>So you're refusing to allow a discussion of the evidence, because
>you already have opinions
>about a subject that you don't know much about, and introducing
>inconvenient facts might change
>your mind. It's okay to invent a genocide that never happened,
>because you think other
>genocides like it probably did happen. Am I reading you correctly here?
>I hope not.
>
>Meanwhile, you have allowed a number of ad hominem attacks on me. Ad
>hominem, okay;
>discussion of evidence, out of bounds. I think your priorities are
>backwards. I have found
>value in your journalism in the past. But if this is your approach
>to evidence, I'm
>going to have to read you a bit differently from here on out. Please tell me
>it was a momentary lapse, and not your normal working method.
I let this through because you were attacked and deserved a chance to respond.
It's not "okay to invent a genocide that never happened," but so many did, that there does seem to be something nitpicky about factchecking individual claims. Like I said earlier, the major threat right now is not Churchill's inflammatory language or questionable scholarship or abrasive personality, it's the attempt by the right to silence critical speech. There's a major attack on academic freedom underway, and it's very urgent that it be defeated. So, whatever Churchill's faults - and I grant that you could probably make a decent-sized list of them - it's just not important right now to enumerate them. If that's suppressing a discussion of the evidence, so be it - but there are plenty of forums that would welcome that sort of thing, so I'm not inhibiting speech in any significant way. It's about priorities, and I'm exercising my rights of editorial control to enforce them, because I think it's very important right now.
Doug