>  Given Veblen's writing style, I assume your quotation from him is meant
to inject irony into this conversation.

Not at all.  Since you enquiry about my intentions I will explain them. 
They were:

1)  To rebuke those who ignored the substance of my mail to focus upon
trivialities

2)  To point up an echo in Veblen’s “scholasticism” of my recent SHOE
reference to Wycliff.

Concerning Wycliff I wrote:  “My current position with regard to
contemporary academic life seems to me broadly similar to that taken by
Wycliff towards the Catholic Church”

The quote I had in mind (from memory, and I read Wycliff about 20 years
back) concerned 14th century friars – whom he described as ‘dead men held
together by chains of dogma’

My wife often correctly reminds me just how lucky in life I have been.  My
grandfather fought on the Somme, her father fought at Stalingrad.  My own
father was I think a little ashamed of his own luck, (WWII - sergeant of a
bomb loading crew).  And I think that is why as children we occasionally
were driven out to ancient battlefields, Marston Moor, and Towton, a kind of
penance in return for the luck.  I have had greater opportunity to travel,
and found Vitkov Hill a good place to meditate upon those who ignored
Wycliff’s warnings.

In anticipation of possible criticism of this mail, I pre-lodge Cobbett’s
defence of Voltaire (available on request)

most sincerely

Rob Tye, York UK, (no affiliation)