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Pastimes : THE SLIGHTLY MODERATED BOXING RING -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Poet who wrote (6824)	4/4/2002 7:16:00 PM
From: Lane3	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 21057

This doesn't jibe with you? I understand the point and I recognize that it's important to many people. I just don't know what that particular point has to do with the rest of the essay. You could leave it out and the sentence and paragraph would still make the point. He said: <<He understands that an attack on a person's cherished beliefs and customs is an attack on that person, and that we should be very careful about stirring up anger and division in society by clumsy attempts to interfere with community norms and private traditions.>> The part I questioned seems extraneous to me. The essay is fairly compact, for Neo, at least. It seems it would be better pared down to: <<He understands that we should be very careful about stirring up anger and division in society by clumsy attempts to interfere with community norms and private traditions.>> I don't know what people taking their institutions personally, while a valid observation, is core to a basic statement on conservatism. Also, one statement about how people "feel" in an otherwise no-nonsense essay seems out of place. So I'm asking why it's there. If it's an important statement on the nature of conservatism, it should have a sentence of its own, not be just some introductory clause. As for jibing with me, I have far, far less attachment to tradition than most people. Tradition is the default, that's all. Customs ought to come with sunset clauses, IMO. They should be reevaluated periodically to make sure that we know why we follow them and that they still make sense. (Bear in mind that I used to reinvent systems for a living.) That doesn't mean I want to throw all the balls up in the air. I'm pretty conservative about making system changes. Change needs to have a valid purpose and be cost effective. I'm just not sentimental about things that no longer serve a useful purpose.