Here's how you tell if a group is connected to the Constitutionally-based concept of "advise and consent," "due process," and "reason," or not.
These are qualities of a Free Speech organization.
1. The rules are clear and sensible; and they can be exempted in special circumstances where good intentions have gone awry. Some times there is a
REASON to break a rule, to spare a relationship.
2. The content of the database is organized to keep issues, matters and problems sorted; with the intention, to prosper understanding of what is
True.
3. The people attracted to the org, embedded as they are in their own questions and issues, actually experience some progress in their learning.
Now, if this were an NWO facility; or if it had been infiltrated by a significant number of NWO hacks, a different set of norms would apply.
1. The rules would become more important than the members. People would get booted who progressed the resolution of issues and arguments--not that
disrupted the consensus process.
2. Errors and inaccuracies in the database would be left in place, even if such errors disrupted by inciting new thread after new thread after new
thread covering the same unresolved topic.
3. NWO gets its methodology from Machiavelli and Leo Strauss, which is--to prosper and propagate distractions, side-bars and divisive dialectics. One
would know whether they are doing this by observing the threads that the Mods themselves create.
My experience here has been that the Mods create interesting threads; getting to the truth about what's going on is a major thrust; and nobody's
hammering on rules at the cost of good people. Reason appears to be at work, here.
There's a saying: "If it waddles like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's probably a duck."
Okay. If it confounded and distracted like the NWO; if it blew people off like the NWO; and if the Mods took pleasure in harassing good people out of
here, THEN you might label ATS as an NWO puppet.
But, that's not what I see, going on. Whew. One for our side. Liberty is not dead, not yet.