[mikeash]

I made the perhaps incorrect assumption that your original reply to me way up there was somehow intended to actually reply to me, and therefore that your nonsense rhetoric about "shut down an opposing viewpoint" was something you thought actually applied to me.

If it didn't, then why did you reply to my comment in the first place?

[talmand]

I was replying to you, I was addressing the dangerous part, the nonsense rhetoric as you put it, that you had an issue with from the original poster. I was referring to the concept in general, it was never aimed directly at you. I don't know where you got that impression. You were the one responding as if you felt my thoughts on the matter applied directly to you when I, and another poster, have gone out of our way to say that was not the intention from the beginning.