Dan Simon has graciously permitted me to guest-blog here, until such time as I bring the discourse down to too low a level. My pseudonym "LTEC" stands for "Let Them Eat Cash"; this is a slogan I made up that summarizes and over-simplifies the kind of capitalist welfare-state that I advocate.

I hereby promise to try to stick to the following rules that I have made up:

1) I will never accuse someone else of being "arrogant". The fact is that our opponents always appear arrogant to us, and us to them, so that the word effectively has no meaning. Perhaps someday someone will describe a meaning for this word in such a way that we can reasonably judge a person's arrogance independently of his opinions. Until then, it's a good word not to use.

2) I will never describe an opponent as being "well-intentioned" unless I have good evidence for this, and truly believe it. In fact, I believe that many people, including many journalists and many people that I know, are very ill-intentioned indeed.

3) I will not call a person "stupid", unless I actually believe it. One thing I have learned is that some very intelligent people are capable of saying really stupid things ... and capable of being very ill-intentioned.


Of course, the statements I will make here represent not only my own opinions, but also those of Dan, my family and my employer.

UPDATE (June 17, 2004)
4) I will not make fun of an opponent for being old or young or thin or fat or ugly or of bad complexion. I will not be one of those people who delight in pointing out that Michael Moore is fat. I will not be like Solzhenitsyn who can write for a thousand pages about the murder of tens of millions of people, and then accuse the murderer of being "short" and "pockmarked".