Free Republic

This is a belated fifth post in a series on Internet Forums and Social Dynamics. In Part I, I pointed out how the internet self-selects into mutually exclusive groups according to common interests or beliefs. Part II provided an amusing look at the reactions within a group when posters to a forum go against the prevailing groupthink. Then Part III showed how segregation of internet groups occurs not only by interests but by common levels of intellect, sophistication, or expertise in a subject. And most recently, Part IV showed how the sheer size and untamed nature of the Internet, and...

One of the metrics which has been emphasized over the last couple of elections, and which is gaining interest in the current election, is the percentage of votes for a candidate coming from various gender demographics: what percentage of married couples vote vs. single women? What is the the likelihood of each group to vote GOP vs. Democrat? It is often felt that, even aside from the "mushy middle" or "moderate" voting bloc, elections can be determined by the affinity of men or of women for a candidate. For example, Bill Clinton's re-election was due to the so-called "arousal gap"...

Once upon a time, there was a mirror. And the mirror was bright, and polished, and pure, without any flaw; and it was said the the mirror would return the very image of its beholder without distortion. And it happened, by chance or malfeasance, that the mirror fell, and was shattered: and it was broken, sparkling, into countless shards scattered throughout the earth. And the fate of these shards as they were scattered differed one from another. Some indeed retained their brilliance, such that they sparkled like a rainbow in the sun, but all their powers to return an image...

This is a passage from chapter XXV, from the subsection Oligarchical Coup d'Etat at Athens. <snip> But this was a mere catchword for the multitude, as the authors of the revolution were really to govern. However, the Assembly and the Council of the Bean still met notwithstanding, although they discussed nothing that was not approved of by the conspirators, who both supplied the speakers and reviewed in advance what they were to say. Fear, and the sight of the numbers of the conspirators, closed the mouths of the rest; or if any ventured to rise in opposition, he was presently...

A spate of recent articles -- see for example here, here, and here -- have noted Detroit’s population implosion and financial woes, along with the proposed solution of shutting off street lights in underpopulated neighborhoods to save money. (Cue the obligatory “Will the last person to leave Detroit...” joke. The last article, in particular, notes that the solution is designed to drive people away from the poorest, most sparsely populated neighborhoods.) And why? Because, supposedly, there is not enough money to pay for the services.
This is an important concept, and deserves further investigation, as it contains the answer to the...

The news came today, about 1:00 PM Central Time, that Rick Santorum is suspending his bid for the Republican nomination for President. (The reader should be reminded of the health issues of the Santorums’ daughter Bella, and is urged to remember the family in prayer.) Reaction was mixed. “At last,” some said, “we have all the deadwood and pretenders cleared out of the way (Newt and Ron Paul are too insignificant to matter, right?) and we can rally around the sensible choice. Go Romney!” Others reached for the Hemlock: “Oh, no, the last good Christian man standing is gone! We...

I wish I had thought of this sooner. But you know, we all ought to start calling Obamacare by a new name, the "Barack Obama Health Insurance Commerce Act". BOHICA. I guess Sarah Palin won't be losing any sleep over this, what with her "Death Panels" tweet and all. Still, every little bit helps.

Over the past couple of years, I have been corresponding with and visiting various Colleges and Universities, as part of helping younger folks decide where to attend school. In addition, I have visited a number of College Websites, and discussion groups (e.g. College Prowler and College Confidential) in order to round out my sources of information by relying on the experience of other people for places I didn't have the opportunity to see for myself. This has led to a number of observations about "the way the world works" and how these factors influence people's actions and their path through...

Folks, come and look at this. It's a site which says -- I am not kidding! -- IF OUR REPRODUCTIVE CHOICES ARE DENIED SO ARE YOURS APRIL 28 – MAY 5, 2012 Now this is hilarious: it evinces the kind of stupidity and fatuous narcissism which it normally takes an Ivy League degree to acquire. How is this FAIL? Let me count the ways: 1) I guess nobody bothered to explain to you about the Birds and the Bees and the DDT, ladies, but by engaging in abstinence, you are achieving precisely the same ends as contraception. For that matter,...

The saga of Sandra Fluke (Trojan Whorse) and Rush Limbaugh continues. Rush Limbaugh made a heartfelt apology on Saturday, apparently caving to pressure from advertisers who suspended or ceased advertising on his program. He continued on Monday, devoting approximately forty or forty-five minutes of his show, first to apologizing for using two derogatory words for Sandra Fluke -- because using them was sinking to the level of the left -- and the remainder of that time to providing timely background to her appearance before Pelosi. As it turns out, the Democrats on Darrel Issa's committee considering mandatory provision of contraception...

