Ian Williams

Ian,

I think your view of our fearless leaders is very naive. There are definitely not "widely divergent worldviews" found within any powerful institution, be it Congress, the Supreme Court or the board of any major corporation (including any mainstream media organization). If you believe these "diverse" views exist, please present some examples of members of Congress, members of the Supreme Court, present or ex-CEOs of any large corporation, present or ex-presidents of any large union, or any reporter, past or present, for a television network, major newspaper or magazine that has publicly expressed a beilef in any major conspiracy theory.

Also try to find a single example anywhere of a person in a similar position of power ever espousing the Huey Long view about "sharing the wealth." The recent example of the AIG banksters taking off with their millions of "bonuses" culled from their taxpayer "bailout" is a perfect illustration of this. The economic system is collapsing, millions are struggling financially, yet these clueless plutocrats grab more millions of taxpayer "bailout" funds for their own benefit. And then the unprincipled politicians strut and crow about how horrible this is, when they approved the whole sordid mess, without ever placing any restrictions upon these impoverished multi-millionaires. My point is, our financial problems revolve around the giant elephant in the room which is the tremendous disparity of wealth in our society.

Anyone who has had direct experience with Congress, the mainstream press, our court system, etc. will disagree with your rather rosy assessment of our society's leadership. They are not diverse in opinion, even when they are diverse in appearance. They are very good at keeping secrets and covering up for each other, as any would be whistleblower could tell you. This was exactly why Kennedy was so dangerous to so many powerful forces; he was "different" enough to frighten them into thinking that perhaps he could produce at least some change for the better.

There is the conventional view of history, which you share with the majority of people. Then there is the conspiracy view of history, which an increasing number of us subscribe to. I think that recent history alone should cause every thinking American to have a very dim view of our leaders, both in government and business. It's hard to escape the belief that there is corruption everywhere, and few if any truly principled and moral people in positions of authority. Conspiracy "theories" are born because of this well-founded suspicion, which grows daily thanks to the uncensored nature of the internet. However, hold on to your skepticism towards "conspiracies" and continue to remain unskeptical towards our leaders and institutions- you will make a great many friends in that "wildly divergent" crowd.

Don, hi, is this the part you were referring to?

I would make two points in response. First, consider some standard examples of such right-wing conspiracy theories, such as those involving Freemasons or Communists. These can be understood in two ways. On one interpretation, the idea would be that Freemasons, Communists, or whomever, given their ideological commitments, have actively sought to get themselves and their sympathizers into positions of power and influence so as to promote and implement their ideas, and that they have done so subtly and by using duplicity. But there is nothing in this idea that conflicts with anything I’ve been saying. In particular, there is nothing in it that entails that any single massively complex event was engineered in detail by a small elite manipulating, with precision, dozens or hundreds of actors across a bewildering variety of conflicting institutions and agencies in the context of a society that is to all appearances reasonably open, all the while skillfully covering their tracks to hide their actions to all but the most devoted conspiracy theory adepts. Rather, it just involves like-minded people working systematically and deviously to further their common interests in a general way over the course of a long period of time – a phenomenon that is well-known from everyday life, and does not require belief in any radical gap between appearance and reality in the social and political worlds. In short, it does not involve belief in any “conspiracy theory” of the specific sort I’ve been criticizing.

--Right Wing or Left Wing, This is mostly true.

Cause if so, that's an awful lot to infer from a two sentence section.

I am neither calling all conspiracy theorists paranoid delusionals nor all skeptics incredulous liars. I made this post to the topic titler, not to post my personal beliefs on the issues. As that's what I was told these forums are geared for. As to that equaling me somehow believing that we have a grand group of benevolent leaders, I just dunno what to say.

Okay, new here, so you'll have to forgive me if I'm not up to snuff on the latest opions on was badge man a real person or did photographer a have an umbrella dart gun? I was wondering what this "4th film" was and who supposedly filmed it, as I've been hitting up one of the few sources of free and readily searchable info on the web==youtube, and this video and several others mention a never released 4th film. Is there confirmation of a 4th film and who filmed it? Is there any leaked portions of it now?

