Battling Our Own Balderdash!

WARNING!

Be careful what you believe without evidence. When real things are happening that are disturbing, the nuts come out of the woods. I remember during the Branch Davidian Standoff, a stream of paranoid schizophrenics streamed through our town on the way to Waco, mumbling about government conspiracies. It's happening again.

Our liberties are, in fact, being threatened. Let's remember, however, that the truth is more important than making a point. Some of the stuff that's being posted on some of the conservative discussion groups is really questionable. There are two sources for this kind of stuff:

(1) People who are mentally unbalanced, kooks and conspiracy theorists

(2) Political wolves in sheep's clothing posting wildly inaccurate and paranoid stories while pretending to be conservatives in an effort to make conservatives look mentally unbalanced and like kooks and conspiracy theorists.

If you listen to Beck, Hannity, Limbaugh and the leading conservative commentators, they are careful to bring solid evidence before they tell a story. Let's follow their example and be very careful to verify everything we pass on in our community. We need to be 99.9% right all the time, to maintain our credibility since we are paddling upstream against a flood of media and educational system driven "common knowledge" that is slanted, distorted, manipulative and just plain wrong. It doesn't help us counter the mainstream when they lie if we pass along lies ourselves, however well-meaning the helpful soul was who made the story up.

Do some research first before you hit "forward".

Someone wrote once, "Satan, Satan is my name. Confusion is my game!"

Or as someone else wrote, "The devil is in the details." Let's try hard to make sure he's not. If something posted here is balderdash, you should say so. Let's be scrupulous about not letting a lie stand. Let's demonstrate our integrity by refusing to accept lies EVER, even when it's our own side telling them and you'd really love to believe the story because it's sooooooooooooooooooo good!

Tom King
Flint, TX