Truisms And Falsisms

[official portrait of Geo. Washington]


Truisms (of which falsisms are the opposite and that's as far as I shall define them) are self-evident claims, things so obvious as to be hardly worth mentioning. Yet we do mention them, often. Why is that? Partly, they are repeated in rebuttal to falsisms like, Americans are goofballs to be exploited for the gains of their betters. To which, historically, America replied: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." The capitalizations are not mine; they are fixed in the Declaration of Independence as invocation of Natural Law.

Natural law is a set of obligations and principles obtained by reason from an examination of the universe. It is expressed in the language of nature, so even goofballs understand it. It adapts to human time and tide by poetic justice. Here is an example: In 1776, the British opposition to American independence garrisoned Hessian troops in the town of Trenton, NJ. Geo. Washington routed them by crossing the Delaware and wiping out their rear. This week, the town of Trenton decided to save money by discontinuing toilet paper in its capitol lavatories. Natural Law and human history exist independently but frequently visit.

Winston Churchill, who represented all elements of this essay by being British, a proponent of independence, a Natural force and an important figure in history, once said, "History is written by the Victors." Let us examine this statement. Aurelius Victor recorded a history of Caesars from Julius to Constantine. Victor Keats is esteemed as a prominent chess historian. Francis Fuller Victor compiled an important history of the American Northwest. So it seems, even if the odd Champollion or couple of Durants share some credit (as it is both a truism and falsism that the exception proves the rule), the Victors were certainly very busy.

We can't precisely categorize Churchill's remark as a truism or falsism because historians are hard to keep track of in the best of times. Certainly he had a lot to do but, as any UFO historian will tell you, Churchill had an unusual distraction. In nearly every outdoor photograph he was hectored by a large cigar-shaped object. No expert opinion exists regarding its world of origin or appearance on this one, but it seemed to recover from all attempts to incinerate it --which defies natural laws and proves by exception all this essay's points.