Further dogged defense of paraphyletic taxa

I was invited to defend my views on cladistic classification at a symposium on Linnaean taxonomy at the Smithsonian Institution in 2001. When the paper was published (Brummitt, 2002) I received very many messages of support from people from all around the world. But in this business it seems one never convinces everyone, and I know that others are probably still critical of my views. We need discussion to resolve what I believe are some very important issues in systematics, but my opponents usually prefer to ignore what I hope is the logic of my case. So I was pleased and interested to see the reply to my paper by such prominent opponents as Nelson, Murphy & Ladiges (2003) in which they have credited me with dogged defense of paraphyly over a period of eight years. They have taken up the challenge originally given by me and my co-author Marc Sosef (Brummitt & Sosef,