What Is Truth?
4th January 2011
Megan McCardle spanks a tool of the Crust.
This is to me a rather surprising characterization, as I read the same post, and was not blown away by its irrefutable factual basis. It’s Garrett Epps’ opinion. An informed opinion to which he is perfectly entitled, but certainly not something that we can characterize as “stating plainly what is true” in the journalistic sense. It’s more like what my evangelical friends mean when they talk about sharing the truth of Christ’s death for our salvation. Of course, they may well be right. But I still maintain that the Washington Post’s front page should not treat this as an established fact.
A reminder for those who might be wondering: Just because someone is a lawyer, or even a law professor, or even a ‘constitutional scholar’, doesn’t mean that such a person knows more about the Constitution than you do; it merely means that he (or she) knows more about what other people think the Constitution is than you do. That’s what ‘scholar’ means.
The Constitution says what it says, and what it says is a matter of fact. What the Constitution means when it says what it says, is a matter of opinion, and anyone who maintains that the Constitution means anything other than what it plainly says, has the burden of proof that their opinion is superior to anyone else’s. And that’s the plain truth.