There are two stories on the wire today that look very different, but to me, speak to the same issue.

Story number one is about a high school teacher in South Carolina who claims that blacks are inferior to whites.  His name is Winston McCuen, and he says:  "Intellectually, yes they are . . . This has been confirmed over and over, and this is a generalization. Again, there are some blacks who are more intelligent than individual whites. But as a rule, that is true. I-Q tests prove it over, and over and over."

The link:  http://www.wltx.com/news/news19.aspx?storyid=37795

The second story concerns a little known Democrat running for attorney general in Alabama named Larry Darby.  His remarks suggest he's a bit of a white supremacist, but his most controversial position is he claims the Holocaust is a fake, manufactured event.  He says: "I am what the propagandists call a Holocaust denier, but I do not deny mass deaths that included some Jews . . . There was no systematic extermination of Jews. There's no evidence of that at all."

The link: http://www.newsday.com/news/local/wire/newjersey/ny-bc-nj—alabamaattorneyge0512may12,0,1010796.story?coll=ny-region-apnewjersey


In both of these stories, we have a man who is making statements that contradict popular wisdom.  Both are hot button issues in which a majority of the public — myself included — is firmly convinced they believe what is right and are highly offended or shocked by what is being said.

But what, in fact, is truth?  I am not suggesting the Holocaust is fake or that blacks are inferior to whites.  I don't buy the evidence that these men supposedly put forth.  But I am willing to speculate on what truth is?

Isn't it simply a mass agreement?  For instance, if we decide that all men are created equal, doesn't that agreement on a mass scale make it so?

The Nazis, in their own right, did something similar.  For a brief period of history, they were convinced that they were the master race, doing the work that they were destined to do.  As history has proven, they were wrong, but does that negate the truth that they lived during the reign of Hitler?

Many truths from the past have been overturned and society has not ended.  A major one was that the sun revolved around the earth.  When Copernicus proposed this, he was ostracized because everyone thought the idea so preposterous.  But in the end, of course, he was right, and society adapted.

As I said, I am not making these arguments to promote racism.  In fact, I am doing just the opposite.   What I suggest is something much more radical —  why don't we become aware of our abilities, as a group, to make truth.

What if, for instance, we decide, as a group, that war in any form is no longer acceptable?  What if we decide that this crazy conflict between Islam and the West must and will stop?   Will our leaders or the Osamas of the world have any recourse but to agree?

The power of the populace to determine reality is enormous.  All we have to do is understand this, and then believe in ourselves and our fellow man.

Let's start making some decisions.