A place where the truth can live
Having simmered and frothed for days, it came bubbling out fast on the Friday night capping election week at the alma mater’s homecoming reunion:
“The (manure) is hitting the fan, and it’s time to stand strong,” I told the University of St. Thomas journalism alumni, students, faculty and even the president. It was supposed to be a celebration except, with reason suffering a technical knockout, I could not help myself but to exhort in five Happy Hour minutes.
The place is named after St. Thomas Aquinas, who was all about truth and reason. Check out his “Summa Theologica” — it totally rocks with the First Mover Theory recited by a hermit priest in freshman theology. I am an old man and sentimental for the days of reason and syllogisms — if this, then that. All of it is built upon vigorous pursuit of the facts, testing them methodically, and then to the truth, and then some sort of moral reckoning. I am grateful to have idled my time behind the sandstone fortress of Aquinas Hall in St. Paul where I endured the lectures.
I told them the only value a reporter has is in credibility. The only way you earn credibility is by relentlessly asserting the facts.
The fact is, we have penned up Mexicans at the border and separated wailing children from their mothers. That offends natural law, in that these people are human beings. If they can lock up a Mexican they can lock up a reporter. The police raided newspapers in Kansas and Alabama over their reporting. In Oklahoma, a sheriff discussed killing a reporter. President-elect Trump refers to journalists as enemies of the people, which has sort of a Stalinesque ring to it. Just the facts, ma’am.
An assault on truth and reason is an offense to natural law, Aquinas would have told you if you listened to Father Lepak. It’s what we quaintly refer to as a moral failing or sin, intellectual slothfulness.
That would be elitist, I suppose.
It is what I was taught by the nuns at St. Mary’s and the priests at St. Thomas: Without the truth you are a banging gong.
A free press is under attack. President Trump has promised retribution on his adversaries. Father Whalen instructed us to be adversarial in loyalty to the truth.
The academy also is under fire for not managing free speech the way the ideologues would prefer. Trump is toying with the idea of taxing university endowments to help pay for tax cuts for rich people. The Iowa Legislature made furtive efforts to crack down on speech at private colleges like Buena Vista. BVU is hardly a socialist hotbed. Donors Don Lamberti and Harry Stine wouldn’t be so crazy about that, and Republican legislators tabled it.
Fortunately, Buena Vista and St. Thomas are deeply invested in the civic debate. You can hardly argue that Drake is elitist when it just announced that it will offer smart Iowa kids from humble backgrounds a full ride.
We’re in the same boat. Universities teach young minds how to reason, based on fact and method. That is becoming more difficult with a narrowing of the civic mind onto money and keeping the poor in their place.
It is vital to democracy that the young people from St. Thomas and BVU take up the battle for the truth. It is their obligation, I told them. The president did not take the microphone away. He shook my hand. A woman said they could raise some money off good old-fashioned pursuit of truth (and maybe even a drop of justice).
The state universities will be controlled by the politics. The private colleges will have to assume more of the burden of advocating for reason and defining reality. Send them a check. They are our first line of defense.
Likewise journalism. We are worthless if we stand back from tyranny. We might be irrelevant. The only way to gain relevance is to shed light. Forces that would like to keep us in the dark have the upper hand. For now, we have the First Amendment. We must assert the facts. You cannot have freedom without free speech. Without freedom you are not American, and all your ideals are for naught. Therefore, you know how logical deduction goes.
Art Cullen is the editor of the Storm Lake Times Pilot in Northwest Iowa, where this column appeared. For more columns and editorials, please consider a subscription to the Times Pilot. Or, if you wish, you can make a tax-deductible gift to the Western Iowa Journalism Foundation to support independent community journalism in rural Iowa. Thanks.
The Iowa Writers’ Collaborative
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Keep the pot bubbling, Art! And may we all add more ingredients. I love the "Stone soup" parable - and not just because it was named (?) for my family!
Now is the time for all good men (persons, individuals) to come to the aid of their country.
It is a time for open, reasoned debate. It is time to focus on the facts. Developing the facts will lead to the truth. The truth is not always what we want it to be.
It is my hope that there will be dedicated, honest, and courageous members of the Congress who will keep the President and his sycophants at bay.
Have courage. Be patient and persistent. Remember, 2026 is on the horizon!