Kennita Watson wrote: KW> Brian Holtz wrote 61K of Hatfields-vs-McCoys sniping in which I frankly have no interest whatsoever. <KW
Noted and logged. :-) You have an interesting way of registering your lack of interest. :-) KW> Please don't waste any more of your own time or the time of the people on these lists or the Internet's bandwidth or the disk space of the people who have limited-space email accounts on this argument. <KW Yahoo! Mail offers 1GB of free email storage, and the Internet has significantly more bandwidth than I can consume by defending myself against Harland's criticisms of my defenses of him. I appreciate your help in managing my time, but I think I've got that situation under control. :-) KW> I contend, and will continue to contend, that you are both intelligent, honorable, well-meaning men who are talking past each other. <KW I'd be interested in you quoting what you consider one of the most clearcut cases of me "talking past" Harland. Just cut and paste, no commentary necessary, a 30-second operation. In the absence of such a specimen, I simply don't know what half of your claim is about. KW> you are [unlikely] to change each other's minds on whatever scores you are arguing about. <KW My goal is not to change Harland's mind. My goal is to correct the record. KW> Please go fight with some Democrats and Republicans instead of each other! <KW >From the time that I resigned from the LPSM a year ago until today, I had not posted a single criticism of anything Harland has written except in response to his criticisms of things I've written. In that time, he by contrast has on at least six occasions posted criticisms of statements by me that weren't directed at him -- on Apr 4, Mar 26, Mar 12, Mar 8, Nov 12, and Aug 7. Two of these -- Mar 26 and Mar 12 -- were occasions in which Harland's criticism of my statements was his very first posting on a forum that he apparently only entered as a result of joining and monitoring my marketliberal distribution list. Harland's behavior traces back to how his frustrations with me compounded last year around the time of the LPC convention cruise. He had apparently been cornered into silence in our consecutive discussions on the Trolley <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/marketliberal/message/862> Problem, the Selzer <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/marketliberal/message/904> Affair, the LPC's disagreement with <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/marketliberal/message/966> the Bill of Rights, and my criticisms <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/marketliberal/message/964> of Paul Ireland. When I then asked Harland out of courtesy to my wife's high-risk pregnancy to not cc Paul Ireland to encourage him in the physical threats against me that later got Ireland expelled from the LPC, Harland seemingly snapped and told me <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/marketliberal/message/965> "If you act like a Nazi, you need a spine". When he subsequently said "I meant exactly what I said" and "I would like people to think about violence on a more personal level", I resigned from my offices with the LPSM and changed my affiliation to the LPSCC. Harland has never since tried to defend his unconscionable behavior, and for the good of the party I volunteered not to embarrass him about it on LPSM-discuss. But now that Harland is following me into new forums in search of more of the systematic refutations that I used to regularly serve him, I've rescinded my self-imposed silence here. There is surely some point at which LPSM members deserve to hear, even if belatedly, about the continuing and unrepentant actions by their now-Chair that caused the resignation of one of their very small group of officers. KW> Just stop. Ignore any further provocation entirely, or if your constitution isn't up to that <KW I'm a libertarian, not a pacifist. You can invoke "testosterone" (as you did last year) or constitutional fortitude or any other metaphor you want, but it won't change my longstanding policy about how I defend my public statements. If such defenses don't interest you, then feel free to filter them into your spam folder. KW> get on with some more productive Libertarian activism <KW The focus of my LP activism is now exclusively on Platform reform. I don't know what Harland's focus has been, but it apparently includes vainly following me around cyberspace trying to find a statement of mine that he can successfully contradict. It certainly seems not to have included his Newsletter Chair duties very much, as he apparently managed to get out only one newsletter since taking over after my resignation -- and almost half of that edition's space was about Harland himself. During my tenure as newsletter chair I was also on the state and national platform committees, attended the state and national conventions, contributed to the LPC newsletter and the national LP newspaper, donated to LP projects and candidates, was an LP-nominated candidate for Congress, created the LPC's most detailed campaign web site, wrote a libertarian blog, wrote an LP reform manifesto, worked full-time, had two small kids and a pregnant wife at home, and volunteered at kindergarten -- but I still got out twice as many newsletters per year as Harland did. The foregoing distractions don't really excuse my newsletter publishing frequency, and Harland could conceivably have had distractions even greater than mine, but I'm nowhere near embarrassed about the productivity of my activism.
