Harvey asked of me: "Would you allow the same freedom to an editor of your hopefully, heartfelt, years in the making, world shattering novel?"

In a word: yes.

But then again, the writing of a novel is a very different process. For one thing, a novel usually runs anywhere from 10,000 words and up, so the changing of a few lines here or there isn't going to make or break the piece as a whole. For another, book publishing is much more complex, business- and creativity-wise, and the responsibilities of an editor there are somewhat different. They don't have the time or will to make the changes themselves, so they return the work to the writer with comments on what they think should be changed, and leave it to the writer to make the actual changes. If the writer doesn't want to make those changes, s/he simply takes it to another editor.

But whatever you think of an editor's decisions, I still stand by my earlier statement that it is just plain unprofessional to call the editor an idiot for making those decisions.