Well, I won’t deny that I have a tendency toward pedantry. It may be inconvenient at times, but I’m not ashamed of it. But speaking of putting words in someone’s mouth, I didn’t say and neither do I think you are a dummy. I in no way implied that you are incapable of engaging in an intelligent conversation, only that you weren’t engaging in one.
I’m not sure what you mean by “flavor of the thought,” but my point was that what you said was not in the spirit of what Smith wrote. “Mercy to criminals is cruelty to victims” is so extremely absolute a statement that it doesn’t make sense unless you were to clarify that “mercy” is meant to have some specific, non-obvious meaning. If you mean any mercy at all, that’s ludicrous. It’s not unheard of for victims themselves to request mercy for those who wronged them. From the context of you posting that phrase to this thread with no other explanation, it was inferred that you meant “mercy” to include allowing felons to vote. There’s an argument to be made that allowing felons to vote is not a good idea, but if there’s any argument to be made that allowing felons to vote is somehow cruel to their victims, it would be short and you would lose.
