Quote of the Day and Another Rant About Conspiracy Theories

From Longrider on yet another post at OoL expounding dubious and unconvincing conspiracy theories:

I have to say that conspiracy theories really undermines what we are doing here. When we point out genuine, provable malfeasance on the part of those who would steal our liberties, our opponents will point straight back to the conspiracy theories and laugh.

Couldn't agree more. While I absolutely believe that James Higham et al should have a right to publish what they want, especially on a site co-run by Higham, I have to say the conspiracy theory guff does nothing for the cause of liberty and will probably end up harming it. We don't need a conspiracy theory about 9/11 to show that the Patriot Act was wrong, and we don't need a conspiracy theory about 7/7 to show that all the attempts to increase the detention periods in this country were wrong. All those conspiracy theories create straw man arguments that our opponents can easily bat away, making themselves look right in the process. And the worst thing is, in articles like the one linked to above, we create those straw man arguments, not our opponents.

And I don't understand why we have to create these largely unprovable and, in my humble opinion, false ideas that cultural Marxism has taken over the world, or that Obama is closet Marxist, or that Christianity is being undermined by arguably the most incompetent organisations in the world (namely, local governments). We're not dealing with opponents who are generally very subtle about what they do. There's no great attempt to hide the fact that the DNA of innocent people is being kept on the DNA database in what represents a massive u-turn and a real concern to anyone interested in championing civil liberties in this country. They're doing it, right now, down in London. We don't need to fight members of the Frankfurt School who have been dead for decades when Clegg and Cameron are doing tangible things to damage freedom in the here and now, right in front of our noses.

But anyway; enough. Fighting conspiracy theorists is a waste of time and effort. I believe in freedom and that belief encompasses the freedom of conspiracy loons to spout their paranoia on any platform they see fit. But that same freedom allows me to point out that what they are doing doesn't help the cause of freedom and actually hinders it.