Family Security Matters » Publications » Exclusive: Questioning Reality

Family Security Matters » Publications » Exclusive: Questioning Reality: "“I wasn’t talking.”

“Hmm. Your lips were moving. Sound was coming out. The person you were facing was looking at you and nodding, but you weren’t talking?”

“No.”

“So, I should believe you, and not my own eyes and ears?”

“Whatever.”

That word is telling. It’s what we’re left with when we deny objective reality. Anyone can talk in my class, but only one at a time and only about the subject at hand. Using the Socratic method, that’s how it has to be. I gave the student a consequence and moved on, but I was troubled by his nonchalant denial of the obvious because I’m seeing it around me more and more. Either the world is getting crazy or I am. Once I saw a bumper sticker saying “Question Reality” and I laughed, but I don't think it's funny anymore.

Objective reality hard to perceive exactly sometimes, but we have to believe it exists or we can’t function. It can be fun to question it and consider that everything is relative during late-night bull sessions, but if we pretend objective reality doesn’t exist, we’ll suffer painful consequences. Gen. Custer discovered this when he ignored reports that thousands of warriors could be just over the hill. “Whatever,” he thought, and ordered an attack. Denial of objective reality is most dangerous during wartime and that’s exactly what our administration and the mainstream media are doing by denying the obvious: that the Fort Hood massacre was an act of Radical Muslim terrorism. After September 11th and all that’s happened since, it astonishes me to see Americans are nodding at their ludicrous claims that Maj. Hasan was really suffering from vicarious PTSD while shouting “Allahu Akbar!” as he mowed down our soldiers; that he contacted al Qaeda 20 times and asked what he could do to further the jihad and told fellow doctors: “Infidels should have their throats cut,” and “non-believers should be beheaded and have boiling oil poured down their throats” is not evidence of Islamofascism, but symptomatic of second-hand stress from counseling returning soldiers.

Whatever."