[Avodah] Have you perhaps become more machmir or more meikil over time?

[Professor L. Levine via Avodah]

This week's Jewish Press contains in interview with the noted poseik Rabbi J.
David Bleich.  See
http://tinyurl.com/jcez9on

One of the questions he is asked and his response are below.

    Have you perhaps become more machmir or more meikil over time?

    Heaven forfend. I don't know what those words mean. There is no such
    thing as a machmir and a meikil. Anyone who talks in that language
    is not a posek. There is a halacha and there is an assessment of
    pros and cons and different positions and then you apply it in a
    concrete situation. Sometimes the ruling is more stringent, sometimes
    it's less stringent. But the categories of machmir and meikil are
    extra-halachic. These words shouldn't even be bandied about.

This response certainly flies in the face of the many, many conversations
and assertions in which persons or practices are designated by this one
or that one as being meikil or machmir.

He is also asked questions about the halachic view of vaccinations,
lost diamonds and torture. See the above URL for the entire interview.

YL