If you only care about the lies of your opponent, you don't care much about the truth.

This is the season when liars come out to play. It's election time. Before November, almost half a billion dollars will be spent trying to get us to vote one way or the other. Responding to this onslaught of campaign propaganda simply exhausts the soul. How many messages do we face every day? How often do we simply accept the truth of something we hear without question, without evaluation?

Somebody in a position of apparent "authority" says something in a factual manner - a newscaster, an alleged witness, a pundit, an advertisement, an author - and we swallow it whole. Maybe it plucks at the edges of our conscience or fits neatly within the framework of our prejudices, but somehow it lodges in our brains as "true" and we believe it. Usually, the information we digest supports an existing worldview. We prefer one news show over another. We read certain magazines in search of facts that support our positions. The conclusions we reach very rarely alter the foundation of beliefs on which our worldview rests. Because most of us live our lives according to our worldviews, propaganda that enforces it is very easy to accept and propaganda that challenges it is very difficult to detect and debunk. We act as our very own "Spinmasters."

If this is the case, how are we to determine what is true and what is not? Since we are in the middle of sawing our house in half in this year's national War of the Roses, it strikes me that answering this question and then putting the program into action is a rather patriotic thing to do - even if it shakes our worldviews a bit. We can all do our part to dial down the chainsaw by doing a little critical thinking and then agreeing that we will not knowingly pass on slander, half-truths and general crap to our friends and neighbors.

What is "Critical Thinking?" I like this definition from the Clinical Epidemiology & Evidence-Based Medicine Glossary:

The disciplined ability and willingness to assess evidence and claims, to seek a breadth of contradicting as well as confirming information, to make objective judgments on the basis of well supported reasons as a guide to belief and action, and to monitor one’s thinking while doing so (metacognition). The thinking process that is appropriate for critical thinking depends on the knowledge domain (e.g.: scientific, mathematical, historical, anthropological, economic, philosophical, moral) but the universal criteria are: clarity, accuracy, precision, consistency, relevance, sound empirical evidence, good reasons, depth, breadth and fairness.

Hmmm. Let's look at those final words again, and then look at a case study. Again, "...the universal criteria are: clarity, accuracy, precision, consistency, relevance, sound empirical evidence, good reasons, depth, breadth and fairness."

Case Study: Swiftboat Veterans for Truth. This group of swift boat veterans maintain that John Kerry's leadership in the anti-war movement makes him unfit to be president. The group has also accused the Democratic leader of exaggerating the extent of his injuries so he could be awarded medals for courage and win an early release from his overseas tour. Do these accusations pass the critical-thinking sniff test? Yes and no.

The first accusation passes, but it is not fact-based and is therefore not really debatable. The swiftboaters believe Kerry betrayed his fellow servicemen with his testimony in 1971 in which he said American soldiers committed war crimes. Mr. Kerry has since said that he would phrase things differently as a mature adult than he did 32 years ago as a young man. If you believe that Kerry's opinion disqualifies him from the presidency, then that is your opinion. However, it cannot be disputed that he had and has the right to testify about his opinions in any way he so chooses. He was also far from alone in his opposition to the Vietnam War. It is a far stretch to equate his anti-war stance with an anti-veteran stance.

What are more troubling are the accusations about Kerry's war record. There is no logical connection between the legitimacy of Kerry's war record and his subsequent activism in the anti-war movement. No matter how much one may disagree with Kerry's thinking after the war, one cannot dispute the fact that he did serve, and by all accounts, served honorably and bravely. If we accept service records as empirical and fair evidence of his service, then Kerry's are in direct contradiction to the accusations of the Swiftboat Veterans. In fact many of the current accusations are made by the same chain of command that approved his glowing reviews and medals. Why the switcheroo?

That would speak to "good reasons." The "reasons" behind the attack are 100% political. Though they present themselves as non-partisan, Swiftboat Veterans for Truth is organized and funded by the GOP and features some enemies of Kerry, notably John O'Neill and Merrie Spaeth, that date back to Nixon.

But what about the accuracy of the allegations? Did Kerry really exaggerate the extent of his injuries in order to win medals? Is it really possible for Kerry to engineer a war event and falsely earn all those medals? How many of the accusers were actually on Kerry's boat? What do the men with whom he served say?

The allegations appear to be false at worst and gross distortions at best. Is it really conceivable that Kerry had the doctors, nurses, and entire chain of command in his pocket? Could he wound himself, then work the system to produce a Bronze Star, a Silver Star and three Purple Hearts. It's not likely. At least that is beyond the level of debate in which I am willing to engage. Further, none of the Swiftboat Veterans for Truth were on the boat with Kerry. Even though O'Neill authored an OP-Ed in the Wall Street Journal entitled, "I was on Mr. Kerry's boat in Vietnam. He doesn't deserve to be commander in chief" it is for the reader to discover that Mr. O'Neill served on the same boat as Kerry but at different times. He took command of Kerry's boat after Kerry had been discharged under the "wounded three times and your out" rule. Is that "accurate and fair?" Um. No.

Why haven't any of Kerry's shipmates joined the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth? With the exception of one, all of his shipmates give him high marks for courage and bravery. In fact, some of the veterans with whom Kerry served, including the gentleman whose life Kerry saved, appear in one of Kerry's ads. When you give a job reference, do you give the reference of the people who worked in the same company but in a different location, or worked there after you quit? Or do you give the reference of the people with whom you actually worked?

Finally, as a matter of conviction, I believe that such flimsy, obviously politically-motivated accusations about one veteran's combat service impugns all veterans, including the men and women doing the country's hard business in Iraq and Afghanistan right now. No matter what you’re political convictions or your opinion about Kerry's post-war opinion, the evidence (military records, testimony of those with whom he served, medals) discredits the ugly charges laid before us by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. So do us all a favor, dear reader, and don't pass them on.