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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