The Founding Father's Belief in Logic is the Key to Saving America
Author, Derek Baum
Before you read my first article, I’d like to welcome everyone to this project and my column. My
goal here will be to use history, logic, and facts to help you connect what’s happening in
America today to the greater questions of American ideals and rights. As this nation reaches
the milestone birthday of 250 years since we declared ourselves independent (even though it
took 5 more years to actually win that independence), the American experiment, as Ben
Franklin called it, is facing the greatest threat this nation has ever faced. You may not realize it,
but all this patriotic pomp and circumstance…it’s merely window dressing to blind the citizenry
to the peril this nation faces. A peril brought about not from an external conquering force, but
from our own hubris. Hubris that has caused us to lose our way and become unmoored from
the ideals that built this country 250 years ago. Patriotism is now defined by waving a flag,
wearing red, white, and blue, buying a bunch of fireworks, and egotistically self-declaring,
“America is the greatest country in the world!” from the top of our lungs while we pound an
American-made beer. It’s no longer defined by standing up for freedom of speech, or the rights
of due process, or the right for Americans…all Americans…to be represented in government…
the ideals that inspired people, leaders, and nations around the world to declare, “America is
the greatest country in the world.” In embracing patriotic form over patriotic substance, we
have forsaken all that the founders fought for. In fact, powerful forces use these symbols and
these patriotic slogans and traditions as a curtain, seeking to blind us to the truth taking place
backstage as they rip this nation apart for their own gain. The irony is that American stories and
symbols are being perverted and twisted into the perfect weapon to attack the very American
ideals that created this great country.
In turbulent times like these, it’s easy for American citizens to get led astray by misinformation
that appeals to the genuinely good parts of those same citizens. In fact, the best lies always
contain two things: a grain of truth and an appeal to the heartstrings. Sometimes, the amount
of information and misinformation bombarding us on TV and the internet makes it hard to know
who is telling the truth. It makes it hard to separate out the facts from the emotional pull. TV
“News” is filled with opinion shows today, ragebaiting their way to higher ratings and ad revenue. Then, when you turn to online sources, social media is the greatest propaganda conduit in history. Social media isn’t bound by the same laws against misinformation and slander that exist for journalism. You can, quite literally, say anything. And sadly, that works. Lies always spread much faster than the truth, and there are no more Walter Cronkites or Peter Jennings to help guide us. Even if there are still a few aspiring Woodward and Bernsteins, there are increasingly few publishers and TV execs willing to speak truth to power.
So what do we do? In these times, we must return to facts, perspective, and logic. We must
follow them where they lead, even if it isn’t the place our internal bias wants us to go. We must
become comfortable with uncomfortable truths. We must choose to put our egos aside when
needed and be willing to say, “I was wrong. I was misinformed,” instead of doubling, tripling,
and quadrupling down on a factually incorrect position. Some people, to justify their incorrect
opinions, like to say that facts lie. But here’s the truth: facts, when presented within context
and perspective, will never lie. Sure, you can take a number out of context and distort it. For
example, you can use percentages instead of numbers, or vice versa, to try to overdramatize or
downplay an inherent reality. You can freeze and personalize an issue…often a tactic used in
the immigration debate…to overdramatize the reality and scare people into a false perspective.
You can lift a quote from the middle of a paragraph to misrepresent the speaker’s intent. But
that constitutes a loss of perspective. And so, it’s not the fact that is lying, it’s the person
manipulating the context and perspective. As I said above, the best lies always contain truth.
None of this is accidental, by the way. A man named Saul Alinsky, known as America’s most
famous Communist, wrote the “Rules for Radicals” that have been adopted by propagandists
across the political spectrum. Why? Because they work. These rules use human nature as the weak point to manipulate and exploit…and human nature knows no party lines. Effective
propaganda plays on emotions, often exploiting the most powerful of human emotions: anger
and fear. But it can also play on love and hope; love for your community, love for your country,
love for your children. These emotions are natural, intrinsic parts of being human and they are a
ripe target because we all have emotions. Next time you see propaganda on social media, take
the time to analyze the words used and the angle the poster takes. See through the words.
Understand the goal behind it and then see if the words and angle match up with the logic and
facts. That is the most powerful defense we have to fight propaganda: the human brain.
Humans weren’t just born with emotions. We were born with an intelligence powerful enough to
override these emotions and recognize when falsehoods are being used in an attempt to
manipulate our emotions. This is why one thing all dictators seek to do is to keep their citizenry
uninformed and uneducated. It’s not just preventing them from accessing information; it’s
about preventing the citizenry from learning the tools and critical-thinking skills needed to
question the narrative these dictators do feed them.
This dichotomy, emotions and logic, is the main reason television and film’s most fascinating
character, Spock from Star Trek, spent many decades trying to both understand and balance
these often diametrically opposed forces as he endeavored to come to terms with what it
means to be human. By making the character half human and half alien (Vulcan), Roddenberry
used Spock as a vehicle for all the viewers to explore this balance within themselves. While it
was science fiction, the show was written during an extremely turbulent time in America, not
unlike today. The 1960’s was a decade dominated by the Civil Rights movement and the
Vietnam war, and the show often became a lightly disguised reflection of the audience’s real
world. Issues of war, racism, and xenophobia were often the foundation of many plot lines. But
by setting these stories in space, Roddenberry was able to get audiences to consider ideas
they would instantly close their minds to if they were presented in a realistic, everyday format.
