A recent glance at Alexander Hamilton’s denunciation of John Adams leads me to revise the comments policy. The passage I have in mind is this:
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.
Ah, they don’t make insults like that any more, or at least enough of them. Hence my compromise: I continue to ask that “[c]omments … be … civil (and, especially, free of name-calling).” But if you absolutely must insult people, I want to set Hamilton’s work as the bar you must clear for that privilege.