Dear Many-
 
I am sorry that I offended you with my A.C. post.  Believe it or not,
Kim Fox and I are *Friends*, not enemies, and I had her permission to
send in a post tugging her tail about A.C., which is not something that I
believe in.  Kim knows this, yet we manage to be friends anyway because
we communicate clearly about our feelings on the matter.  She asked me
why I had my doubts about it.  I told her.  I thought that she deserved
to know my thoughts on the matter.  It's called respect.
 
This lack of fear to address a potential source of conflict is the
cornerstone of our friendship, and of the learning process in general.
When people are so dogmatic in their beliefs that they refuse to allow
them to be discussed, held up to examination, or even satired in print,
*THAT* is true intolerance.  That does lead to grotesque examples of
oppression in thought and belief, of which the Salem witch trials stand
out as a vivid example.
 
I think I can understand why you looked at my post and thought Salem,
1992.  I wish that people today could look at it instead and think U.N.,
2003., but that is a forlorn hope.  We haven't evolved quite that far,
yet, I'm afraid.
 
Kim is quite capable of posting her own thoughts to the FML about people
who apparently have no lives, and write sugar-sweet little stories about
the imaginary lives of their ferrets.  And if she does, I will laugh,
and applaud her wit, as well as her right to do so.  Good satire is a
vanishing art form.
 
Sincerely,
Alexandra in Massachusetts
 
P.S. Best regards to Widdle Fairy Buttercup (Giggle.)
[Posted in FML issue 4194]