Mumbo jumbo to you but widom to your neighbor --- what else is new?

I am skeptical of attacks on fools, though I love these round sounds:

Crooked Timber's Mumbo jumbo; The Guardian's Twaddle unswaddled.

The gist of the book upon which these posts revolve is that there are a lot of quacks out there and many who base whatever it is that they are peddling on some non-rational or even anti-rational theory. So be careful.

My comment at CT:

Yes there are a lot of fools roaming the world and opining; some even have their own blogs where they pretend to expertise.

But the medium aside, was it ever any different? Judging from the calamities and stupidities of the past it appears that the foolishness of our own age has a long pedigree.

Let's be skeptical of our current roster of weirdos but let's be skeptical that something brand new is afoot.

While there is always room for one more "call to reason,"  it seems to me that the necessity for such should be no more now than in the past, hence a book which seeks to spotlight the problem of quacks may lead us to a misunderstanding of our age. I do not think that there is any rational, plausible method to prove the truth or falsity of a statement such as "There is more/less cant & stupidity now than there was in _________." (pick-your-year) The data (historical/sociological or whatever) is simply not available. So generalized attacks from left or right (they both take delight in attacking our era) on "the stupidity and cupidity of our age" are mere anecdotal opinion. There is simply no rational basis to make a judgment about the superiority of one era over another. I happen to think that there was never such an enlightened and mentally evolved era as that which we now enjoy. But there is no way to prove it one way or another.

Or is there?

UPDATE: Well perhaps I am too sanguine about the impact of the anti-rationalists of left and right. Read Ian Buruma on The Origins of Occidentalism.