Scottish Truth

I couldn't help but snap these photos as I toured the construction site of the new Scottish Parliament. It was as if the Scottish people sought to imbue their new parliament with the spirit of enlightenment Scottish and other scholars helped found in previous centuries. The connection between truth and democracy, and between the enlightenment to the pursuit of liberal democratic politics, are often submerged in contemporary society (although see, of course, Yaron Ezrahi's The Descent of Icarus, and Al Gore's new film An Inconvenient Truth). The submergence of Scotland (whose new parliament is itself a remarkable testament to democracy's ability to undermine particular forms of sovereignty in favor of others) to the truth is no less relevant for those who are trying to understand the shifting dynamics of political globalization. What does it mean, for example, for how we understand the deeply contested factual claims at the core of disputes over the US invasion of Iraq in 2003?