"If facts are outlawed, only outlaws will have the facts." -- TheLastWordSword
The rhetorical positions of those who wish to limit and control the Social Narrative. The need to limit the Social Narrative in some fashion, so as to retain its factual and informative nature seems fairly benign, but the need to control it seems to me to be more questionable. While there is a great deal of value in acquiring expertise in any subject, the fact remains that such expertise does not make anyone's opinion infallible, and that such privileged opinions ought to be subject to re-examination and re-evaluation by anyone willing to apply the intellectual effort necessary to address their merits and flaws appropriately and openly.
In the final analysis, any use of Rhetoric, removed from the power and examination of Dialectic, finds its only real strengths are the uses of force and fraud. That these "principles" remain all too effective does not say much for the progress we believe that we have made as an intelligent, self-aware and self-interested species of life.
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