"I think we'll just have to agree to disagree :) "
It might heappen, but it is still very pleasant to disagree with you,
so let's disagree a little bit more... J

"I also have to disagree that inclusion would require making initial
distinctions. I don't believe there are such distinctions to be made
or that there would be a need for them. On the contrary, the
commonalities are the basis of the inclusionary attitude."
I would have to ask you to go into details of what you actually mean
by exclusion/inclusion. I just understand the above mentioned
attitued in a straight was, i.e. by the meaning of the words.
Therefore if I would say "commonalities are the basis of the
inclusionary attitude" than I would think of existance of something
common and on something uncommon. If I stand on the ground of
commonalities and include to the population uncommonalities, I focus
on a specific scope of uncommonalities to include. Thus I would have
to think of defining the uncommonalities which are right to include.
Then there must be a borderline of what might be included and if the
borderlines are defined, then I come to the same point which is the
ruling point of breed destinction.
If I do not define the uncommonalities and include anything one bu
one I come to the point that I am facing a unity. And as far as the
unit is my ground (unit probably comes from UNUM in Latin – and may
mean ONE) then there is no inclusin as there is nothing to include,
because in ONE everything is included.
Please, tell me if I am not right with understanding
inclusion/exclusion.

"More important to me is that if they look the same, act the same and
function the same, why divide them?"
If this point referred to sloughi and saluki, I experience on every
day ground (as I own sloughi and tazi) that I own two different
breeds. They do not look the same (off course not only the fur is
different, but also the frame, tails, heads, ears etc.) but they also
behave in a different way (sloughi has an instinc of a watchdog,
lacking in tazi; sloughi hates running in bushes, which tazi adores;
sloughi never goes far away for a longer moment, tazi disappears for
prolonged time, etc.)

Personal preferences will keep different types alive even if we were
to include them all into one breeding population, and that is as it
should be. It is also the way the types have endured for so long.
If the population would be big enough and it will never come to be
homogenous, I guess you might be right. But one has to admit, that
different types would appear in the same litter.

Bye,
Martin