“It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself. Subject opinion to coercion: whom will you make your inquisitors?” —Thomas Jefferson (1781)

In today’s society, there are many who start with the underlying proposition that the government knows best.  The reality is that the government does not hold a monopoly on truth.  It is in God we trust best not in government.

When searching out the truth, it is best that we allow anyone to make arguments and that these arguments be subjected to challenge.  As Thomas Jefferson asserted in “Notes On the State of Virginia, reason and free inquiry are what best make us able to and equally protects the search for truth.  In too many instances throughout human history, government has opposed truth.   Truth, unlike we humans, is an infallible quantity that should not be inhibited by our propensity toward error.

Mankind is far too often governed by our passions.  These passions can have private and public means.  But by any means, passionate discourse does not truth make. Bringing government into the truth making is simply coercion.  Coercion, even with a uniformity of opinion, is not desirable.   It only acts to crowd out free inquiry and cloud truth.

We see this in many of modern society’s debates.  Advocates on one side or another of many issues spend more time calling opponents names instead of developing rational argumentation.   Rights are created out of thin air to support policies favored and then instead of explaining why such rights might be supported, these sophist politicians simply denounce opposition to these fictitious rights due to the oxymoronic tautology that to oppose these rights by that very opposition  denies the fundamental right.  Never should we mind that such ‘fundamental rights’ have no solid basis of support.

In other matters, that of global climate change for example, its proponents do not vigorously defend their propositions as proper science is conducted.  Instead, anyone who might challenge its underlying tenets or oppose its provably political agenda is denounced as naïve and anti-science.  This begs the question for any student of human history as to when it became forgotten that human science has a provably fallible record.  Simultaneously, it is also forgotten that truth is not fallible.  So, by the very essence of this, it is truth that should be sought after and not dogma – not even in the name of ‘science’.

Galileo might have a thing or two to say about this.  So would many others along the path of mankind’s history.  Free inquiry must be sought and protected.  Regardless of how much we might disagree with opposing viewpoints, we must operate under the assurance that in the end truth must and will prevail.