Ethics

Volokh's Comment Policy

By Ed Brayton

I had to laugh at this post, where Eugene Volokh, apparently frustrated by some of the comments at the VC getting a bit vitriolic, urges readers to be a bit more kind - or at least to hide one's insults inside clever phrasing. He cites this delightful insult written by Alexander Hamilton about John Adams:

This scrutiny [of some of Adams's writings] enhanced my esteem in the main for his [Adams's] moral qualifications, but lessened my respect for his intellectual endowments. I then adopted an opinion, which all my subsequent experience has confirmed, that he is a man of an imagination sublimated and eccentric; propitious neither to the regular display of sound judgment, nor to steady perseverance in a systematic plan of conduct; and I began to perceive what has been since too manifest, that to this defect are added the unfortunate foibles of a vanity without bounds, and a jealousy capable of discoloring every object.

Full post as published by Dispatches from the Culture Wars on January 22, 2009 (boomark / email).