'Smartness', Tracey, has nothing to do with Mensa and how priviliged you might feel. Many 'intelligent' people, whilst grasping the intimate workings of Quantum Physics, fail to keep their feet on the ground long enough to look at the world around them and see how it operates.

However, had you a PhD in Sociology, you might spot it, as your work would bring you closer to the sentiment of the grass roots, where all this 'tradition' lives, or gets overwhelmed in the rivers of blood.

I have said before that assumption is a bad thing. And what may be 'considered' a vulgarism in one person's terminology, might not necessarily be so. To 'consider' anything in that way, is to generalise to the same degree as 'considering' that English people are more or less, tolerant.

That is basically my only premise, and I would never have thought about it had you not made a point of making it relevant to this discussion.

When one 'vehemently' purports a popular theory, and another 'vehemently' expresses the unpopular, opposing theory, why is it that the dissenter is always portrayed to be the trouble-maker, with all sorts of accusations levelled at him?
But we have a tendency to do that. It's part of our tradition

Why do some people strive to beat the dissenter into submission, by sufficiently muddying up the waters so, so that they are forced into defending other corners not specifically connected to the matter at hand?

At any other time, perhaps, giving Malcolm a 'Glasgow Kiss' might have been enjoyable, perhaps even appropriate.
But since I don't believe in such activities as a reasonable way to continue discussions, the question would never have been brought up by me either.

I think when people 'over defend' their viewpoint, I can't help but suspect a little of "Methinks thou dost protest too much" (sic)