Fruits and Nuts and the New World Order

I am decidedly skeptical about all the conspiracy theorists that are out there. I thought I'd put this up as a disclaimer since I just linked to a Rick Wiles radio piece which contained a lot of interesting material, but also a lot of stuff that seems likely to come from lala land. Are there bad guys in the world? You bet! Are there people who want to create something like a "New World Order"? You bet! Is there some pervasive interlocking conspiracy that every politician is linked into so they can move us towards this utopian vision that would almost surely be a disaster? Probably not.

That being said perhaps some statement of philosophy is in order. Let me say that I take in as broad a range of material as I can from any number of political perspectives because I don't think anyone has a monopoly on the truth. But the sheer amount of nonsense out there is quite pervasive so you have to have your filters on all the time and to me that means something like Ronald Reagan's phrase "trust but verify." There are a lot of sincere people peddling sheer nonsense. But part of the problem is how to verify? I think that is a decidedly serious problem.

A friend of mind in a conversation I had long ago (circa 1965), when I was still only 23, said that his father told him that it was all a game of "Who do you trust?" I think that's exactly the case. You end up having to build a list, not necessarily literally although that's fine too, of people and principles. The people are those that really care about the truth and that you think exercise due diligence in trying to verify what they say. The principles are those that have been tried and tested and shown to be themselves true starting with things like logic, analysis, mathematics, etc.

The problem that gets really sticky is that nuts and fruits are not necessarily nuts and fruits about everything. And on the flip side, the people that are generally solid are not necessarily solid on everything. It is important to cultivate a certain level of skepticism that requires everything to be held only provisionally until it has been validated in some way. "Trust, but verify!"

If you think I've gone off the deep end, please let me know. I want to know more than opinion however. I want reasons. Opinions are not worth much. Truth is something that stands up to the full light of focused attention. Dig down for facts and principles so that you can discover the truth. Test everything.