I subscribe to LinkedIn, and I have for years. Now and then, I get a job referral that I pass on to a friend or colleague; I myself am no longer seeking employment. I enjoy reading posts from medical colleagues in the “notifications” tab, and I occasionally read comments on the main page as well. A couple of weeks ago, I saw a post from one of my colleagues in Texas Geriatric medicine. It was a Rand Paul meme from BlackRifle Co. This is Texas, after all. And, we are all very much Second Amendment sycophants here.
This particular meme showed Senator Paul in profile with a textual notation that the Constitution was written to restrict the rights of the government rather than rights of the citizenry. I was mildly offended by the post, despite it having been posted by a colleague who I admire and respect. I did not respond to it.
This evening, I connected to LinkedIn to read a job posting, and I was taken to this same Rand Paul meme. My friend had garnered at least a couple of dozen “likes.” Again, I was moderately offended by Senator Paul’s abject stupidity. I have been doing my best to not respond to these trolling posts because doing so has already landed me in the social media Gulag at least a half-dozen times. But, tonight I could no longer remain silent. No one had challenged my friend. So, I posted that if this were so, the framers would not have bothered to include Article III, Section 3, Clause 1 in the Constitution.
My colleague wasted no time in responding that the particular clause that I cited was very narrow in its applicability, and that Senator Paul was speaking about a “Greater Truth.” Let me digress here to say that my minor in graduate school was Philosophy. In those long past days, Computer Science and Philosophy, as Mathematics and Philosophy in earlier days, were often bedfellows.
I took various courses in Philosophy including a graduate courses in Logic as well as Epistemology on my way to my Master’s degree in Computer Science. I have little doubt that my graduate committee granted my degree only while pinching their noses tightly. I do not blame them.
I do not recall studying any “Hierarchy of Truths” in any of my philosophy courses. Such things may be discussed in seminary, I suppose. But, if there are “Greater Truths,” as my colleague asserts, then there must also be “Lesser Truths.” I find this troubling because I would much prefer a universe of understanding in which things are either True or False or perhaps still undecided – open for further consideration, as it were. Isn’t that how computers are supposed to work?
To my colleague, I asserted only that I read the Constitution as a compact between the governed and the government. Each has rights and responsibilities. For either side to proclaim its rights while denying its responsibilities is a breach of the compact or covenant, that both sides must observe if the society is to survive.
What do you think?