Ian, you may possibly be talking about a hypothesised fourth copy of the Zfilm.

AFAIK: There was the original, the two SS copies. one which was sent to Washington straight away and a third that Harrry D. Holmes and FBI Sorrels(?) thumbed through, frame by frame, that night. (plus the transparencies.

It's travels may very well give genesis to a fourth (amd more?) copy of the prebreak Z film. Nights followed of showings to select locals. Perhaps too many to indicate they were only using the last copy which should by now be in the (sticky nailpolish tipped fingertips?) hands of the authorities. The orignal was already in the destructive hands of Life. No idea where the copy sent to Washington is.

Also early researchers made films out of the WC frame published(64) portions of the film.

Ahh, so an unedited version of Zapruder rather than an entirely new film?? Thank for clearing that up, I was wondering why there were no sites or threads anywhere on it if there was some unreleased filmer out there.

Well then, new question: Does Kennedy's silver-backed dollar EO pose a serious threat to the Federal Reserve's stranglehold over our economy?

Rorschach

Some of it is of course, that's unavoidable. Thanks for your opinion.

Duncan MacRae

XXXXXXX awesome. And very true.♦

Edited by moderator due to language.

Multiple points to be made here, even on a broad, shallow understanding of the facts like mine, as I've heard this line all too often , and eloquent though it may be , it just dont' hold any water really:

People who think the U.S. government was complicit in 9/11 or in the JFK assassination sometimes complain that those who dismiss them as “conspiracy theorists” are guilty of inconsistency. For don’t the defenders of the “official story” behind 9/11 themselves believe in a conspiracy, namely one masterminded by Osama bin Laden? Don’t they acknowledge the existence of conspiracies like Watergate, as well as everyday garden variety criminal conspiracies?

--kind of a non-issue, as acknowledging that there can ever be a conspiracy anywhere does not suddenly make someone a super-credible sober-as-hell skeptic.

The objection is superficial. Critics of the best known “conspiracy theories” don’t deny the possibility of conspiracies per se. Rather they deny the possibility, or at least the plausibility, of conspiracies of the scale of those posited by 9/11 and JFK assassination skeptics. One reason for this has to do with considerations about the nature of modern bureaucracies, especially governmental ones. They are notoriously sclerotic and risk-averse, structurally incapable of implementing any decision without reams of paperwork and committee oversight, and dominated by ass-covering careerists concerned above all with job security. The personnel who comprise them largely preexist and outlast the particular administrations that are voted in and out every few years, and have interests and attitudes that often conflict with those of the politicians they temporarily serve. Like the rest of society, they are staffed by individuals with wildly divergent worldviews that are difficult to harmonize. The lack of market incentives and the power of public employee unions make them extremely inefficient. And so forth. All of this makes the chances of organizing diverse reaches of the bureaucracy (just the right set of people spread across the Army, the Air Force, the FBI, the CIA, the FAA, etc. – not to mention within private firms having their own bureaucracies and diversity of corporate and individual interests) in a short period of time (e.g. the months between Bush’s inauguration and 9/11) to carry out a plot and cover-up of such staggering complexity, close to nil.

--This is probably the most true of your post in a literal sense, as it's true that most bureacracies are leaky sieves in terms of both secrecy and efficiency. However, that applies to their moral codes as well. And to an oft overlooked point-there is such a thing as mutual cooperation(either to avoid embarassment/scandal or to massively profit) that doesn't involve an actively organized conspiracy as you define it.

