reporter, Clark Kent would seek out the truth. Then Superman would use his great powers to bring criminals to justice. While justice was served by bringing in the bag guys, it was always the courts that Superman always served. What made the story of Superman so enduring was that it was really an important metaphor, a fundamental philosophy about what we Americans want and need to be. The fictional character of Superman was created as an American ideal. It is appropriate that we should examine our current administration's political actions in context with the ideals of truth, justice and the American way.

October 15, 2003

There is an American expectation that truth and justice can always somehow prevail through the democratic will of the people. This is the foundation upon which the constitutional and citizens democratic right to vote is based. Americans need the reassurance that we are doing things for the right reasons and that requires the existence of the conditions of truth and justice. We depend on that assurance. It is therefore important to step back and reflect on those essential American ideals that together we expect ourselves and others to trust.

There are excellent reasons why truth and justice in America must go together. To many and Americans maybe it is simply because the concepts can not be taken apart without weakening the cause it serves. All that America has achieved, "the American way," suddenly becomes nothing if we do not have truth and justice behind us. Any elected politician who separates the two ideas in favor of expediency is undermining our nation. There is an essential order to these concepts that is based on reason. Truth must first exist before justifiable action can exist. This is not just because because truth is the basis of justice, it is because truth must be verifiable and validatable for justice to exist as a fact. Verifiable and validatable truths are able to stand alone, independent of the virtues of honesty and loyalty.

This is because within the context of our social perspective personal honesty and loyalty can actually have little to do with truth and justice. Honest and loyal individuals are always the backbone of organizations with little or no justice. Honest and loyal people can be misguided and they can be wrong. Honest and loyal people can do things that are wrong and evil in the name of their honesty and loyalty. This was fundamentally what our American Civil War was really all about. That war was fought over the differences between the virtues of honesty and loyalty vs. truth and justice.

By forgetting about the truth and justice of history many of us have forgotten those hard won lessons. To the majority of individual Americans, just the act of doing the right thing is the basis of honesty and loyalty. But truth and justice are not relics of some forgotten era like black and white television stored in a dusty attic. Truth and justice are shiny basic elements that compose all modern forms of reasoning. They are the elemental pathways that guide our direction and they make the difference between doing the right and wrong thing. They keep the questions of ethics open and available within our decision making process.

Within this social era where our world is wired and data, information and knowledge is constantly being stored and transferred around our planet, our future can not exist without the truth of the past. The availability of truth will always exist like a fingerprint at a crime scene. Humanity is forced to build its future based on the past. We therefore have some responsibility to the relationship of truth and justice so that through truth we can make our future prosper. Justice is an attempt by humanity to rectify its actions of the past with its prospects of the future in order to do better in the future. Sometimes this may mean the removal of the offender from doing further harm along with the potential of punishment and the requirement of restitutions but sometimes it simply means what can be the more powerful aspect of gentle forgiveness.

Our concept of justice is a necessary standard that must not only exist, it also must be grounded on irrefutable evidence that is proven beyond a reasonable beyond a doubt; that perception, if not reality, is the American way that has made us different from so many other nations. It was what has established our American translation of equality. To otherwise act without the inevitable scientific concept of evidence is to be unable to truthfully justify, protect and defend a consistent means with respect to ends. There can never be perfect justice; our notion of justice is ultimately tied to the lessons of the value of reason with respect to action. Actions that taken in the interest of truth and justice are therefore the basis of the legitimacy of the exercise of reasonable use of America's power.

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