On Thu, 18 Jan 96 17:53:46 MST you wrote:
On Sun, 14 Jan 96 16:28:30 EST, sjones@iinet.net.au (Stephen Jones)
said:
[...]
>JF>No-one is required to post all of their private opinions. I will
>publicly defend public statements, and privately defend private
>statements (or retract them).]
SJ>Fine, but as for me I do not have private opinions on public issues
>that are different from my public opinions on public issues, so I find
>it difficult to understand when others do.
JF>This is the crux of the matter.
>
>Steve, you may not have intended this, but being on the receiving end of
>this paragraph, it sounds like you are accusing me of dishonesty. I
>want you to read the next paragraphs very closely. I am going to try
>again to explain myself, since you didn't seem to get my point last
>time.
I do not accuse you of "dishonesty". We are just different. I do not
hold
myself up as an arbiter of honesty.
JF>My public opinions and my private opinions are one and the same.
Read
>carefully. I said "private statements" and "public statements". These
>sometimes differ. There is no problem, provided they do not
>*contradict*. All of us say things in private that we do not say in
>public. This is not dishonesty, it is commonsense and politeness. If
>you go to a church service of another denomination, do you make a pest
>of yourself by telling everyone where you think they are wrong or
>unbiblical (unless of course it comes up in discussion)? If you
>privately think a list member if a gibbering idiot, do you publically
>say so? Of course not. I similarly try to avoid inflammatory
>statements here; I respect the wish of members not to have this list
>turn into another talk.origins.
I carefully said "I do not have private opinions on *public* issues
that are different from my public opinions on *public* issues". Of
course I have private views on private issues. And of course I
"try to avoid inflammatory statements". But if I thought that Gish
was deliberately dishonest for example, I would say it both publicly
and
privately, because this is a *public* matter.
JF>Recall my original posting, in which I said that I considered Gish
>"untrustworthy", in the sense that I considered his testimony
>unreliable. *It doesn't matter* whether I consider him unreliable
>because of intentional dishonesty, unintentional dishonesty, stupidity,
>poor research, ignorance, senility, smoking drugs, whatever. Saying
>that I find him unreliable is a fairly mild statement (he probably
>thinks I'm unreliable too) that is consistent with *any* of the above
>reasons. I deliberately didn't make a stronger statement because there
>was no need to; it would have been unnecessarily inflammatory, it could
>have annoyed other list members, it could have distracted attention away
>from my original request for further confirmation of Gish's claim into a
>firefight about my statement.
If you post your original ptivate statement, then I could make
comparisons
between what you said publicly and privately.
JF>I accept your apology that even inferring the contents of a private
>message could be a breach of netiquette. BUT I would also like you to
>reconsider your claim that my private and public statements have been at
>odds. Different, yes. Contradictory, no.
That's what I said. "Different"! :-)
[...]
I really don't wan't to continue this, Jim. Without you posting your
original private statement, its an impossible position for me to
discuss.
Regards.
Stephen
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