Winston Churchill said words to the effect of, “Truth is so important she must be protected by a vanguard of lies.” Of course, that was wartime.

A few years ago, Stephen Colbert introduced America to “truthiness”—the feeling that an idea must be true, even without evidence of its veracity.

Last year, Salon blogger Farhad Manjoo authored True Enough: Learning to Live in a Post-Fact Society. Mind you, I haven't read this book (yet) and thus can't speak to it. But isn't the idea itself fascinating in a disturbing way? I'm intrigued by the mere usage of the non-word "post-fact" and the implication that truth belongs to a bygone era.

After simply reading the title, I'm confronted by two disparate thoughts. One: a dread that truthiness even exists and that it should not relegated to satire, lest we laugh ruefully at our own ingrained cynicism. Two: truth should be mined, like a diamond.