I take it that by this comment - "Ultimately you have no moral high ground." you are claiming that ground for yourself? Let's look at your basis.
" And why brand politically biased MSM paid writing as worthy of excerpts, ...
Why do you characterize the excerpt as a sign of worth or worthiness? My understanding is that it exists only to appease those who are so driven by profit that they disallow fair use of their writing - OR - those who have restricted their use on FR because of outright hostility to FreeRepublic and its goals.
"...and citizen writing unworthy?"
Again I will not speak for Gunner, but every time that I have asked for a blogger not to excerpt it is so that the full body of his writing will appear here. This is a compliment to the blogger in question. This is saying that we all need to read the full text here and engage in discussion here as we have been asked to do by our host, the site owner many times.
"But clicks at how a blogger is paid, and why shouldn’t they be paid for their work, especially since it doesn’t hurt FR?"
Now I speak from personal experience. It *does* hurt FR.
On numerous occasions I have referred friends to this site only to have them decide not to participate in what they viewed as a giant blog referral.
"You act like the very existence of bloggers is somehow shameful, when precisely the opposite is true."
Just how is it "shameful" to ask someone to post *more* of their work here? You act like this is an insult, when precisely the opposite is true.
And Finally -
"As opposed to FR using other people’s writing to support their business model?"
Again, you have it backward. FR existed long before the blogger craze. As JimRob made it clear in his statement (which I linked above) the Blogger Section was set up as an accommodation to guests, not as an appeal for more opinion pieces. The original "business model" of FreeRepublic was discussion and *internal* commentary on the news, not a soapbox for everyone with a Wordpress or Blogger site.
Opinions are welcome. Most members (like me) post opinion pieces all the time, as part of the discussion threads that follow each piece of "News."
Now a word in deference to Bruce who authored this thread. I regard him as one of the "Good Guys." He does his best to post his material in full. I believe his prime motivation is to share his opinions on education with as many as possible. The worst that can be said about him is that he tends to be a one issue poster, but that's really of no consequence in the big picture. He is smart enough to know that posting his full content here reaches *more* readers than posting excerpts to blog sites that may or may not (especially in the case of "Examiner") get hits from FR's readers.
(As an aside, I am among those who, if I ever find myself lured into clicking on Examiner, get myself out of there as fast as I can. I already "caught a cold" from their site once.)
Shibumi,
Here is an interesting part of the story. Two weeks ago I saw that the Globe, the tabloid, was attacking Obama on its front cover. I wrote a piece called “Globe Magazine demands ‘ Impeach Obama.’” I put this on Examiner.com here—
http://www.examiner.com/article/globe-magazine-demands-impeach-obama?cid=db_articles
As you note I’m a one-issue person, for the most part. I want people to think of me as an education expert. So I did not post this article on Free Republic, although your readers would certainly enjoy it. This article would surely get 10 or 20 times as many readers as a discussion about heroes.