Conspiracy Theories, Skepticism, and Critical Thinking

 The chapter begins like all of Cooper's chapters with a title and then a bunch of sub-titles. The title of this chapter is "Lessons from Lithuania" and then it subtitles with the Second Amendment--surprisingly the whole thing. Cooper does not ignore that inconvenient first half that modern gun fetishists concentrate on. He then goes on to Patrick Henry's famous quote, but again he gives the full thing: " I know not what others may do. But as for me, give me liberty or give me death."  Cooper is unlikely to know this: it's very doubtful that Patrick Henry uttered these words. What we know is that he gave a speech in Virginia in 1775 which pushed the Virginia legislature toward desiring independence from England, but his speech was never recorded. The line comes from the recollection of people decades later. As much as I would like to attack Cooper for getting this wrong, I cannot do so, he would not have access to the scholarly research on the subject, a

I knew that this was coming, but I was going to wait on the commentary until chapter 15 hit. Famously (infamously), Cooper is going to include, in this book, the entirety of the notorious anti-Semitic tract "Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion. I was going to discuss the history of this work then but at the bottom of page 178 (PDF) he says this:  " I managed to locate a reference to The Protocols of Sion dated in the 1700s (see chapter 15, page 269). This plan for subjugation of the world correctly outlined exactly what has happened since the Protocols were discovered, and that is all that is needed to confirm the authenticity of the information contained within the document. It is clear that the Illuminati has planned to rule the world for centuries ." This paragraph is all that there is, save one sentence in the beginning of the next paragraph, " They have followed the plan outlined in the The Protocols of Sion. "  I feel as though I have to address some

First, we begin with a correction. I made a mistake when we covered the first chapter "Silent Weapons for Quiet Wars." I claimed that Cooper may have written it himself, but this is incorrect. Cooper did not write it, it was a document that had been floating around the UFOlogy and conspiracy circuit for a while that he just inserted in his book. I have to credit fellow "The Skeptic" writer Thiago Vahia Malliagros for the tip, which he cited from the excellent biography of Bill Cooper "Pale Horse Rider." This is a rather embarrassing mistake because I have read that book and even cited it in my dissertation.  This week we continue with population controls and Cooper's assertion that "they" are going to use plagues to do it. To recap the story that Cooper is telling us, WWII ended, and the models that "they" predicted were going to result in overpopulation. So, a way to stem the growth was needed. The first method was by normalizing b

The titles for these chapters are quite something, I've never paid attention to them before, but they are quite revealing. Here is the beginning of chapter 9: " Anatomy of An Alliance The Logic for the New World Order The Glue that Binds That Alliance of Power  and The Consequences 'All that is necessary for evil to triumph  is for good men to do nothing.'    -Edmund Burke 1729-1797 As a quick aside: in my research, I discovered something very interesting, Irish Philosopher Edmund Burke never said this quote , even though it is widely mis-attributed to him.  Back to the task at hand: what the chapter title reveals is a lack of discipline in the writer. Writing instruction repeats a mantra so often it has become a cliche, show don't tell. If you are unfamiliar, it means that the writer should rely on the reader to understand what is going on. If "Bill" is angry, it's better writing to let the character's actions reflect his anger than to state &quo