Exaggeration and Denial

In “Exaggeration and Denial” (Chalcedon Report No. 422), Rushdoony argues that modern relativism, grounded in the myth of neutrality, has corrupted truth by treating all claims as morally equivalent and by forcing the media to give equal weight to unequal realities. This false balance produces a destructive cycle in which facts are exaggerated to provoke outrage or denied to blunt moral judgment, all under the guise of objectivity. He insists that the twentieth century’s vast record of mass murder by Turks, Nazis, and Communists cannot honestly be disputed, yet modern consciences, numbed by scale, are tempted either to inflate lesser atrocities or to deny greater ones altogether. Against both exaggeration and denial, Rushdoony appeals to the Ninth Commandment, which demands truthfulness regardless of political or emotional goals. When truth is subordinated to shock value or ideological utility, historical revisionism sets the stage for future atrocities by raising the threshold of what counts as “evil enough” to matter. The real danger, he concludes, lies in a culture that treats God’s law as merely one opinion among many, thereby forfeiting any fixed moral standard by which truth and justice can be upheld.