You can, and I do. But most sites use it in a way that breaks most of the functionality if you don't enable it. This is bad, and encourages bad habits to those that don't know what they are doing.

> Yes, there are potential threats from running javascript, but javascript still relatively less threatening than everything else...

yeah, all of those plain html attacks have been pretty damaging.... oh, wait, there are hardly any, because html makes sense, and is designed with the user in mind. JS is the opposite.

> including every other kind of executable code that can run from the web, such as java applets, flash and silverlight.

Those are shitty too. But just because they are worse, doesn't make JS acceptable.

> I understand you don't like javascript, but you're overstating the malice of forethought behind its application in all but the edge cases.

I'm not overstating the malice of forethought. I get that 99% of JS is by people who want their site to work well, and use it with good intentions. But even good intentions, done wrong, lead to bad results.