Politicians are increasingly turning to syrupy words instead of speaking the truth

Iwant to say a few words about truth, starting in an admittedly unlikely place — with remarks by former U.S. vice-president Joe Biden. Not for the first time, Biden has been accused of a sexually inappropriate act.

The most recent victim was Lucy Flores, previously a candidate for the post of lieutenantgovernor in Nevada. Flores says Biden kissed her on the back of her head without permission, behaviour she found “demeaning

and disrespectful.”

Here is how Biden’s office responded: “Neither then, nor in the years since, did he or the staff with him at the time have an inkling that Ms. Flores had been at any time uncomfortable, nor do they recall what she describes. But vice-president Biden believes that Ms. Flores has every right to share her own recollection and reflections, and that it is a change for better in our society that she has the opportunity to do so.”

Notice what went on here. Biden didn’t deny the allegation. Nor did he admit it and apologize.

Instead, he engaged in an increasingly common sleight of hand. To the best of his recollection, he says, what Flores alleges never took place. However, that doesn’t mean she isn’t entitled to her own version of the truth — her own “recollection and reflections.”

In this way of thinking, there is no such thing as objective truth. You can have your truth and I can have mine, and both are equally valid.

This nonsense had its beginnings in the academic world, sad to say. But it has become a manoeuvre by which aggrieved individuals can press their complaints without having to back them up with facts. They have their truth, and that finishes the discussion.

We need to dispense first with an attempt at justifying this kind of game. Views change over time, we are reminded, and unavoidably, emerging new values take some of us by surprise. We think a certain act is harmless, others disagree.

We had an example of that when John Turner was running for leader of the federal Liberal party in the early 1980s. Turner had been out of office for some years and, during campaign stops, he repeatedly patted women on the bum.

He meant no offence, but had to be taken aside and told, forcefully, that times had moved on and you couldn’t do that sort of thing (not that it stopped him).

In short, social values change, and if you’re not up to date, you can inadvertently give offence. My guess is this explains Biden’s behaviour (the man is 75), but that’s not the point.

We’re not just seeing a collision between opposing values. We are witnessing an effort to shore up disputed claims by wrapping them in the mantle of “personal truth.” And that is a dangerous path to go down.

How we see the world is affected by how we speak about it. Throughout all of written history until the present, to say that a statement was true meant that it corresponded with the facts. To say that it was false meant that it did not.

In turn, this entailed the belief that the world is knowable, that facts can be sought and found, verified and passed on. Science rests on this premise. So do our courts.

Someone who bears false witness in a trial isn’t just expressing his own version of the truth. He’s lying.

And more than this is at stake. We have to be able to take people at their word, or alternatively, to find them untrustworthy. Reputations are built on this, personal, corporate and political.

This is no mere quibble over words. Humans are social animals, and societies need rules.

And one of the most foundational is that truth and falsity are fact-based, subject to proof or refutation.

It is this rule that hangs in the balance, thanks to a form of softheaded group-speak that past generations would have ridiculed.