By now, nearly the entire known universe has at least heard of the controversy over Sandra Fluke. However, a passing acquaintance based on sound-bytes and snippets is never the best basis for action, and is in fact fertile ground for the propaganda ministers of the left. This piece will give a brief recap of the situation, and then discuss the lay of the land. (Pun intended, if you like it.) Back in the GOP primary debate on January 7, George Stephanopoulos asked Mitt Romney(RINO-Bain) whether he believed that states have the power to ban contraception. This puzzled Romney, and was...

This is the fourth of a series of five essays on the Internet and Social Dynamics. In Internet Forums and Social Dynamics: Part I: Everybody is someone else’s weirdo was concerned with the treatment of how internet groups (focusing on Free Republic) dealt with posters (I almost typed “posers” which on second thought would not have been a bad typo to leave in place) who do not share the prevailing views. The second part, Internet Forums and Social Dynamics: Part II: Snapbacks, was concerned with the psychological reactions when a poster who had been considered safely “one of the group”...

In Internet Forums and Social Dynamics: Part I: Everybody is someone else’s weirdo, I dealt with the issue of self-selection on internet discussion groups, using Free Republic as an example. I explained that people who share values tend to evaluate newcomers to see if they are truly “members” of the group or not, by analogy to well-known statistical methods, before deciding whether to accept them or not. In Internet Forums and Social Dynamics: Part II: Snapbacks, I discussed the often humorous process by which people sound one another out, and the fireworks which oftentimes result when a person is suddenly...

In the early- to mid- 1970’s, the current crop of liberal alarmists were coming to the fore and feeling their oats. There was Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, the book which singlehandedly led to the elimination of DDT. And finally, there was the grand-daddy of them all, Paul Erlich’s The Population Bomb, an updated salute to Malthus. I can still remember the words on the cover: “While you were reading these words, people will die of starvation, most of them children.” It seems that the world was eating itself out of house and home, beyond any possibility of rescue. It is...

One of the favorite targets of conservative pundits (and rightly so) is the liberal tendency to extremes. Oftentimes, a liberal will see a societal problem, and pronounce :”This needs government!” Quite often the liberal will see a real problem, too, but will either end up creating a massive, wasteful bureaucracy (say, Medicare or Social Security), or else use the problem as a excuse for a vastly disproportionate growth in governmental power (say, the IRS). As H. L. Mencken once wrote, “Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.”...

It is interesting how, in the aftermath of the past year’s run-up in oil prices, we have been hearing less and less talk of “globalization” from the chattering classes. Why is this? On the surface, there are several reasons. First, the topic high oil prices presents an easy segue to bring up the annointed’s favorite mantra: green technologies and the need to continue de-industrializing America. We can all get high-paying “green” jobs to replace the textile, manufacturing, computer programming, and bio-tech jobs which have been developed in the United States and then shipped offshore. And the high oil prices themselves...

Last week, Rush Limbaugh celebrated the 20th anniversary of his national show. As part of the festivities, he played a number of well-loved and famous clips from his archives. One such clip was a television spot where he debated Al Gore on the environment and on global warming. During that debate, Al Gore attempted to explain himself, and the urgency behind global warming, by quoting the oft-cited story of the frog in a pot of water. If, he said, you drop a frog directly into a pot of boiling water (and why didn’t PETA complain about this analogy?), the frog...

The course of the Democrat primaries this year has surprised everyone: most pundits figured going in that Hillary Clinton had the nomination all sewn up, and that by next year she would be crossing the country on "Broomstick One". But a funny thing happened on the way to the coronation. Another candidate, named Barack [Censored] Obama. Charles Krauthammer has written a brilliant and insightful piece on the errors made by Hillary Clinton's team, and how they contributed to Senator Obama's success. But I feel that his analysis did not credit the brilliance of the candidate himself. Obama has correctly sensed...

The Heller decision on the second amendment has affirmed the right to keep and bear arms as an individual right. This has come as a great relief to many conservatives, and has caused great gnashing of teeth among many liberals. Among the liberals dismayed by the decision are the D.C. City Council, who are defying the United States Supreme Court, at least in spirit, by promising to re-write the original law governing the possession of firearms so that it just falls within the legal definitions required by Heller, while still ensuring as a practical matter that people will not be...