www.thornwalker.com/ditch/critic_lopez.htm

To Mr. Lopez's initial comment.

An encounter with a reader
on war and empire

Continuing the thread with John Lopez ...

You are overreacting to a "label." It is a screen name, dummy. It does not define the totality of my person, or the manner in which I think concerning politics or the world situation, without any deviation.

I could have labeled myself a Libertarian and made the same comments. Then you would have been deprived of most of the simple minded complaints you leveled.

I have always thought it interesting that those who do not appreciate conservatives, insist on defining what a conservative is. As if each and every conservative took the exact same position on every issue. If this were true, than there would be no need for various Libertarian writers to express their point of view. One voice would suffice. However, you give those you agree with unlimited opportunity to express a variety of viewpoints. You would only restrict conservatives, by labeling them as if they were all identical.

Richard Sherwin
April 27, 2003

As I wrote in my first response to Mr. Sherwin:

"I don't expect a rational answer, of course."

Note carefully that I am not attempting to "insist on defining what a conservative is": I have left that for Mr. Sherwin to tell me. Given that he cannot even answer the most basic question about his political thought, what can he hope to gain from discussing those thoughts?

John Lopez
April 28, 2003

Nicholas Strakon comments

If I selected the screen name "Marxist-Leninist" and then took umbrage when someone concluded that I was some kind of Marxist-Leninist, I wonder whether anyone would take me seriously. Labels, or even "labels," as Mr. Sherwin would have it, are actually pretty important.

Mr. Lopez and I don't mean to assign Mr. Sherwin to any little pigeonhole, but, c'mon, how can our correspondent expect us to consider a man who seems uninterested in conserving things of value to be any kind of conservative?

Perhaps Mr. Sherwin did not select his own screen name.

April 30, 2003

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