A letter from a Mr. Bill Pope of Mississippi is running in tomorrow’s paper as follows:
“It is interesting that the viewpoint of the Destin Log is totally dominated by the views of Mr. Sherman, your resident liberal.
His main purpose now is to attack the columns by Ron Hart. While Mr. Hart represents the stated views of your owner Freedom Communications, which promotes “Freedom and Individual Rights for All,” Sherman stands only for liberalism for all.
Apparently the publisher and editor agree with Mr. Sherman or his column would not exist. Either that or they lack the will or ability to express conservative views. Sherman attacking Mr. Hart is like a pea-ant attacking an elephant. ”
Setting aside that as with some of Ron Hart’s other fans, Mr. Pope doesn’t actually refute anything I said (admittedly that would be difficult, since I’m right), my column, as they say, does not represent the views of this paper or this company. Hart says one thing, I disagree, The Log runs us both; obviously, therefore, we’re not being selected because the editor agrees with our views. And the fact that Hart’s column does run shows we’re willing to run conservative pieces (we’ve had former columnists who were much more so).
It’s not my “main purpose” to take shots at Hart’s writing, as witness that this was my first column about his views since 2007. I’ve written fewer columns in response to Hart than I did to that former local conservative columnist, or to the Ayn Rand Institute when we ran their columns.
I do take a semi-weekly shot at Hart in my blog, for the same reason I used to write regular letters to the Daily News (before I became a Freedom staffer) about some of their columnists (Casey Brooks, Walter Williams) and write columns about the Ayn Rand Institute: False claims appearing in my local paper annoy me more than when they come out of the White House spokesperson or some national pundit. So as long as Hart’s writing for us, I’ll be blogging to explain why he’s wrong, just as I frequently do with letters in the Daily News or The Log.
As for not representing the views of Freedom, in the column Mr. Pope was referring to I was criticizing the government for the use of torture, illegal detention and the violation of the Constitution; opposition to those things is surely a good libertarian position (I’m not a libertarian, but there are things on which I agree with them). Mr. Hart, like a dutiful Republican, voted for McCain who would have continued those policies so no, I don’t quite see him as pro-freedom as much as pro-Republican.

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