Truth will out

Truth will out

"Be sure, the truth will find you out."

Interesting phrase, isn't it? Not "you will find the truth ..." Not even the biblical promise, "You shall know the truth, and the truth will make you free," in the Gospel of John, 8:32.

But the truth will find you out.

There's something ominous about that. The implication clearly is that no matter what you may try to hide, regardless of how carefully and cleverly you may have covered some secret deed or intent, in time – perhaps the most inopportune but serious time – the secret will be revealed. And consequences will follow, sometimes even posthumously.

Shakespeare opined, "The evil that men do lives after them, while the good is oft interred with their bones." History and observation revealed that to him. And serious reflection confirms it to us now.



I myself, like most of you, have watched this happen in my lifetime. In 1948, a young congressman from California, Richard Nixon, diligently working with the House Un-American Activities Committee, went out to the farm of accused Communist collaborator Whittaker Chambers and, on a tip, discovered a stash of incriminating papers and some 35 mm film hidden in a pumpkin. Chambers, knowing the investigators were relentlessly on his trail, put the evidence in a place where no one would ever think to look. But something, like the "hounds of hell," led Nixon to the last place anyone would look. And he held up, for the world to see, all that was needed to convict Chambers and Alger Hiss of espionage and send them to prison.

Truth will out.

Ironically, during the fateful Watergate hearings in 1973, then-President Nixon was steadfastly denying any knowledge of the break-in at the Democrat Headquarters. But the "hounds of hell" this time were pursuing him, through the Senate investigating committee. Others close to him were taking the fall, and it appeared that there was not enough evidence to incriminate the president himself.

But he had ordered a secret taping of all conversations in the Oval Office for his own purposes … and eventually the "hounds" identified 18 and a half minutes of those tapes that had mysteriously been erased on Watergate tape 342, at a time when Nixon and Haldeman, his close aide, were obviously discussing the Watergate break-in. This became "the smoking gun," and enough to bring about his resignation.

Truth will out.

Early in Bill Clinton's second term as president, he steadfastly "stonewalled" the growing evidence that he had maintained an illicit affair, in the Oval Office, with Monica Lewinsky. He looked into the camera, used his finger for emphasis, and told America: "I did not have sex with that woman." How could anybody prove otherwise? He even lied, under oath, to an investigative committee – which later he admitted.

But the "hounds" kept digging. And a blue dress turned up, a dress Monica had mentioned wearing in an Oval Office tryst. The dress was examined, and the president's DNA was identified in a stain on that garment. And so the 42nd president of the United States had to confess and apologize to the citizens, barely escaping removal from office.

Truth will out.

Almost no matter the secret, but especially if it's really a significant one with enormous present and future ramifications, it seems inevitable that somehow, in time, the truth will come to light.

So now, America has a president who, with his closest advisers, adamantly refuses to produce a legitimate, verifiable birth certificate. How he managed to sidestep the close scrutiny to which John McCain was subjected (because he was born in Panama) is a mystery in itself.

Not just McCain's liberal opponents, but Congress itself felt the matter was extremely important. Although John McCain is the son of generations of distinguished U.S. Naval officers, and his father was stationed in the Canal Zone, there was explicit language in Article 2, Section 1 of the Constitution saying that no one not "a natural born citizen of the United States" could be elected president. So, curiously, though Congress justly demanded that McCain release all relevant records – which he did – they did not require the same of Barack Obama! Why?

I wrote about this just recently, demanding as one American citizen, that the man who would be president obey the Constitution. Fifty-eight percent of respondents to an AOL online poll said Obama should produce his actual birth certificate, and 49.3 percent of the respondents to a scientific Wenzel poll found the question to be legitimate.

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The Los Angeles Times and a host of angry bloggers derided me, some calling me weird names and even a "racist." That's particularly galling to me, since I've been stumping for the Republican Party to identify and nurture qualified black candidates for every office, up to and including the presidency, since 1976.

But what has Barack Obama done in response to the growing clamor for him to do what the Constitution demands and to show us an actual American birth certificate, if indeed one actually exists?

He has paid his team of lawyers almost a million dollars to produce a Certification of Live Birth, a "short form" document, a print-out of information that has been entered – at some point in time, by someone – into a computer database. This is not a birth certificate. The state of Hawaii does not accept a Certification of Live Birth as singular proof that an individual was actually born in Hawaii.

So why should we accept it? And why should Congress?

Knowing this is a matter of grave concern, and knowing that he swore to "defend the Constitution of the United States" – not to defy it – why does he not just produce the proper document? Or at least explain why he won't, or can't? The more he resists, and the longer he does, the worse the situation will become. It's not going away. Every citizen has the constitutional right to demand that our president, of all people, obey the law of our land.

God Himself promises, "All that is secret will be brought into the open, and everything that is concealed will be brought to light and made known to all." (Luke 8:17)

Truth will out.