The question is whether "authority should be respected". My intent was to show that as it is used, this is not so. It involves an equivocation in order to make it palatable.
I don't want to get into semantic arguments, although that might be unavoidable.
You wrote "Note, I don't want this tied to a discussion of who said it or why it was raised." Yet there is an obvious guess as the issue that led you to start this thread, namely that raised in
this post. Ben has already suggested that you are taking "authority" to mean other than was intended. I suggest that you are also taking "respect" to mean other than intended. As said in
Message 251 of that same thread
You've got to let some problems go. The moderator team isn't perfect, either, including me. My advice, as always, is to just focus on the issues and ignore anything that appears like personal slights.
I take it that "respect" was intended to mean respect for such requests. Whether you respect the person who made that request is a different issue, and IMO personal respect for the authority as a person was not what was being asked.
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