I think I owe various readers an apology

Starting with I am Not Spartacus but including various others I can’t recall

I will often have an idea prompted by something somebody will write in my comboxes. Sometimes I agree with what they are saying or (more often) I am prompted to write because I disagree with what they are saying. So, for instance, yesterday I was prompted on a train of thought because I was disagreeing with some of the notion IANS was expressing.

Fair enough. But I noticed something recently. When I am disagreeing with a stranger, my focus in response is entirely on their ideas. They don’t enter into the picture: just the idea they are expressing. However, when somebody I actually know says something I disagree with, I *do* pay attention to them, to their past, to the way in which they might respond to the point I’m making, to their person. Of course, that’s easier because I actually know something about them. But it got me thinking about how simply responding to ideas apart from the person expressing them can often make my writing rather blunt when rejecting things I do, in fact, reject. I started wondering how many readers with whom I’ve disagreed have felt like I was just mowing them down rather than having any regard for their feelings. It’s not my intention to mow people down (though I think I can be pretty brutal in a fair fight with people who mean to mow me down).

Anyway, all that is to say “Sorry” to IANS and any others to whom I have been abstract and unfeeling. Your prayers are appreciated.