In fact, just a year after the Loving vs. Virginia case led to the legalization of interracial marriage
in 1967, the first interracial kiss in the history of television took place…on Star Trek. If I were to
use today’s terminology, I might go so far as to call the show woke. At the time, many Southern
TV stations refused to even air that episode. Oddly, today, no one thinks of Star Trek as some
particularly controversial or revolutionary show. Time passes and people fall for the rosy
narrative that “this is how it always was.” They want to believe the perfect picture and so often,
as a result, lose track of the principles and the struggle that led to the ability to paint this rosy
picture in the first place. This is why history so often repeats and partly why we once again find
our nation awash in similarly turbulent times. So as we navigate the issues we face today, I’d
like us all to take a little inspiration from Roddenberry and be a bit more logical Spock than
emotional Captain Kirk. With the increasing use of AI, propaganda is only going to get more
sophisticated and manipulative. However, it still can’t change facts. It still can’t change reality.
The truth must be our beacon If we are to keep the ship of state from crashing into the rocks in
the fog of this misinformation war.
The founders of this nation were obviously very passionate, courageous men. But they were
also incredibly intelligent, logical, and educated men. While history wraps them in a flag or
immortalizes them with paintings, such as Washington famously standing in his boat as his
men rowed him across the Delaware River, the truth is, the founders used intellect to convince
the colonies to rebel. Thomas Paine wrote a pamphlet called “Common Sense,” not
“Courageous Emotion.” There was no television or radio, so the argument to convince the
colonists to revolt from their mother country, something that had never succeeded in the
history of the world, was made mostly in writing. John and Sam Adams, Jefferson, Franklin,
Madison, Hamilton. They were prolific writers. Luckily for them, and us, they lived in an era
where people’s brains didn’t explode if they were forced to read something longer than the 144
characters of a tweet. Later, with the Articles of Confederation failing, Madison, Hamilton, and
John Jay wrote a series of newspaper pieces to convince Americans to support the ratification
of the Constitution. These articles are now known as the Federalist Papers and, even today, give an incredible insight into the thoughts behind the greatest governing document in history.
The Constitution was a masterpiece not just for its era. Thanks to the foresight of the founding
fathers, it was designed to live and grow with the nation they were risking their lives to build.
I ask all my readers to open their minds and silence their emotions as they process political
information and stories these days. The question I want people to ask isn’t, "Is the writer or
speaker R or D?” Instead, ask if the conclusions reached are logical. Ask if they are fact-based.
Be willing to play devil’s advocate with your most strongly held beliefs. Examine the evidence
the same way a jury does. If there’s no evidence to back up an argument, be skeptical. Ask
why? People who have right and truth on their side are never afraid of the evidence. They’re
never afraid of that evidence being examined in the harsh light of context and perspective. If
there is evidence and it runs contrary to what you have said or believed prior, be humble.
There’s no shame in being wrong. There’s no shame in having fallen for sophisticated
misinformation. However, there is if you choose your ego over the evidence. There is shame if
you choose to hold on to discredited beliefs because the notion of admitting you were wrong
and potentially the “other side” was right is too much to bear. That, quite simply, is antithetical
to the ideals that built this country. It is willfully chosen ignorance. The belief that we should
reject cold hard truths for the warmth and comfort of traditionally held lies is as anti-American
as it gets. England pushed ideas of tradition, loyalty, and mythical ideals of citizenry and
country to keep their colonies loyal. The founding fathers rejected these lies and truth was their
most powerful weapon. They exhibited the greatest and most American attribute of all:
audacity. The audacity to speak the truth in an era when truth could get you killed. I ask you to
find that American audacity again today.
In return, this is the promise I will make to you. Everything you read in my columns will be
sourced and backed up with evidence and data. It will be presented within context and
perspective. This isn’t about R or D, it’s about truth or lies. Truth is the foundation of all my
political beliefs. It’s the reason why my beliefs have changed over the years as I learned more.
Truth is my north star. So if the truth leads you to vote for a political party, or to realize that
you’ve been voting for the wrong political party, then so be it. Don’t be afraid of where it leads.
While I am no Hamilton, Jefferson, or Thomas Paine, I, too, write to appeal to your common
sense, not your heart. In each article, I will lay out the facts, with proper context and
perspective, behind the issues confronting America today. In the course of doing so, I will link
them to the history of this nation to explain how far off course we have been blown and where
the right path is to get back on track. You will be able to have total confidence that, should you
choose to quote my article or send it to a friend, you will be able to back it up with facts. And if
you choose to challenge something you read, I implore you not to do so from an emotional
perspective. Do not assuage your ego with talking points from Twitter or some opinion
influencer. Let the evidence guide your questioning. Let logic be your bellwether. I will strive to
always link the evidence and data, so you can see where my conclusions come from. Because
like the founders, the truth will never scare me. My principles will never allow me to seek easy
refuge in falsehoods that appeal to my ego. That, if I could define it, is American courage. It’s
not about immature ideas of American imperial strength and might making right; it’s about the
humility to let truth be your guiding light in the face of the darkest storm.