"The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light." --Jesus
"Sometimes the first duty of intelligent men is the restatement of the obvious" --George Orwell
"The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function." --F. Scott Fitzgerald
Sunday, December 03, 2006
Holocaust Denial: The Lunatic Touchstone
"A January 1994 Gallup Poll found that a much lower percentage, approximately 4 percent, of those it surveyed "have real doubts about the Holocaust; the others (19 percent) are just insecure about their historical knowledge or won't believe anything they have not experienced themselves," says Frank Newport, Editor of the Gallup Poll." [ This was a U.S. poll. The 4% is frankly disturbingly high but doesn't seem way off base given the number of people running around that I would categorize in my experience as openly nutty. And I'm afraid that the 19% is a sad commentary on the state of our educational system (though, again, probably not completely off base given the number of people without GEDs or that skate through anything resembling an attempt at education. But at least I can comfortably pull two things out of this: 1) I can sleep at night with this. 2) Holocaust denial remains a touchstone for people that can safely be assumed to be lunatics. If you're going to believe in it, then I'm not rational for assessing YOU as rational. -ed. ]