Is Truth a Big Deal?

 I hope that most people would agree that truth is a Big Deal.  Over the years I have blogged about the significance of telling the truth, from little white fibs to avoid hurting someone's feelings to absolute whoppers, whether for relatively insignificant boasts to harmful lies.  This post is about something else.  The question in this blog deals with Lies verses Omissions.  Can it be just as harmful to omit the full truth as it is to outright lie.

I do a great deal of research for writing my blog posts, and because history is often the subject of my blogs, I often seek a broad range of sources in an effort not to be misled.  To answer the question of my title, Yes, Truth is a Big Deal to me, and lying by omission deliberately by leaving out important details so that the truth is skewed by misrepresentation is one of the most disgusting means.  

My husband and I have always been curious to learn more, and the fact that our careers took us to many places, we delighted in visiting many sources of learning, from museums to restaurants, music, lectures, and many other things, but especially important were National Parks.  

Therefore, I was especially disturbed to learn that Museums and Parks are altering the content of information in these public places to "to promote a more patriotic description of American History."  First of all, promoting "a more patriotic version" isn't history.  History is defined as "a chronological record of significant events, including an explanation of their causes."  History is truth, and microprinting by omitting part of the story isn't history.

Museums and parks across the Nation have been impacted by such directives, and in Kansas the directive has impacted the narrative of Brown v. Board of Education.  Such examples as The Grand Canyon "history" that omitted the settlers pushing tribes off the land they had occupied for generations, as well as the Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument that omitted information about global warming's impact on the cacti were not being patriotic.  Both of those examples are half-truths, with a very different purpose than patriotism.    

And so, I return to the question whether truth matters.  Olin Vevi, Library of Congress, quoted Francisco Goya:  The sleep of reason produces monsters."  Retired Professor Crispin Sartwell began his paper, "Truth is Real" with these words:  "It is often said, rather casually, that truth is dissolving, that we live in the 'post-truth era."  But truth is one of our central concepts -- perhaps our most central concept --  and I don't think we can do without it."