” A Situation in Which the Majority Intimidates the Minority into Self-Censorship Is Not Healthy and Leads to No Place Good. I Respect My Buy-and-Hold Friends. I Love My Buy-and-Hold Friends. But I Am Not Willing to Say Things That I Do Not Believe Are True to Appease My Buy-and-Hold Friends.”

Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to the discussion thread for another blog entry at this site:

“When we all agree on the importance of that distinction, we will all be in a much better place.”

And when we don’t agree, we are called “goons” and told we are going to prison.

No.

You are called “Goons” and told you are going to prison when you: (1) advance death threats; (2) demand unjustified board bannings; (3) put forward thousands of acts of defamation; or (4) threaten to get academic researchers fired if they continue to do honest work.

It is possible to imagine a world in which Buy-and-Holders and Valuation-Informed Indexers would live together in peace while openly disagreeing about how stock investing works. Robert Shiller and Jeremy Siegel hold opposite views and they took several family vacations together without experiencing any problems. Robert Shiller and Eugene Fama hold opposite views and they have appeared at several conferences together without any negative incidents taking place.

It can be done.

But the published rules of all of our board and blog communities and the laws of the United States are good rules and good laws. For people of differing views to live together in harmony there has to be a mutual respect and affection. A situation in which the majority intimidates the minority into self-censorship is not healthy and leads to no place good.

I respect my Buy-and-Hold friends. I love my Buy-and-Hold friends. But I am not willing to say things that I do not believe are true to appease my Buy-and-Hold friends. My personal view is that I would not be showing respect and love to my Buy-and-Hold friends if I did that. I would be showing fear of them. I would be evidencing cowardice. I would be degrading myself AND my Buy-and-Hold friends by walking that path. No.

I will sign on to any situation in which I and all my fellow community members (including my Buy-and-Hold friends, to be sure) are permitted to post honestly. I will not sign on to any situation that does not permit us all to post honestly. Communities that permit honest posting are magic. They permit us all to learn things that we never could have learned congregating only with others who thought as we did. Communities that demand dishonesty as the price of admission make me sick. That’s the way it is. I possess zero desire to sugarcoat that reality, a reality of which I am exceedingly proud.

That’s it, you know?

We can live together in peace or we can destroy ourselves by failing to make the effort required to do so. I vote for making the effort.

My best and warmest wishes to you and yours, old friend.

Rob