Bill Lawrence wrote on Aug 18
th, 2018 at 12:59am:
Harvey Donaldson should be judged as a man of his times, not ours.
Of course, everybody should! (Although modern education, beginning in grade school, teaches exactly the opposite--thus most of the Founding Fathers are now condemned for owning slaves, when
that was the social system they grew up in! Look up "presentism" is you've never heard that term--the college instructor who doesn't preach it will soon be out of a job.)
As I previously said, I very much want to give Harve the benefit of the doubt. But if you knew as much, probably more, than the man who has become famous for the books & articles he's written, would it not be natural to feel some envy, some sense of life's injustice? People who wouldn't are probably destined to become monks. Harvey's only book, remember, was published
after his death. That's my interpretation of the questionable remarks Water's discussed in his Handloader article.
Incidentally, "print the legend," not the factual truth, is a pernicious philosophy--it means "what most (ignorant) people believe" is more important than what actually happened. Of course, it's an immensely popular philosophy because it affirms what the majority
want to believe. Thus "the legend" of the greatest demagogue & rabble-rouser this country has ever produced--who else but MLK?--is taught in every schoolroom in the country, & the FBI tapes which reveal what kind of man he
really was are suppressed because they conflict with "the legend."