RE: finding the hork point in ~/.emacs

[Drew Adams]

> emacs -Q
> and then visit ~/.emacs.  I then try to C-x C-e every individual
> statement, until I find the one that Emacs doesn't like.

Unless you have only a few such statements, see
what others have suggested as an alternative:
binary search.  Use `M-x comment-region' to
comment out 1/2, then 3/4, 7/8, 15/16,... of the
file, till you find just what caused the problem.

If you use `C-u M-x comment-region' it UNcomments.

This is very quick, even if it doesn't seem so
at first.