Reality Check

Malcolm Muggeridge was a famous British liberal who became a conservative. Asked why, he replied, “I’ve been mugged by reality.” We in the West have lived so long with faddish notions expressed in sayings like, “Well, that’s your truth, but not mine” that I’m afraid we have actually lapsed into a kind of bizarre ‘wishful thinking’ that apparently imagines that we can alter Reality just by ‘thinking’ things are different than they are. But as John Adams said, “Facts are stubborn things.” And Reality – the way things actually are – is even more unyielding. Here are some current examples, I think, of things that modern people have tried to imagine differently than what actually exists: 1) the nature and goals of Muslim extremism; 2) the Ebola virus, and 3) Hell.