Voting on Historical Truth

As the House Foreign Affairs Committee passes a resolution to call the mass killings of Armenians that began in 1915 “genocide,” defying all eight living former secretaries of state, who signed a joint letter saying that such a resolution by Congress would seriously harm U.S. relations with Turkey, I recommend the thoughts of a young Armenian‐​American writer, Garin Hovannisian:

As the great grandson of genocide survivors, the grandson of genocide historians, and the son of Armenian repatriates — though writing, I’m afraid, without the sanction of the generations — I am insulted by that sticker. That Congress “finds” the genocide to be a fact makes the tragedy no more real than its refusal, so far, has made it unreal. Truth does not need a permission slip from the state.


As an heir, moreover, of an American tradition of limited government, I am annoyed that the legislature is poking into a sphere in which it has neither business nor experience: the province of truth. It is bad enough that a committee of aristocrats governs the conventions of politics, economics and human rights. We the citizens scarcely need to sign over the laws of nature, too, lest gravity be repealed and the whole race goes floating about the universe.