Thank you, Onhwy61, for your thoughtful response. It is not easy to be thoughtful during a disagreement, and I genuinely appreciate it. I have a reaction to your post, and I hope you will find it similarly reasonable...
What I've done is quote someone who has pointed out that good manners and civility are a method used by one class of society to oppress another sector of that society. The implication is that you are trying to impose civility upon this thread as an attempt to silence opinions that disagree with yours. I doubt that was your intention, but that may well be the effect.
Though I understood the meaning of the quote, I failed to appreciate your interpretation that my comments might, intentionally or not, silence opinions that disagree with mine. It certainly was not my intention to silence anyone, as you mentioned. In fact, my intention was exactly the opposite. It was to point out some comments that I felt might be intended to silence opposition. It is ironic and unfortunate that, in my attempt to challenge what I perceived to be peremptory comments, I made what you perceived to be peremptory comments. You have my apology for that.
Those who are familiar with my posting history will know that I have no problem with differences of opinion. My first comment on this thread reflects that. If it weren't for differences of opinion, this site and those like it would be very boring. I made the comments I did because I felt that the thread was veering into territory where nothing constructive gets said, because people have dug their heels in too deep. You have resisted the temptation to do that, and I thank you for it.
And now back to our regularly scheduled programming...
Bryon
