Blowing off steam: An open letter to the folks at Conservapedia
Dear people at Conservapedia,
I am absolutely positive that you have received a lot of critique already. I can understand if you completely disregard this letter. Heck, let's be honest, you'll probably never know of it's existence. But I have visited your site, and I was appalled. I was appalled by you blatant disregard of any logic, by your absolute hypocrisy and medieval intolerance. In fact, I felt sick, not just appalled, but physically sick when reading through the articles you are hosting and maintaining. And in this open letter, I will lay out exactly why I regard your site, should it maintain its current course, as a painful soar in the face of humanity itself.
Intolerance is alive and well, I was robbed of that bliss when I discovered Fred Phelps and his Westboro Baptist Church. And honestly, those nutters are good for a laugh or two and should never be regarded as a serious threat to society as we would want it. However, you people take it one step further. You are not just practising intolerance, you are also weaving it into something that could be regarded as an alternative worldview. This is different from regular fundamental christian groups, who are spreading their views in a context of the present day. You, however, create a report of the world in which everything can be shaped to conform with your convervative views. Where have we seen that again folks? That's right, 1984. Your site is an Orwellian place where lies and lies to back up lies live long and prosper under the maintainance of home schoolers. Actually, I would place people like Fred Phelps above you. At least they preach their ideas without trying to hide their origin - after all, they are a church. You, however, present your ideas as unbiased, well-balanced and backed up by certain quotes.
You call Wikipedia biased. And because of what? Because you tried to insert fallacies into articles. And when you found them to be corrected within a timely manner, you decided that they were biased. Now I do not know whether or not you tried to reason with them, because, you know, not all leftists are the devils brethren. I also disagree your use of the word leftist. You seem to have the opinion that anything that does not stem from the political right is automatically associated with communism and mass-murder. While I do absolutely not agree with the present-day practices of communism, I can testify that left-winged parties, in many countries covering this beautiful globe, actually contributed greatly towards the maturity of the political situation in those countries. Maybe left-winged ideas are alien to North-American culture by some twisted turn of plot. Maybe it is your inheritance from the Cold War. But leftist ideas are definately not by definition evil. Through the majority of your articles, the term bleeds with implicit wrong-doing. Not just that, also atheism and modern-day science are regarded as evil.
If Wikipedia is biased at all, of which I never discovered a single example, it is biased against your bigotry. If you wanted to spread your views of the subjects, you should have done so through discussion and reason. But instead you resorted to an island in the ocean of bits. You called this island Conservapedia, and under that name and the logo with an American flag, you claimed to be trustworthy. I will debate any of you any day in an environment where respect and clear reasoning flourish. You have demonstrated how easy it is to form a dystopia on the internet where a credo of war is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength can be maintained with little more effort than you put into it now. I think this is one of the unfortunate drawbacks of the internet. Far be it from me to try to take you down by suing or copyright claims, for I will not sink to your level.
And of course it is your absolute right to voice your opinion and hold it up high against any reason as long as you do not break the law. Consequently, I have every right to voice my opinion about your way of editing, as do others. However, if ever any outskirt of conservatism, which does not exclude you, will try to establish your views as absolute truths in a legal perspective, rest assured I will stand on the barricades blocking your every attempt. And I will not be the only one. Fortunately, I will not be the only one. I am open for any response should your attention ever be drawn to this writing, you can find my email address on this site. Remember that I bear you no personal grudge, but I honestly disagree with your opinions and try to reason with you.
Sincerely yours,
Tobias Kappé
A sidenote
I have intentionally not linked to the domain of Convervapedia, because by doing so I would actually help their cause to spread their knowledge, for example through search engines. Should you want to find information about them, there is always google. For some sweet logic I recommend RationalWiki. I strongly suggest that you form your own opinion. If you agree with me, that's fine, if you do not, please, let me hear!
