Why, yes, I am a jerk. Thanks for noticing

Since I wrote a column last week about the Duggar family, I've been besieged by e-mails. Yes, when we get more than four e-mails on any topic, we close the castle door and declare a besieging. I've been accused of not knowing women (nice to hear it coming from someone besides my wife) to wrongfully accusing the Duggar family of frequenting shopping malls to getting up early in the morning to write my columns. I will not rescind my opinions. If I'm going to cut and run every time I take a stance and it angers somebody, then I might as well quit and run for political office. I will say that the point of last week's column was not so much to slam the Duggars as it was to point out the pain of infertility versus their decided non-fertility. Did my acerbic wit instead lead me down a path that took too many easy and unnecessary potshots at a family that has done nothing to me? Perhaps. People also took an offense at my comment about the family forming a milita. C'mon, people, that was a joke. Have you ever tried to get a teenager or toddler to do anything, let alone participate in a successful government overthrow. If the Duggar family or any of the 15,000 million Duggar devotees who apparently read my column as well were angered or hurt, I apologize. I am intrigued by a frequent comment I got over the past weekend, saying their choice to have a large family was what this country was built on and that's the way it was 100 years ago. With all deference to history, we also used to deny minorities and women the right to vote and drive around in clunky, old jalopy's. Just because we did it in the past, doesn't means it works as well today.