Shut up Duke.

Duke will almost certainly blow a gasket when he reads this letter but I unmistakably must make the case that Duke runs like a scared rabbit whenever his harangues are challenged by someone with courage, conviction, and a love of Truth. Perhaps before going on, I should describe Duke to you. Duke is wretched, malign, and bloodthirsty. Furthermore, he yearns to initiate a reign of worthless terror.

Once again, I find disappointment. Once again, I find no satisfaction. Once again, I find that Duke is a small part of a large movement that seeks to redefine humanity as alienated machines/beasts and then convince everyone that they were never human to begin with. But first, let me pose you a question: Is he actually concerned about any of us, or does he just want to elevate his animadversions to prominence as epistemological principles? After reading this letter, you'll indubitably find it's the latter. More to the point, every so often, you'll see him lament, flog himself, cry mea culpa for seeking to send selfish radicals on safari holidays instead of publicly birching them, and vow never again to be so sententious. Sadly, he always reverts to his old behavior immediately afterwards, making me think that his frightful, pugnacious smear tactics leave the current power structure untouched while simultaneously killing countless children through starvation and disease. Are these children Duke's enemies? I've never gotten a clear and honest answer to that question from Duke. But what is clear is that if he can't stand the heat, he should get out of the kitchen.

How can we expect to provide an atmosphere of mutual respect, free from immoralism, jujuism, and all other forms of prejudice and intolerance if we walk right into Duke's trap? We can't, and that's why he should not replace intellectual integrity with jejune sloganeering. Not now, not ever. There is no place in this country where we are safe from Duke's supporters, no place where we are not targeted for hatred and attack. It is hardly surprising that Duke wants to stultify art and retard the enjoyment and adoration of the beautiful. After all, this is the same virulent, petty antagonist whose rapacious prattle informed us that newspapers should report only on items he agrees with.

If we don't soon tell Duke to stop what he's doing, he will proceed with his maledicent canards, considerably emboldened by our lack of resistance. We will have tacitly given Duke our permission to do so. He ignores a breathtaking number of facts, most notably:

• Fact: Compared to yawping chuckleheads like him, every pimp is a man of honor.
• Fact: He is not at all apologetic for the harm his assistants have caused.
• Fact: Sometimes, duplicitous finks are so haughty, they merit special attention.

In addition, I should note that his most drossy tactic is to fabricate a phony war between clueless, yellow-bellied gits and high-handed, perfidious cowards. This way, Duke can subjugate both groups into helping him stonewall on issues in which taxpayers see a vital public interest. I certainly don't want that to happen, which is why I'm telling you that you shouldn't let Duke intimidate you. You shouldn't let him push you around. We're the ones who are right, not Duke. The gloss that Duke's disciples put on Duke's newsgroup postings unfortunately does little to act honorably. Did it ever occur to Duke that maybe he often starts with a preconceived story and then plugs in supposed "information" in order to create a somewhat believable tale? Dream on.

However, Duke should think for himself. Once we realize that, what do we do? The appropriate thing, in my judgment, is to shelter initially unpopular truths from suppression, enabling them to ultimately win out through competition in the marketplace of ideas. I say that because I have traveled the length and breadth of this country and talked with the best people. I can therefore assure you that he has declared that he's staging a revolt against everyone who wants to view the realms of sesquipedalianism and voyeurism not as two opposing poles, but as two continua. Duke's revolting all right; the very sight of him turns my stomach. All kidding aside, his apothegms are rife with contradictions and difficulties; they're entirely sappy, meet no objective criteria, and are unsuited for a supposedly educated population. And as if that weren't enough, he is not only immoral, but amoral. I must admit that I've read only a small fraction of Duke's writings. (As a well-known aphorism states, it is not necessary to eat all of an apple to learn that it is rotten.) Nevertheless, I've read enough of Duke's writings to know that Duke claims to be fighting for equality. What he's really fighting for, however, is equality in degradation, by which I mean that Duke wants to produce an army of mindless insects who will obey his every command. To produce such an army, he plans to destroy people's minds using either drugs or an advanced form of lobotomy. Whichever approach he takes, Duke proclaims at every opportunity that he'd never create a kind of psychic pain at the very root of the modern mind. The gentleman doth protest too much, methinks. Duke likes to compare his ramblings to those that shaped this nation. The comparison, however, doesn't hold up beyond some uselessly broad, superficial similarities that are so vague and pointless, it's not even worth summarizing them. He condones the disrespectful exegeses that will use mass organization as a system of integration and control.

It's quite a feat of hypocrisy for Duke to deny he wants to tinker about with a lot of halfway prescriptions after so recently doing exactly that. Duke will almost certainly tiptoe around that glaringly evident fact, because if he didn't, you might come to realize that his ideas are evil. They're evil because they cause global warming; they make your teeth fall out; they give you spots; they incite nuclear war. And, as if that weren't enough, I have no idea why Duke wannabees have sprouted across the country like mushrooms after a downpour. That's self-evident, and even Duke would probably agree with me on that. Even so, there is no such thing as evil in the abstract. It exists only in the evil deeds of evil people like Duke. Are you prepared to discuss this, Duke? Socrates was condemned to death by the city of Athens for his views. I hope I don't receive the same treatment for saying that we cannot afford to waste our time, resources, and energy by dwelling upon inequities of the past. Instead, we must reinforce the contentions of all reasonable people and confute those of repressive witlings. Doing so would be significantly easier if more people were to understand that Duke has been known to say that unfounded attacks on character, loads of hyperbole, and fallacious information are the best way to make a point. That notion is so inarticulate, I hardly know where to begin refuting it. Be forewarned: It's astounding that he has found a way to work the words "thyroparathyroidectomize" and "ultraphotomicrograph" into his expedients. However, you may find it even more astounding that if he had his way, schools would teach students that Duke is the most recent incarnation of the Buddha. This is not education but indoctrination. It prevents students from learning about how if Duke is victorious in his quest to substitute rumor and gossip for bona fide evidence, then his crown will be the funeral wreath of humanity. Let me end this letter by pointing out that the battle to hinder the power of blathering self-proclaimed arbiters of taste and standards like Duke is now joined on many fronts. We will not waver; we will not tire; we will not falter; and, we will not fail.