Another reason has to do with the nature of liberal democratic societies, and the way in which they differ from totalitarian societies like Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia, whose leaders did conspire to do great evil. The point is not that the leaders of liberal democratic societies are not capable of great evil. Of course they are. But they do not, and cannot, commit evils in the same way that totalitarian leaders do. There are both structural and sociological reasons for this. The structural reasons have to do with the adversarial, checks-and-balances nature of liberal democratic polities, which make it extremely difficult for any faction or interest to impose its agenda by force on the others. In the American context, the courts, the legislature, and the executive branch are all jealous of their power, even when controlled by the same party. The Army, Air Force, Navy, Marines, CIA, FBI, etc. are all also notoriously often at odds with one another, as are the various departments within the executive branch. The same is true of private interests – the press, corporations, universities, and the like. All must work through public legal channels, and when they try to do otherwise they risk exposure from competing interests. Unlike traditional societies, in which the various elements of society agree (if only because they’ve never known any alternative) to subordinate their interests to a common end (e.g. a religious end), and totalitarian societies, which openly and brutally force every element to subordinate their interests to a common end (e.g. a utopian or dystopian political end), liberal democratic societies eschew any common end in the interests of allowing each individual and faction to pursue their own often conflicting ends as far as possible.

--I would disagree most heartily here, while they are jealous of their power towards each other in times of relative prosperity, in times of possible political financial or otherwise destruction I'd imagine they scramble to pick up the pieces and scratch each other's backs like any other group of politicians or businessmen.

Now I do not claim that liberal democratic societies in fact perfectly realize this ideal of eschewing any common end. Far from it. The liberal democratic ethos inevitably becomes an end in itself, and all factions that refuse to incorporate it are ultimately pushed to the margins or even persecuted. (John Rawls’s so-called “political liberalism” is nothing more and nothing less than an attempt to rationalize this “soft totalitarianism.”) But that does not affect my point. The imposition of the liberal ethos may involve an occasional bold power grab on the part of one faction (as Roe v. Wade did in the case of the Supreme Court). It may involve attempts culturally to marginalize the opposition (as in the universities and entertainment industry). But the other factions know about these efforts – they are hardly carried out unobserved in smoke-filled rooms – and never roll over and play dead, as they would in a totalitarian society. Liberal ideologues must work through the very adversarial institutions that their ideology calls for, which is why these alleged arch-democrats are constantly complaining about the choices their fellow citizens democratically make (electing Bush, voting for Prop 8, opposing gun control, supporting capital punishment, etc.). For them to impose their egalitarian ethos on everyone else through force of law takes generations, and a series of public battles, before the other side is gradually ground down. The evil that results is typically the result of a slowly and gradually evolving public consensus to do, or at least to give in to, evil – not a sudden and secret conspiratorial act.

--?? So, now you're claiming a liberal conspiracy that failed, or what??

So, structurally, there is just no plausible way for an “inside job” conspiracy of the JFK assassination or 9/11 type to work. There is simply not enough harmony between the different institutions that would have to be involved, either of a natural sort or the type imposed by force. And this brings me to the sociological point that the liberal ethos itself, precisely because it tends so deeply to permeate the thinking even of the professedly conservative elements of liberal democratic societies, makes a conspiracy of the sort in question impossible to carry out. “Freedom,” “tolerance,” “democracy,” “majority rule,” and the like are as much the watchwords of contemporary American conservatives as they are of American liberals. Indeed, contemporary conservatives tend to defend their own positions precisely in these terms, and are uncomfortable with any suggestion that there might be something in conservatism inconsistent with them. The good side of this is that contemporary American conservatives will have absolutely no truck with the likes of Tim McVeigh, and will condemn right-wing political violence as loudly as any liberal would. The bad side is that some of them also seem willing to tolerate almost any evil as long as there is a consensus in favor of it and it is done legally. (Same-sex marriage? Well, the courts imposed it without voter approval. But what if the voters do someday approve it? Will conservatives then decide that it’s OK after all? Some of them already have.)

