What does it mean to be well read?

In a conversation, I mentioned that many in the intelligence community consider London to be Ground Zero for world jihadism.  It’s not the numbers, it’s the mosques.  Mr. Bookworm was outraged:  “Who are these ‘many’?”  How dare I repeat someone else’s opinion as if I know the facts.  I know nothing about terrorism, nor does anyone else, because we have no idea what the real facts are.  His attitude struck me as the reductio ad absurdum of the deconstructionism taught in American universities.  No text has any actual meaning.  All meaning is supplied by the reader’s own biases.    Because I’m pro-Israel, I take meaningless facts and give them a pro-Israel — and anti-everyone else — spin.   End of story.

Further, because we have no knowledge of what facts are actually real facts, and because facts in any event have no meaning, we can only rely on interpreters.  And because I refuse to read, or, if I do read, to give credence to, Mr. Bookworm’s favorite interpreters — Paul Krugman and Tom Friedman — nothing I say can have any validity.  I have neither facts nor interpretation on my side.

This is a reminder of why it is very difficult to have a conversation with a liberal.