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Date: | Fri, 24 Oct 2008 09:14:51 -0400 |
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Brent Tarter again criticized forum participants who
> "[engage] in insulting and irrelevant comments about
> other people (which may annoy me so much in the
> end that I'll succumb to the temptation to cancel
> subscriptions).
Mr. Tarter, I for one do wish that you would cancel subscriptions in the
worst cases. Also -- and I hope this is just something spurred by an
unintentional effect of your choice of subject-line wording -- a long
time ago, when I first introduced the subject of the fate of post-Army
Fort Monroe in this forum, I checked with you off-list to make sure that
it seemed like an appropriate topic. An obvious problem is that it's
hard to keep the discussion completely disconnected from present-day
politics, since in fact the entire thing comes up _because_ of
present-day politics. (It's easy, though, to keep _electoral_ politics
and party politics out of it. I also have a lot to say on those, but
I've said it at VBDems.org, not here.) The Pentagon has decided to close
this post in 2011, the National Trust for Historic Preservation ranks it
with Monticello and Mount Vernon, the history is intertwined
fundamentally with efforts in (and out of) academe to improve
understanding of America's slavery-era past ... and so on. So it does
still seem to me to be a valid Virginia history forum topic. Here's my
point: Despite the irrelevancies and personal attacks and worse that the
Fort Monroe topic somehow brought with it this time, it also brought
some conversation that seems to me constructive and fitting. So I plan
to continue from time to time to bring it up. But as when I queried you
originally, I'm open to being corrected on that. Thanks, and thanks to
the Library of Virginia for sustaining this forum, with its imperfectly
appreciated spirit.
Steve Corneliussen
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