Truth's Predicate Values

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necessary (pure truth) & contingent (paradoxical truth’s) PREDICATE VALUES:‘is true’ and ‘is false.’ Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln practiced necessary truth: their truth’s logically consistent predicate values were, therefore, mostly ‘is true.’ In a letter to H. L. Prince, Lincoln cited Jefferson’s dedication to naturally antecedent first principles, i.e., gave reason to his logical fidelity: 1 “Remembering . . . that the Jefferson party was formed upon its supposed superior devotion to the personal rights of men, holding the rights of property to be secondary only, and greatly inferior . . . it will be . . . interesting to note how completely the two [political parties] have changed hands as to the principles upon which they were originally supposed to be divided. The Democracy of today hold the liberty of one man to be absolutely nothing, when in conflict with another’s right to property [as politics of slavery had done]; Republicans on the contrary, are for both the man and the dollar, but in case of conflict the man before the dollar [Lincoln’s appraisal of Jeffersonian politics]. . . . But, soberly, it is now no child’s play to save the principles of Jefferson from total overthrow in this nation. . . . The principles of Jefferson are the principles and axioms of free society and yet they are denied and evaded, with no small show of success. One dashingly calls them ‘glittering generalities.’ Another bluntly calls them ‘self-evident lies!’ And others insidiously argue that they apply to ‘superior races.’ These expressions, differing in form, are identical in object and effect -- the supplanting the principles of free government, and restoring those of classification, caste, and legitimacy. . . . They are the vanguard, the miners and sappers of returning despotism. We must repulse them or they will subjugate us.” [And, they succeeded to return America to Sixteenth century dogmatism]

‘What the King says, or does, is just!’ An affirmed rationalization, about which Will Durant wrote this: Ultimately, our troubles are due to dogma and deduction; we find no new truth because we take some venerable but questionable proposition as the indubitable starting point, and never think about putting this assumption itself to a test of observation or experiment. Critically reasoned principles of truth, liberty and justice were supplanted by authoritative dogmatic affirmations, the predicate values of which bear the contingent truth value, as “the divine right of justice -- ‘vox justiciae vox dei’” does. Such truth reason-based neither is fitted for knowledge and morality, nor for the rational part of democracy. Purer justice rests mostly as insidious frustrations of those tyrannized by the ‘vox justiciae vox dei’ system of justice imported from England: Tory-Federalist-Whig dogmabased justice. Legal economic mechanisms of this U.S. tyranny had ‘vox justiciae vox dei’ mechanist dogma-based politics as its sponsor. 2 The . . . Federalist dogma of the divine right of justice -- ‘vox justiciae vox dei’ -- was at hand to serve . . . and . . .free use of it [was made]. When justice comports to dogma-based ‘positive’ laws, the underlying dogmatic tenets are made the master of reasoned principles. With justice not reasonable, the stress of great frustration caused by paradoxical mechanist tyrannies were authoritatively spread onto society. When rationalization is the basis of laws, ‘divine right’-based belief quiets (conflates) the natural principles of reason. Still, injustice describes the result! Similarly, dogma-based rationalizations of ‘truth’ yields ‘falsehoods.’ ‘Positive laws’ denude Justice of consistent intelligent meaning, and we also should worry about parallel erosions of the other ethereal products of mind; for instance, culture can only improve by the inculcation of reason-based understandings of truth, and morality. Selections for this anthology are from Our Federal Savings Plan, DeYoung’s research document about “Social Security.” By M. H. DeYoung all rights reserved


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