If you're looking for truth, don't overlook the obvious answer

Editor's note: Several years ago, on an earlier Website, I wrote this. I think it still holds true today.

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"… and the lonely voice of youth cries, 'What is truth?'"
– JOHNNY CASH, 1968

If there’s one answer I could give to that question, it would be that truth is something almost everyone thinks they know, but very few of us actually do.

There are certainly plenty of folks on both sides of the political divide who will tell you they know the truth and they’ll be happy to share it with you, but truth through one side or the other of the political spectrum is usually lacking.

Truth isn’t really about politics, anyway.

Regardless of what folks on the left or the right will tell you, they don’t have all the answers. That doesn’t mean they don’t have any answers, though, and taking a "plague on both your houses" approach rarely accomplishes very much.

Truth? I know a few things that might qualify as basic truths, and one of them is that love is at the heart of everything. It’s why Jesus boiled the 10 commandments of the Old Testament down to what he called the two great commandments — love God and love your neighbor.

That’s a basic truth. If you strive to love God and love your neighbor, and put those two goals ahead of everything else, you’ll probably be a fairly happy person.

It’s why if I fall anywhere on the political spectrum, it’s to the left of center because I believe we have a responsibility to help the less fortunate among us. It’s why I believe in a progressive income tax, and in an estate tax that limits the vast wealth that can be passed down from parents who earned it to children who didn’t do anything except belong to the Lucky Sperm Club.

I’d rather see a government that represents me helping children from poor families — it isn’t their fault their parents are poor — than giving more and more tax incentives to the wealthy to send jobs overseas.

Overly simplistic? Sure, but there are very few of us who don’t oversimplify things. One of the great heroes of the right wing in the ’80s was Margaret Thatcher, who said that there were really no such things as communities, that there were really only individuals and families.

That’s certainly one way of looking at it. If we assume that everyone will act in their own interest, we are at least able to predict what they will do. But to view the world that way, we have to ignore the possibility that we contain any spark of the divine, any basic goodness.

I don’t know how Thatcher would explain the Gandhis, the Mother Teresas; maybe her theory only covers the world of politics.

So what is truth?

To me, anyway, the most basic truth there is involves love. Love, whether it’s for God, friends, family or neighbors, ennobles us in a way nothing else can.