Replies:

Oh, and checking a referrer log would be nice if I actually used anything other than notepad to build my site...

Posted by Wood @ 03/24/2003 09:18 AM CST

Joel: thanks at least for the reply - although having gone and found my rant on my computer, I can find no reference to the word "scumbag". Or, in fact, anywhere on my site outside of the fiction. I don't know where you got it from, and yeah, it's a dissing.

Also, I must disagree with you: I think it is a fairly obvious point of etiquette to inform someone if they've been linked. Had I been able to find an email link on your site, I'd have told you about this.

Re. Pinochet: I think you completely missed my point, Joel. It's about the fact that totalitarian dictators often claim ideologies - Socialist, Capitalist, Muslim (guess who), even Christian - which they just do't live up to. So saying that just because there were evil dictators who happened to be left wing means that being left wing is wrong is just as erroneous as saying that capitalism is wrong because of Pinochet or Nicholas Van Hoogstraten (he's a scumbag. It was proven in court) or whoever.

Or that Christianity is wrong because of Tomas de Torquemada, Benny Hinn or Fred Phelps.

Posted by Wood @ 03/24/2003 09:16 AM CST

Hi, I'm Joel Fuhrmann, blogger at Religious Left Watch.

Maybe I just walked into a conversation late, and am not familiar with the words you use in conversation, but whenever I hear people end arguments by calling their opponents 'scumbag' or other words to that effect, I call that invective, which means 'Denunciatory or abusive expression or discourse', so I don't really think I was dissing you, I was just stating a plain fact. Apparently you disagree with me. Excuse me.

Now regarding your comment about Pinochet, I didn't mention him, I just commented on the huge loss of life at the hands of totalitarian governments in the twentieth century. Before you go saying that socialism is a godly system of government, I just think you ought to take a good look at what its leaders do. Do you really think that a just government would kill 20 million people (USSR), 65 million (China), one million (Eastern Europe), or do you think that those numbers are false? The numbers come from "The Black Book of Communism" which was written by European historians, some of whom were members of the Communist party.

Now you may use the argument that socialism and Communism are different things, and that is something to be sorted out in the details of the debate. One point that has been argued, by Hayek, is that any system that limits freedom will over the long term attract corruption and brutality of the sort evident in hard-core totalitarian regimes, as dictators enforce their economic policies against the will of the people.

That's my say, and I will make it a point to never link to your site without informing you when I do. It would be nice if you published such rules of etiquette on your site, I don't think that one is self-evident.