If I see anything that concerns me here, it's that the rhetoric went up a little bit in their response.

I think you are wrong, Basil, but I won't argue with you. It is only the intellectually lost who ever argue.

.. a simile is not a lie, unless it is a bad simile.

That's all good theory and rhetoric but this real-life circumstance here, it's green, it's thick and good to have and I'm not shifting.

I liked the prominent and nuance rhetoric on Catholic identity, including the ideas that reason can challenge a false and complacent notion of faith and that if we hired only Catholic we'd be less Catholic.

tired and inane rhetoric.