US Dealer: "heritage preservation comprises a very great threat to cultural heritage". (sic)

This abusive rant has so far gone unchallenged by other 'responsible' antiquities collectors on the yahoo forum, who one may only presume endorse such views:

So far as appreciation of classical numismatics as a cultural resource and socially beneficial intellectual pursuit are concerned, that tradition also endures, overcomes, and overwhelms and utterly discredits, carping idiocies from deranged "heritage preservation" lunatics such as this: http://paul-barford.blogspot.com/2016/09/what-is-point.html The point, of course, is that such distressingly ignorant anti-intellectual and Philistine opinions, and compulsive venting of extreme anti-collecting prejudice, characterize the "heritage preservation" mania and those compulsively spouting it as being inherently destructive and obstructive toward a full and complete appreciation of our immense cultural heritage from the ancient world. The excesses of this unbridled and distressingly uninformed "heritage preservation" mania comprise a very great threat to cultural heritage. 

here we see clearly the collectors and dealers setting themselves up as the "real intellectuals" and claiming (falsely, in my opinion) that you can get a "full and complete appreciation of our immense cultural heritage from the ancient world" merely by fondling ancient coins - in the same way as, no doubt, you can achieve a full understanding of the current US cultural and intellectual heritage merely from having a pocket full of State Quarters and Liberty dollars.The idea is plainly ridiculous - as is the overblown rhetoric of the dealer's prose.

There is nothing 'anti-collecting' in what I wrote, all we want to see is the antiquities' trade to clean up their act and stop their campaign of denial and presenting themselves as passive victims.

Meanwhile the claimed status as intellectuals of the majority of the thousands of people collecting antiquities (including ancient and medieval coins) may easily be challenged by glancing at any one of their forums - and the BM in its interactions with some of them describes many as belonging to UK social brackets 'C2 and D' and 'challenged by formal education'. To judge by the levels of articulacy exhibited by many of their comments to MOU renewal consultations, many of the US coin collectors also definitely seem to belong to the category of 'kids left behind' at school. I have many times asked the claimants of the notion that heaping decontextualised artefacts onto a kitchen table is somehow an academic discipline for studying the past with a methodology of its own to present that methodology for us to see. So far the claimants have done nothing of the kind, neither the dealers, nor those 'intellectual' collectors.

Meanwhile, I invite those unwilling to be told by a fatuous dealer type what to think to read what I actually wrote and decide what values coin fondling really represent and whether the damage done to maintain the current no-questions-asked market run by such buffoons is justified.

Vignette: The voice of the antiquities trade, Dealer Dave