--This is the most patently false statement in your post. First of all, most mouthpieces of any of those values are exactly the polar opposites of their implementation, and only use them as a vote-getting tool. Second, it's actually easily possible, as every single side to those arguments has amply demonstrated that even in the most morally-upright and law-abiding seeming institutions we have, there are constantly those with secret or special privileges that other members do not seem to possess. Think of it like being the only tiny group of immigrants with a green card, you are exempt from being persecuted, while they are not.

The point, in any event, is that just as the structure of a liberal democratic society differs from that of totalitarian states, so too does the ethos of its leaders. They generally like to do their evil in legal and political ways, through demagoguery, getting evil laws passed, destroying reputations, and other generally bloodless means. Occasionally they’ll resort also to ballot-box stuffing, and maybe the odd piece of union thuggery or police brutality. But outright murder is extremely rare, and usually folded into some legitimate context so as to make it seem justifiable (e.g. My Lai or the firebombing of Dresden, atrocities committed in the course of otherwise just wars). Do ideologically motivated sociopaths like General Jack D. Ripper of Dr. Strangelove fame sometimes exist even in liberal democratic societies? Sure. But hundreds or even just dozens of Jack D. Rippers, occupying just the right positions at just the right times in the executive branch, the FBI, the FAA, the NYPD, the FDNY, the Air Force, American Airlines, United Airlines, Larry Silverstein’s office, CNN, NBC, Fox News, The New York Times, etc. etc., never accidentally tipping off hostile co-workers or fatally screwing up in other ways? All happily risking their careers and reputations, indeed maybe even their lives, in the interests of the Zionist cause, or Big Oil, or whatever? Not a chance. Indeed, the very idea is ludicrous.

--This is mostly true, I think. One, murder and such are generally way more troublesome than they're worth, especially when shaming and scandal seems to work just as well in politics, and I highly doubt there was much "higher cause" motivating all of the conspirators above their own gains.

Of course, some conspiracy theorists will insist that the adversarial, checks-and-balances nature of liberal democracies and their tolerant ethos are themselves just part of the illusion created by the conspirators. Somehow, even the fact that conspiracy theorists are perfectly free to publish their books, organize rallies, etc. in a way they would not for a moment be able to do in Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia is nevertheless just part of a more subtle and diabolical form of police state.

--In the same way you just mentioned, would it not be simpler to just marginalize and "fringe" any true finds they come up with as outright lunacy that casts your sanity into to question to even be believed than to attempt suppression in an open internet world??

Here we’ve gone through the looking glass indeed, and come to a third and more philosophically interesting problem with conspiracy theories, one that can be understood on the basis of an analogy with philosophical skepticism and its differences from ordinary skepticism. Doubting whether you really saw your cousin walking across the bridge, or just a lookalike, can be perfectly reasonable. Doubting whether cousins or bridges really exist in the first place – maybe you’re only dreaming they exist, or maybe there’s a Cartesian demon deceiving you, or maybe you’re trapped in The Matrix – is not reasonable. It only seems reasonable when one is beholden to a misguided theory of knowledge, a theory that effectively undermines the possibility of any knowledge whatsoever. The difference here is sometimes described as a difference between "local" doubt and "global" doubt. Local doubts arise on the basis of other beliefs taken to be secure. You know that you are nearsighted or that your glasses are dirty, so you doubt whether you really saw your cousin. Global doubts have a tendency to undermine all beliefs, or at least all beliefs within a certain domain. You know that your senses have sometimes deceived you about some things, and being a philosopher you start to wonder whether they are always deceiving you about everything.

--Matter of opinion I suppose, there's no real right or wrong side to debate here.

Notice that unlike local doubt, global doubt tends to undermine even the evidence that led to the doubt in the first place. Doubting that you really saw your cousin doesn’t lead you to think that your belief that you are nearsighted or that your glasses are dirty might also be false. But suppose your belief that you sometimes have been fooled by visual illusions leads you to doubt your senses in general. You came to believe that your perceptual experience of a bent stick in the water was illusory because you also believed that your experience of seeing the stick as straight when removed from the water was not illusory. But you end up with the view that maybe that experience, and all experience, is illusory after all. You came to believe that you might be dreaming right now because in the past you’ve had vivid dreams from which you woke up. You end up with the view that maybe even the experience of waking up was itself a dream, so that you’ve never really been awake at all. Again, the doubt tends to swallow up even the evidence that led to the doubt. (Philosophers like J. L. Austin have suggested that this shows that philosophical skepticism is not even conceptually coherent, but we needn’t commit ourselves to that claim to make the point that it does at least tend to undermine the very evidence that leads to it.)

