A Point of Order

"Not Guilty is not the same as innocent."
"Regardless of the outcome of the trial... we know he's a traitor."

I'm still drinking long and hard at the well, re-examining what others have examined, still seeking... this isn't a full post, just a pause.

What we know to be true and false, what we know to be true, is not the same as Justice. Justice is not the same as what we know to be true, but what we can publicly agree to have been demonstrated as a reasonable conclusion.

Justice is more important than what we know to be true, Justice is the result of the intersection of what we know, and the method by which we come to know it by determining it to be so, and by extension what we can publicly, communally see what we can be known to all... not to each, but to all, that what we can publicly demonstrate, according to methods determined to be proper and just, that is all that we as members of the public have a right to act upon.

That is the method we use ourselves according to what we know in our inner recesses to be true, what we know, yet cannot bring out as evidence to share with others, what we cannot demonstrate but know - in matters of public justice, it is what we can demonstrate to know, what everyone can share as having access to, and through methods of reasoning most proper and correct, a supportable decision is made, and expresses Justice.

It does not masquerade as truth... that is for us to know ourselves... justice is what we can all know to be a reasonable conclusion. By the same methods we use internally to reach what we know to be true, justice is using what we each can know to be true, externally.

This is not in any way relativism, or cynicism, or the discarding of humanity which is skepticism; this is a recognition of what makes us who we are, Reason. No society of any worth, no civilization of any lasting relevance had or has ever emerged, which did not recognize this, and no civilization has ever known it, practiced it, become it, like Western Civilization.

To preach skepticism, or its cowering masked twin, the flat literalist absolutism of Kantian categorical imperatives - whether seeking or believing that some statement is somehow 'true' no matter the context of reality or the reality of your own knowledge and understanding, is to assault not only the west, but to attack that real Truth which dwells within you.

Those who wish for a truth that is beyond doubt, really mean that they want an understanding which absolves them of judgment, which they can claim to know as true without having to be responsible for their own conclusions. Not surprisingly they seek the company and approval of those who unquestioningly seem to believe the same as they do, without reason, without judgment, without responsibility, as 'true' beyond doubt, to avoid questioning... and seeing. That is the true soul of the skeptic and the Kantian both, and it is doubly the heart of the leftist.

The understanding, of the agreement to publicly reason based upon agreed upon methods, and supportable evidence, based upon what we can know to be true, in order to arrive at what we can all reasonably conclude to be proper, Just... it is the heart of our civilization. It is the heart of our Laws. It is the heart of us.

And we risk all we know, and all we can know, when we allow what we ourselves claim to know and believe to override what we can all know and agree upon. That is injustice.

A nation of laws, or a nation of men. Should we fully choose to become a nation of 'men' regardless of law, we will cease to be men at all.

We must have law, based upon what we know to be true in order to arrive at what we can agree upon to do.

Without that, there will exist no place where we can each learn and do what we know to be true.