William Pietri wrote
Of course, to me, this underlines John's point. He can't even bring up an article that calls Brandt a conspiracy theorist and mentions the SV-as-MI5 bit as obvious nuttery without getting accused of acting in bad faith.
I thought the point about the dead horse was rarely the good faith with which the flogging was being carried out. Oh, let's see, to have good faith in the flogging, you'd have to believe that the horse was still alive. In which case, it is not so much mauvaise foi we are talking about, but an inhumane approach to an animal, which even if goaded into standing up, isn't going to transport you anywhere.
Actually there was a tad of bad faith in the posting. It is clear that the topic can be thrashed into generating more heat than light, yet again. (Surely everyone realizes that the "don't bring that up again" topic eventually hangs over any email list.) I think John knew that, perfectly well. The old nag will have to go through its paces, the opinions of few people will change.
Charles
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charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com wrote:
Actually there was a tad of bad faith in the posting. It is clear that the topic can be thrashed into generating more heat than light, yet again. (Surely everyone realizes that the "don't bring that up again" topic eventually hangs over any email list.) I think John knew that, perfectly well. The old nag will have to go through its paces, the opinions of few people will change.
The desire to talk about a topic known to be difficult is not evidence of even a scintilla of bad faith. Indeed, it's often evidence of the opposite: caring too deeply about something to let things go quietly to hell. If you're going to question something, you might start with his judgment that bringing things up would be productive.
However, I certainly learned something about Fred's views here, so I'd I found the thread useful. Of course, I also don't think it's a dead horse, and the arbitration case and the disputed policy both suggest that the issue is far from settled one way or another.
William