I suggest that the distinction between ordinary, everyday conspiracies (among mobsters, or Watergate conspirators, or whatever) and vast conspiracies of the sort alleged by 9/11 and JFK assassination skeptics, parallels the scenarios described by commonsense or “local” forms of doubt and philosophical or “global” forms of doubt, respectively. We know that the former sorts of conspiracies occur because we trust the sources that tell us about them – news accounts, history books, reports issued by government commissions, eyewitnesses, and so forth. And there is nothing in the nature of those conspiracies that would lead us to doubt these sources. But conspiracies of the latter sort, if they were real, would undermine all such sources. And yet it is only through such sources that conspiracy theorists defend their theories in the first place. They point to isolated statements from this or that history book or government document (the Warren Report, say), to this or that allegedly anomalous claim made in a newspaper story or by an eyewitness, and build their case on a collection of such sources. But the conspiracy they posit is one so vast that they end up claiming that all such sources are suspect wherever they conflict with the conspiracy theory. Indeed, even some sources apparently supportive of the conspiracy theory are sometimes suspected of being plants subtly insinuated by the conspirators themselves, so that they might later be discredited, thereby discrediting conspiracy theorists generally. Overall, the history books, news sources, government commissions, and eyewitnesses are all taken to be in some way subject to the power of the conspirators (out of sympathy, or because of threats, or because the sources are themselves being lied to). Nothing is certain. But in that case the grounds for believing in the conspiracy in the first place are themselves uncertain. At the very least, the decision to accept some source claims and not others inevitably becomes arbitrary and question-begging, driven by belief in the conspiracy rather than providing independent support for believing in it.

--Yes, paranoia does seem to run rampant amongst the theorists.

Now, while “global” forms of skepticism might be fun to think about and pose interesting philosophical puzzles, it would hardly be rational to think for a moment that they might be true. Seriously to wonder whether one is a “brain in a vat,” or trapped in The Matrix, or always asleep and dreaming – not as a fantasy, not in the course of a late-night dorm room bull session, but as a live option – would be lunacy. Certainly it would make almost any further rational thought nearly impossible, because it would strip almost any inference of any rational foundation. But something similar seems to be true of conspiracy theories of the sort in question. The reason their adherents often seem to others to be paranoid and delusional is because they are committed to an epistemological position which inherently tends toward paranoia and delusion, just as a serious belief in Cartesian demons or omnipotent matrix-building mad scientists or supercomputers would. Their skepticism about the social order is so radical that it precludes the possibility of coming to any stable or justified beliefs about the social order.

--MOP again.

Am I saying that news organizations, government commissions, and the like never lie? Of course not. I am saying that it is at the very least improbable in the extreme that they do lie or even could lie on the vast scale and in the manner in which conspiracy theorists say they do, and that it is hard to see how the belief that they do so could ever be rationally justified. But what about government agencies and news sources in totalitarian countries? Doesn’t the fact of their existence refute this claim of mine? Not at all. For citizens in totalitarian countries generally do not trust these sources in the first place. Indeed, they often treat them as something of a joke, and though they might believe some of what they are told by these sources, they are also constantly seeking out more reliable alternative sources from outside. Moreover, these citizens already know full well that their governments are doing horrible things, and many of these things are done openly anyway. Hence, we don’t have in this case anything close to a parallel to what conspiracy theorists claim happens in liberal democracies: evil things done by governments on a massive scale, of which the general population has no inkling because they generally trust the news sources and government agencies from which they get their information, and where these sources and agencies purport to be, and are generally perceived to be, independent.

