"THE Truth"

George Weigel, biographer of Pope John Paul II, has an outstanding piece in today's Wall Street Journal. The key quote:

"For if there is only your truth and my truth and neither one of us recognizes a transcendent moral standard (call it 'the truth') by which to settle our differences, then either you will impose your power on me or I will impose my power on you; Nietszche, great, mad prophet of the 20th century, got at least that right. Freedom uncoupled from truth, John Paul taught, leads to chaos and thence to new forms of tyranny. For, in the face of chaos (or fear), raw power will inexorably replace persuasion, compromise, and agreement as the coin of the political realm. The false humanism of freedom misconstrued as 'I did it my way' inevitably leads to freedom's decay, and then to freedom's self-cannibalization. This was not the soured warning of an antimodern scold; this was the sage counsel of a man who had given his life to freedom's cause from 1939 on."

R.I.P., Karol.

http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110006512