“What is Truth?” is a question that has been around since the Greeks. One can speak of moral truth as well as aesthetic truth, yet scientific truth seems to be the only one that’s undeniable. And yet, even though there’s scientific proof the world is round, those who deny it can still live normal lives outside of mental institutions.

That old Greek, Diogenes, was seen carrying a lit torch around the market in daylight. When asked why, he answered that he was searching for an honest man. I suppose intellectual dishonesty was as brazen back then as it is now, but the Greeks would not have reached the heights of wisdom they did if they denied self-evident truths.

Needless to say, at present in America and Britain, we are busy constructing the biggest falsehoods our minds can muster in order to pacify those who feel history has wronged them. In George Orwell’s 1984, two plus two equaled five if the Party decreed it; the Ministry of Truth disseminated lies; and what Big Brother decreed was the only truth. Orwell didn’t live long enough to see the modern version of his nightmare scenario take place in America and Western Europe. He had the Soviet system in mind when he wrote this classic, yet after its collapse it was the victorious Americans who embraced Big Brother.

About 15 years ago I was seated next to a Nobel Prize winner, scientist James Watson, co-discoverer of DNA. He is a tall, handsome, blue-eyed, older man who was delightful company and who mostly wanted to hear me tell stories about Princess Diana. Unthinkingly, I asked him about a past finding of his concerning the average IQ scores of African populations compared to Indo-European ones. He looked at me as if I were O’Brien from 1984 and almost begged me to change the subject.

Watson later gave millions of his Nobel Prize dollars to black causes, yet he still became a nonperson because his scientific findings about the genetic component of intelligence did not suit the politically correct. If science can be disputed or denied in order to please political correctness, truth becomes redundant and a bad joke. This pernicious philosophy of denying truth is not new. The Nazis and the Communists perfected it, and the Chinese government revels in it even as I write. Amazingly, it has caught on here in America, supposedly the “Land of the Free.” A friend of mine recently rang me from Florida just as the Democrats in the U.S. House were striking from the text of their congressional rulebook gendered words such as “father,” “brother,” “sister,” and “son.” He told me how people in the enclosed community where he lives are outraged by this, but they whisper their outrage, scared to death they might be denounced and cancelled by their neighbors. The creation of a culture in which people are scared to say what they mean is the beginning of the end of freedom.

American universities effectively suspended political debate, and from there repression spread via the Internet to create a bland, “safe” environment in which only the left is allowed freedom of speech. Far from being bastions of freedom, universities have come to see themselves as fortresses protecting people from offensive ideas, such as the scientific fact of biological sex differences.

Science also comes second at universities where racial sensibilities are concerned. At Cornell University, students who refuse the flu vaccine are barred from libraries and other campus buildings. Students of color, however, can decline with impunity. “Students who identify as Black, Indigenous, or as a Person of Color (BIPOC) may have personal concerns about fulfilling the Compact requirements based on historical injustices and current events,” Cornell administrators decreed. In other words, white kids must be tested and vaccinated or get kicked out, while black kids can have it either way—all because last year, 1,000 miles away, a career criminal died after some dumb cop knelt on his neck.

This self-flagellating lunacy by American universities is encouraged by greedy, white-hating media such as The New York Times and The Washington Post, the latter owned by Amazon’s chief executive, Jeff Bezos. A case in point, a 15-year-old who years ago sang rap lyrics containing the N-word to no one in particular was taped by a busybody. Now that she’s a well-rounded sophomore at a Texas university, The New York Times published a full-page story about her indiscretion, forcing her to leave her school, her life in ruins. If that is not Orwellian, I don’t know what is.

Free minds and free markets have always outperformed sclerotic central planning and tyrannical ideologies. But now imagined racism dominates the news media and late night shows spread the false assumption that America is a race-based white supremacist society with a killer cop standing on every corner. It’s time to cry halt to political correctness and do something to preserve our freedoms, which are quickly ebbing away. ◆