--Mostly true. I think most corruption is attainable legally today anyways, so many conspiracy problems have now become "oh wait theyre just legalizing it now" problems, such as the Patriot Act.

On such general epistemological and social-scientific grounds, then, I maintain that conspiracy theories of the sort in question are so a priori improbable that they are not worth taking seriously. That does not mean that the specific empirical claims made by conspiracy theorists are never significant. In my college days I read a great deal about the JFK assassination case, and was even convinced for a time that there was a conspiracy involving the government. While I no longer believe that – I believe that Oswald killed Kennedy, and acted alone – I concede that there are certain pieces of evidence (e.g. the backward movement of Kennedy’s head, Ruby’s assassination of Oswald) that might lead a reasonable person who hasn’t investigated the case very deeply to doubt the “official story.” (I’ve also examined a fair amount of the 9/11 conspiracy theory material, though I must say that in this case this has only made the whole idea seem to me even more preposterous than it did initially, if that is possible. They don’t make conspiracy theorists like they used to.) But in my judgment, in the vast majority of cases the alleged “evidence” of falsehood in the “official story” is nothing of the kind, and where it is it can easily and most plausibly be accounted for in terms of the sort of bureaucratic ass-covering, incompetence, or just honest error that is common to investigations in general (whether by police, insurance companies, or whatever).

--no, there you are wrong. "the bigger the lie, the more people will believe it." -Adolf Hitler

If one is going to claim more than this, then just as in these other sorts of investigations, one needs to provide some plausible alternative explanation. The “I’m just raising questions” shtick is not intellectually or morally serious, certainly not when you’re accusing people of mass murder. And given the considerations raised above, it is hard to see how conspiracy theories of the sort in question could ever be plausible alternatives.

--Dead Wrong. And yes, yes it is. That is in fact just the right attitude. Whereas, most conspiracy theorists go with "I asked questions, and now I know the exact truth just as it happened" and that is also wrong. Any time anyone claims that asking questions or even suggesting conspiracies is wrong, it merely feeds the paranoia you pointed out above, whatever your personal beliefs or motives, not to mention being a load of bullcrap.

Why, then, do people fall for these theories? Largely out of simple intellectual error. But what makes someone susceptible of this particular kind of error? That is a question I have addressed before, in a TCS Daily article which suggested that the answer has something to do with the (false) post-Enlightenment notion that science and critical thinking are of their nature in the business of unmasking received ideas, popular opinion, and common sense in general. Some readers of that article asked a good question: How does this suggestion account for the existence of conspiracy theories on the Right, which generally sees itself as upholding received ideas and common sense?

I would make two points in response. First, consider some standard examples of such right-wing conspiracy theories, such as those involving Freemasons or Communists. These can be understood in two ways. On one interpretation, the idea would be that Freemasons, Communists, or whomever, given their ideological commitments, have actively sought to get themselves and their sympathizers into positions of power and influence so as to promote and implement their ideas, and that they have done so subtly and by using duplicity. But there is nothing in this idea that conflicts with anything I’ve been saying. In particular, there is nothing in it that entails that any single massively complex event was engineered in detail by a small elite manipulating, with precision, dozens or hundreds of actors across a bewildering variety of conflicting institutions and agencies in the context of a society that is to all appearances reasonably open, all the while skillfully covering their tracks to hide their actions to all but the most devoted conspiracy theory adepts. Rather, it just involves like-minded people working systematically and deviously to further their common interests in a general way over the course of a long period of time – a phenomenon that is well-known from everyday life, and does not require belief in any radical gap between appearance and reality in the social and political worlds. In short, it does not involve belief in any “conspiracy theory” of the specific sort I’ve been criticizing.

--Right Wing or Left Wing, This is mostly true.

