Posted on 04/01/2005 4:26:00 PM PST by Poohbah
First, this is NOT an April Fool's joke.
I am leaving Free Republic.
Over the past two years, civility and thoughtful discourse has vanished from this site, replaced with demands for ideological conformity that are straight out of Stalinist Russia or China's Great Cultural Revolution, and unrelenting uncivility if said conformance is not forthcoming. This trend began with the California recall election, where certain posters were allowed to flame the living beejezus out of those who didn't wholeheartedly support Tom McClintock, or thought that he wasn't running a campaign capable of winning. It extended into the Keyes campaign last year, where any critique of Keyes' campaign strategy was shrilly flamed, despite the obviously flawed execution of his campaign.
(Aside: one person who flamed me during the Keyes mess later said that he hadn't intended to start a fight with his remarks that accused me of homosexuality, pedophilia, and other evils; I was instantly reminded of the time I had to bail one of my Marines out of the local lockup. "Honest, Sarge," this Marine told me, "I didn't mean to start a fight when I called that Army Ranger a faggot." My response was not [and still isn't] suitable for public consumption.)
Since then, the Terri Schiavo case has pushed FR over the edge. We had posts calling for people to ensure that "accidents" to befall Schiavo and Judge Greer. We had posts praying that Iran would soon develop nuclear weapons, so that they could destroy the United States. And until the FBI started making arrests, those posts were allowed to stay up, completely abnegating Free Republic's standards.
We had people on both sides of the issue point out that the Schindlers were associating with some people of extremely low character, and that our uncritical embrace of these parties would not rebound to our favor. Rather reasonable attitudes to take, actually; but the loudest of the loud were in no mood to think.
My personal favorite was the following exchange:
The issue is not legality, but public opinion. