I was impressed by the comments folks posted on my original Huh? post. A lot of very perceptive comments and well-delivered humor. My compliments, folks! I was touched!
I’m not going to drag this subject out, but wanted to put a few items on the record.
First, as many pointed out, I did not endorse the Iraq War in the posts that the original commenter cited. Neither did I dis-endorse it.
Second, I have no intention of commenting specifically on the war at this point. There is no official Catholic stance on the war, and I generally confine myself to matters of theory rather than matters of application when it comes to subjects like this.
Further, if I were to stake out a position in the way that the commenter wants, it would only "feed the troll" as the saying goes. I have no interest in being provoked into a debate with the commenter on this or any other subject. I’ve tried to be patient and charitable, but I’m not going to feed a fixation.
Lest there be any doubt as to the unreasonableness of what was being asked of me in this case (and others have already very ably pointed out the problems here), I would like to put on record an e-mail that was sent to me at 11:05 p.m. Pacific Time, just over an hour before my "Huh?" post even went up–at which point I had publicly said nothing in response to the commenter. In this e-mail, the commenter wrote:
Mr. Akin,
So, you have been a little bit too much influenced by Richard John
Neuhaus, so that you’re a neoconservative like he is now, right?
This is simply wild speculation on the part of the commenter.
In point of fact, I can’t recall ever reading anything Fr. Neuhaus has written on the Iraq War. I don’t know what Fr. Neuhaus’ opinion of it is. I don’t know if he’s a "neoconservative," and I certainly am not one myself.
The commenter is simply leaping wildly to conclusions for which he has no rational grounds.
Further, the commenter carboned his e-mail to eight different people besides myself, all of whom are notable Catholic bloggers. In deference to them, I will not re-post their e-mail addresses.
I will, however, compliment them on the fact that at this time of this writing not one of them has chosen to respond to the commenter’s e-mail–at least not with me included in the reply. It appears that they all have the blogger ethics and professionalism to recognize and resist such attempts to gin up a baseless controversy and start a blogpile on someone else.
For all I know, they themselves may have had encounters with individuals attempting to entrap them in this fashion.
In any event, my compliments to them and to the voices of reason that have weighed in on this subject.
We now return to the blog . . . already in progress.
