SO WHO REALLY OWNS THE TRUTH?

When you've been born and raised in an age of presumed certainties (ie, America in the first half of the 20th C), today's many uncertainties can be vexing. Consider the relentless uncertainties about everything from the Bible to birth certificates, from coffee to wine to red meat, from vitamin E to prostate exams to pension plans. Among even the children, there is no longer any certainty left about Santa Claus, Easter Bunnies, and Tooth Fairies.

Kafka said it well: "It is hard to tell the truth, for although there is one, it is alive and constantly changing its face!"

What then are visitors from my generation to believe when we are currently witness to starling new revisions of old certainties like Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, and Ayn Rand.

The folks today parading in Franklin costumes have appropriated the old gent to their cause of opposing "big government." Now you see, my generation always studied Franklin as one of the first creative minds to use government to provide services for the people. Post offices, fire departments, and public libraries. Why he was one of the gifted voices after the Revolutionary War proposing a stronger central government with which to bond together the disparate 13 colonies.

As for Washington, my generation always remembers him as the first president of the "united" states, whose administration established the tradition of strong central government. Sending federal troops to quell a New England whiskey rebellion in the 1790s set the first precedent for the role of central executive power.

Then there's that old reprobate, Ayn Rand. Ever since the feisty lady wrote ATLAS SHRUGGED, she's been the pinup girl for every unfettered-capitalist, states-rights advocate, and mountaintop-survivalist around. And yet, when my generation read her, we also knew her as an atheist, a feminist, an outspoken supporter of abortion rights, and an opponent of the Vietnam War. So while the Right's newest darling, Rep Paul Ryan, demands his staff read her book, they weren't around when she was snorting fire at most every Conservative agenda in sight.

So perhaps a truce among the generations over whose "truth" is most true. For a handy one-step lesson in the futility of claiming the truth like a trophy, consider the American sports pages. The truth-tellers we call sports reporters will never ever quite see or report the same game the same way. Especially when reporting the same game, but from the two different home-town papers.

I guess it's still true. Whatever the generation: "Perception is reality." Really...!