From: utzoo!dciem!mmt Newsgroups: net.college Title: Re: Re: Jeane Kirkpatrick - (nf) Article-I.D.: dciem.204 Posted: Wed Mar 2 20:36:41 1983 Received: Wed Mar 2 20:42:00 1983 References: ucbcad.737 Michael Turner is probably unrealistic when he assumes that it would become obvious very quickly whether or not Jean Kirkpatrick was lying. Josef Goebbels had the measure of a public fed by only a few information sources when he said that the public will believe a big lie sooner than a small one, especially if the big lie is repeated often enough. When the authorities proclaim a truth, people do tend to believe it; it is our present misfortune that we have found our authorities to be lying for reasons of political expediency quite often in recent years. But how many lies are still around, passing for truth? We don't know. Questioning some of them may seem like heresy -- people who do it are thought to be fools, or are suppressed or ignored. The other side of the same coin is the suppression of inconvenient truth, such as the impending failure of the oil and gas supply. Most readers of this will live to see that day, but it is amazing how many people think that stories about limited supplies are just fabrications of oil companies wanting to make big profits. Half-truths cover lies very well. It's even worse when we deal with foreign news, especially when both sides of a conflict make direct observation difficult except when it would help their own case. Martin Taylor