Reader’s advice to VFR jumps the shark

Readers regularly advise me, “You shouldn’t write about this, you shouldn’t write about that,” and generally what they say is very reasonable, even if I can’t always oblige them. But here’s a suggestion from a reader that leaves my jaw agape:

You wrote: “How can one have debates with people who think that America circa 1789 or 1850 or 1910 was a Taliban-like regime? Don’t people see that this means hating our entire civilization prior to the women’s franchise?”

Debating with these people is an impossibility. You’ve made the mistake of making an appeal to their sense of logic when in fact they have none. They have only hatred. They are collateral damage in the war for the preservation of our culture and nation.

Furthermore, I think it is a mistake to shed light on this writhing fever swamp just because it mentions you. Such places will always exist.

The most popular liberal blog, with a daily readership in the tens or hundreds of thousands, has featured and discussed a VFR article, and I should ignore this? Is the reader serious?

Also, does the reader feel that the VFR discussion branching off from my posting of the Daily Kos item has been without value?

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Dan K. writes:

You wrote: “The most popular liberal blog, with a daily readership in the tens or hundreds of thousands, has featured and discussed a VFR article, and I should ignore this? Is the reader serious?”

A neighbor of mine in the 1970s told me about his years in the Newspaper Business (started in NYC, ending in San Diego). One point that he made many times was this: “We (newspaper people) always believed that if an individual did not defend himself, he was guilty as charged.”

Posted by Lawrence Auster at August 15, 2007 08:15 AM | Send