Faith and Facts

This excellent letter by our own Joe Manzi was printed in Saturday's Daily Item:

On Saturday, November 8^th, your paper printed a letter to the editor entitled "Pro-life politics." I take issue with the writer’s simplistic responses to complex issues. First he stated that John McCain "knows that life begins at conception." He also refers to the Iraq invasion and occupation as a "good Samaritan mission to release the innocent people of Iraq from tyranny, bondage and servitude." These statements illustrate two trends in our nation that are disturbing and often lead us to wrong conclusions and to disastrous actions.

First is the trend by many, especially of the Religious Right, to equate belief with fact. In this instance one could argue that if life begins at conception, what is the nature of that life, is it a human life, and if not when does it become a human life? The answers to these questions are often based on faith, our religious beliefs, and as such we should preface our answers with I believe, not I know. Belief is based on faith and opinion, not fact and should not be presented as or confused with fact.

The second is the trend, again especially by people to the right of the political spectrum, to confuse myth with reality. Too many of us subscribe to the myth that America always acts with good intentions and takes the morally right course. Thus we get statements claiming that our invasion of Iraq is a "good Samaritan mission." Let’s recognize that the United States, for all its amazing achievements and its outstanding two hundred year experiment with democracy, is after all a nation of citizens and leaders who are fallible and capable of wrong decisions and, yes, even immoral behavior. One only has to look to our inhumane history of slavery and our equally cruel and barbaric treatment of Native Americans to know that we as a nation do not always take the moral high ground.

Until we stop confusing faith with fact and myth with reality we cannot have an intelligent logical debate process and we cannot hope to solve the many problems confronting our nation here and abroad. Sadly, the writer of "Pro-life politics," like all too many voters, relies on faith and mythical perceptions in deciding who to vote for, rather than on a thought process based on factual information, and that is why we get Presidents like Bush and dangerous policies like his "preventive strike" theory that led us to invade Iraq--a nation that posed no threat to us, and to which we have inflicted unimaginable suffering and hardships--at tremendous human and financial cost to our own nation.

Sincerely,
Joe Manzi