I was recently bashed -- and still am -- for my remarks about Cardinal Burke, and many of the hate posts did not deal with the issue at all. This was the same thing when I maintained the position that Quo Warranto was available to unseat a Chief Justice.

This happened again when I maintained that the NTC had no authority to issue provisional authority. Others have been similarly tarred and feathered!

It is the common plight of all who muster the courage to espouse and to express unpopular positions.

The deleterious result is clear: People of less stern stuff will shy from expressing themselves and announcing their views for fear of being on the receiving end of raving and crazed netizens.

This cannot be so. It is not right.

It spells the demise of rationality in our society. I therefore propose the some measures for countering this dreadful tide of irrationality.

First, when anyone contests, rebuts or interpellates another and starts by characterizing the other as "dilawan" or "DDS", the post or the "poster", the article or the writer should be shunned -- left out of civilized discourse.

They should be denied the privilege (no matter how titled, degrees or puffed-up) of participation in intelligent exchange.

Second, when a columnist, commentator or SocMed journalist engages in ad hominems,

or attacks against the person with whose views in his in disagreement, no importance should ever be given such a charlatan, by honoring his or her personal attacks with rebuttal, refutation or even as much as comment.

Putrid air should be made to pass away as quickly as possible. Professors and those in academe are to advise students that such persons do not make for good or edifying reading and are examples of the blatant violation of the fundamentals of sound journalism.

Third, any comment or riposte that ignores the issue and strays into alien territory making an issue out of that which is not, only to pick a quarrel, the only comment deserved is a brief restatement of the problem with the cautelary reminder that "initium disputandi,

definitio nominis"...before a disputation, settle the terms and the issues and that "ignoratio elenchi"...ignoring the issue...is a capital crime in logic.

Fourth, persons who persist in irrationality should be unfriended or blocked, when the platform is socmed,

and a concerted campaign against patronage should be launched and sustained against mainstream media outlets and networks that keep such purveyors of irrationality in their stables!

May I request dissemination of this, please.