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As the smoke cleared, William Beaty <[email protected]> mounted the barricade and roared out: > On Thu, 14 May 2009, Edmund Storms wrote: > > > It is truly amazing and scary to see how much power and influences > > the skeptics have. > > It's a "Witch-hunt atmosphere," full of self-nominated witchhunters, > very similar to the red scare paranoia of the 1950s. Be careful or > you'll be labeled as "suspected Commie" and have to move to some other > town. Let me tell you from personal, ongoing experience that the "1950's" have never, EVER left us. > > I think an interesting study could be made of why skepticism has so > > much power compared to what is claimed to be good science based on an > > open minded evaluation of observation. > > In a word: fear. Modern witch-hunts are all about fear of banishment > from the community. This explains the endless cowardice one finds in the face of this juggernaut. And the bourgeoisie understand VERY well how to manipulate the masses in this regard -- which is why they jealously guard "their" mass-propaganda media from all the rest of us. Praise Marx for the Internet. (For now.) > > Why are people who clearly violate the standards of science, rational > > discussion, and honesty given any influence at all? > > Besides the existence of witchhunters, the more fundamental problem is > that no member of the community dares point out the fanatacism and > corruption of the witch-hunters. If criticism of skeptics is seen as > infallible evidence of crackpotism, then there are no checks and > balances against skeptic corruption. > > The first law of the modern Skeptic seems to be "Thou Shalt Only > Criticise the Victim, Never Yourself." Nobody seems to care that > this turns intelligent people into the worst sort of pseudoscientists. And I find the lack of self-kriticism in that exact same regard to recent 'ikonoklasm' here on vortex-l to be quite amusing -- on top of being highly, HIGHLY ironic..! ;P - -- grok. - -- Build the North America-wide General Strike. TODO el poder a los consejos y las comunas. TOUT le pouvoir aux conseils et communes. ALL power to the councils and communes. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (GNU/Linux) iEYEARECAAYFAkoMmkQACgkQXo3EtEYbt3HYJwCg34NG54gUCOzc/O7bFEvwTFQC i8AAnA9pbIZ+sYI/IeaD+mT9pbNrWTK9 =S+5n -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
