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Politics : The Environmentalist Thread -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: maceng2 who wrote (7507)	10/3/2006 12:47:16 PM
From: average joe	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 36917

I did not realize you were the self appointed guardian of this thread. Is there anything else that is outside the scope of this thread?

To: maceng2 who wrote (7507)	10/4/2006 8:51:34 AM
From: Wharf Rat	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 36917

"First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they fight you. Then you win." —Gandhi

To: maceng2 who wrote (7507)	10/5/2006 12:05:47 PM
From: longnshort	Respond to of 36917

Vast conspiracy "Conspiracy theorists allege that the events of 9/11 are not adequately explained by the 'official story' fingering Osama bin Laden and his network as the culprits. What really needs explaining, though, is not 9/11, but the existence of such conspiracy theorists themselves, whose by now well-known speculations about what 'really happened' that day are -- not to put too fine a point on it -- so mind-numbingly stupid that it is mystifying how anyone with a functioning cerebrum could take them seriously even for a moment. ... "A clue to the real attraction of conspiracy theories, I would suggest, lies in the rhetoric of theorists themselves, which is filled with self-congratulatory descriptions of those who accept such theories as 'willing to think,' 'educated,' 'independent-minded,' and so forth, and with invective against the 'uninformed' and 'unthinking' 'sheeple' who 'blindly follow authority.' The world of the conspiracy theorist is Manichean: either you are intelligent, well-informed, and honest, and therefore question all authority and received opinion; or you accept what popular opinion or an authority says and therefore must be stupid, dishonest, and ignorant. There is no third option. "The absurd idea that to be intelligent, scientific, and intellectually honest requires a distrust for all authority per se and a contempt for the opinions of the average person, has so deeply permeated the modern Western consciousness that conspiratorial thinking has for many people come to seem the rational default position." --Edward Feser, writing on "We the Sheeple? Why Conspiracy Theories Persist," Sept. 20 in Tech Central Station at www.tcsdaily.com