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To see the discussion in question, see the link on vlad’s home page, posts 91 & 93 in particular. As a law review member, I can tell you it is a common temptation. You finally find the source nugget you’ve been searching for, but it is somehow compromised, appearing in an adversarial context where it may have been edited, or some other sourcing defect. But now you know the primary source is out there and you know how to look for it, and lo and behold you find it. Now your problems are solved, right? But no, because to get it right, you have to go back to your original cut and paste and replace the defective quote with the real deal. You should never trust the two to be identical. Some extremely minor difference will come back to burn you, just as it did here.

But do not think that it is enough to merely agree with vlad that misrepresenting one’s sources is a form of lying. No, apparently you must come down with both feet, share an equal sense of outrage at the moral failings of another, or some other proof of like feeling, or else you will be condemned (yes, vlad, that’s my word choice and I’m sticking with it) as complicit in the lie and further proof of his general thesis that Protestant apologists lie.

Vlad and I discussed this in private mail. I will not here disgorge the entire content of that exchange (though if pressed by some unexpected necessity I would be glad to). But I will relate that vlad nowhere in that exchange offers anything remotely like a statistical validation of his claim. He has this one data point with the sourcing integrity, which he hangs on his home page surface like some morbid trophy, and he has a number of other events which rise at best to hearsay and/or opinion, but not proof. The coup de grace is his claim he had a Protestant preacher tell him explicitly that it was OK to lie about Catholics.

Now I have no doubt that would be an upsetting experience. But if I were a scholar of any accomplishment, I would know, absolutely KNOW, I could not use such anecdotal evidence to support making defamatory claims about an entire class of individuals. Therefore, to be perfectly honest, vlad, I suspect your credentials. If you are who you say you are, you should know better. I’d have lost my situation on Law Review for attempting to foist such trash on readers as if it were good argument.

BTW, vlad, question. Are you naming yourself after Vladimir the Great, who I think I’ve read somewhere introduced Christianity to Russia in 998? Interesting character he was.