Well, it often surprises me that the “values” that most of our conservative posters espouse and laud, and claim that liberals are destroying, don’t include common courtesy and the value of civil discourse. (My apologies to those decent exceptions to that generalization who may feel injured by it; the condemnation is not directed at you.)
As for the “plagiarism” comment, we have had, over the years, a substantial group of posters – and I believe I can safely and accurately use the word “trolls” of those people – who came on this board reprinting something from a blog or columnist that they did not themselves in fact write. It struck me at the time that an inordinate number of them were in Hallowe’en dress-up as Ann Coulter or Charles Krauthammer – the idea of a Charles Krauthammer sock puppet strikes me as a particularly bizarre visual, by the way.
Our esteemed Razorsharp’s first few posts were, IIRC, reprints from his website/blog. (I ask him for correction on this; I know some of them were, but whether all of his earliest OPs were is something I’m not prepared to argue.)
It was a reasonable assumption, given the previous plethora of pretended publicists plagiarizing pontificating pundits, that Razorsharp was the latest in this line of cleverly costumed infrapontensians. In point of fact, he was the actual original author of what it was presumed he was plagiarizing.
But if the real Bill Clinton or Ann Coulter decided to join this board and claim to have written or said what it is known that they wrote or said, they could expect to go through the same sort of accusation, pending demonstration to the staff that they were actually the persons who had originally written/said what they claimed to have written/said.
In short, Razorsharp, I feel little pity for your complaint of having been unjustly accused of plagiarism – as with any other allegation made on this board, the burden of proof is on the claimant that what he/she claims is in fact accurate. That would include a claim to the original authorship of something available to the public at large on the Internet. Your bona fides have been established; while I disagree vehemently with a lot of your stances, you are who claim to be.
But given the past history here, I don’t think you have a leg to stand on in feeling sorry for yourself about the accusations.