The alternative interpretation would be that Freemasons, Communists, and the like have done more than this, that they have indeed conspired to produce individual events of the sort in question, in just the manner in question – that they conspired across national boundaries and bureaucracies to engineer World War I, say, or various stock market crashes, or whatever. Here the right-wing sort of conspiracy theory does indeed run into the problems I have been identifying, and is as a consequence just as irrational as its left-wing counterparts. And this brings me to my second point. As I said earlier, given the hegemony of liberal, post-Enlightenment ideas in modern Western society, even many conservatives can find themselves taking some of them for granted. Ironically, this sometimes includes even those conservatives most self-consciously hostile to liberal and Enlightenment ideas, namely paleoconservatives (the sort, not coincidentally, who are most likely to be drawn to conspiracy theories). And it does so, even more ironically, precisely because of their awareness of this hegemony. Because they quite understandably feel besieged on all sides by modernity, and utterly shut out of its ruling institutions, they are tempted by at least one modern, post-Enlightenment, left-wing illusion, and the most beguiling one at that: that all authority is a manifestation of a smothering, omnipotent malevolence. Like the Marxist or anarchist, they find themselves shaking their fist at the entire social order as nothing more than a mask for hidden forces of evil, and even the most absurd conspiracy theories come to seem to them to be a priori plausible.

--This has shown to be true sometimes though, such as the Gulf of Tonkin incident. Even if not by specific color-by-numbers blueprints, events are sometimes manipulated to serve other purposes than their face value by groups of like-minded conspirators.

The overall result is something eerily like the old Gnostic heresy, on which the apparently benign world of our experience is really the creation of an evil demiurge, and where this dark and hidden truth is known only to those few insiders acquainted with a special gnosis. (Into the bargain, the demiurge was often identified by the Gnostics with the God of the Jews.) For “world” read modern Western society, for “demiurge” read Freemasons, Communists, or Zionists, and for “gnosis” read the vast labyrinth of conspiracy theory literature. Alternatively, it is like the Cartesian fantasy of a malin genie who deceives us with a world of appearances that masks a hidden reality. Certainly these similarities should give any traditionalist pause; and the conspiracy theory mindset is in any event a very odd thing to try to combine with the traditional Christian anti-Gnostic emphasis on the public and open nature of truth, and the Aristotelian-Thomistic rejection of any radical Cartesian appearance/reality distinction in favor of moderation and common sense.

--Yes, and???

Anyway, if the question is how, given that (as I argue in the TCS Daily article) conspiracy theories are essentially an artifact of certain key modern, post-Enlightenment attitudes and assumptions, right-wingers could ever accept them, the answer is that here, as elsewhere, conservatives and traditionalists are too often not conservative and traditional enough.

--Ok. That clears up nothing, thanks. While I think we all appreciate your stance as being a conservative, traditional Right-Winger(of which, there doesn't seem to be really any in high office anymore), your arguments, at being conclusive or using the hammer of deconstructive logic to disassemble "our wild fantasies of conspiracy"{paraphrased}=EPIC FAIL, to put it in net speak.

Okay, new here, so you'll have to forgive me if I'm not up to snuff on the latest opions on was badge man a real person or did photographer a have an umbrella dart gun? I was wondering what this "4th film" was and who supposedly filmed it, as I've been hitting up one of the few sources of free and readily searchable info on the web==youtube, and this video and several others mention a never released 4th film. Is there confirmation of a 4th film and who filmed it? Is there any leaked portions of it now?

I was raised by crazed hippies who believed any half-baked conspiracy theory they could get their hands on, so I became interested in seeing if any of them held up under evidence. More recently I became interested in the JFK assassination because it's so obviously a conspiracy yet there's never enough evidence or even eyewitness testimony to pin down what happened. I am interested in it because I feel that in the same way that the skeptics who simply cite the warren commission report fail to take all the evidence into account, most book writers/etc of the assassination try and line up all the facts to fit a pet theory. An ongoing study of evidence and all the entangled events is needed, which is why I was interested in this board.