Quote Originally Posted by Rank amateur View Post
Looks like Mr. Nagl can stand up for himself. I thought the charge of "cultural relativism" was devastating and potentially fatal.
Not necessarily. Price's invective is sadly fairly common in academic circles, where the only battles they often fight are in the book review sections of the various scholarly journals. In any case, he can rebut it by simply claiming that since Nagl is "only" a soldier he certainly can't understand the basics of a complex thing like cultural relativism, and even if he could he doesn't have the qualifications to render an opinion on same. [/sarcasm]

Price is writing for his own audience, many of whom won't see (or will discount) Nagl's reasoned response. To an extent this is a situation that was caused by a rush to publication (possibly) on the part of the University of Chicago (which should have tried to reconstruct the footnotes if possible, or if not issued a very clear disclaimer in the introduction), but that doesn't (IMO) excuse the personal attacks launched by Price.