Championing the truth

Some quotes we come across in our lives serve as continual reminders of what matters and what should guide our lives, particularly as Christians. William F. Buckley Jr. (one of my intellectual heroes) once made the following observation about the place of truth in history: “The most casual student of history knows that, as a matter of fact, truth does not necessarily vanquish. What is more, truth can never win unless it is promulgated. Truth does not carry within itself an antitoxin to falsehood. The cause of truth must be championed, and it must be championed dynamically.”

There is a profound Christian truth embedded in Buckley’s claim. The point of his axiom is that ever since Genesis 3, truth does not just surface and defend itself. The truth is at a deficit in a world governed by evil. Evil, lies, and falsehood are the default. That truth emerges at all is evidence of God’s common grace, that God, in His kindness, suppresses what is natural to fallen humanity by gracing us with the ability to know the truth. But the truth must be “promulgated,” according to Buckley, and it must be “championed dynamically.” In an age of deceit, it will take more work for the truth to surface and win out than for lies.

The truth of Buckley’s phrase is worth reflecting on in greater detail in the aftermath of this week’s news that Meta (the owner of Facebook and Instagram) would repeal its fact-checking and censorship regime. It is hard to understate just how significant this policy change is.

While many in the media speculate about what caused Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s change of mind (some accuse him of shifting with the political winds while others simply see this as a decision good for business), we should be less concerned about his motivation than what Zuckerberg said out loud in his now-viral video. And what he said matters greatly for how we as Christians understand our commitment to truth amid a regime of lies and censorship.

In addition to admitting systemic bias among the fact-checkers, Zuckerberg acknowledged that certain discussions that had been subject to censorship and shadow-banning were, in fact, legitimate debates that people should feel free to speak about. One of those topics he mentioned was the debate over transgenderism.

Yes, you read that correctly. According to Zuckerberg, the so-called transgender revolution is now a topic that has brought upon itself enough suspicion that it is no longer afforded the forcefield of invincibility it received on Meta’s platforms.

Such a change is only possible when people continue speaking up. One of my former bosses used to say, “Silence never wins.” That has proven to be one of the most important phrases of my life.

Of course, there are figures like J.K. Rowling who have used their fame and wealth to bring attention to transgender absurdities. But I’d like to go a few rungs lower on the ladder and suggest that a lot of everyday people, many of them Christians, kept speaking up at significant cost to themselves about the problems associated with trying to divorce gender from biology.

And here we are. All because a lot of people sought to champion the truth and do so dynamically. There is a lesson here: Keep standing up for the truth. We have no idea how the flux of history from one generation to the next will receive and reconsider ancient truths. There is no “right side of history” in this age, as progressives like to speak of. The right side of truth is all there is, and it requires a witness for its advance.

However, there are lessons that conservatives and liberals must learn from this situation.

First, if we want to understand why progressives are upset at Mark Zuckerberg, it would be best not to see their rage primarily through the lens of a high-minded commitment to truth, accuracy, or inaccuracy but through power. Actions like Zuckerberg’s make it more difficult for progressives to control cultural discourse.

Perhaps, that is a cynical way of looking at the situation. But there have been far too many instances of progressives trafficking in falsehoods for me to believe that somehow, all of a sudden, they have found a love for the truth.

But conservatives who are quick to criticize the “procedural neutrality” of the Constitution or trade liberal authoritarianism for post-liberal authoritarianism should take a moment to pause and reflect. Meta’s actions are voluntary. The “fact-checking” was not working, and it was not good for business, so the company changed its policy.

Perhaps we should refrain from seeing this week’s news from Meta in strictly left-coded or right-coded ways (and I’m saying that to myself, especially). We should see it as a renaissance of basic common sense, a summoning of procedural fairness, and an invocation of classic constitutional principles of free speech to refine public discourse in more equalizing ways.

People are reducing Zuckerberg’s decision to politics more than coming to grips with the actual harms of ideological gatekeeping that companies like Meta have been doing. The 2024 election was a repudiation of media-governed narrative control. Regardless, if Meta does want to compete more powerfully against X, maybe that’s a good thing since mimicking best practices like Community Notes is called keeping pace with market demands.

We should refuse to live in a groupthink dystopia. “In a time of deceit, George Orwell once famously said, “telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”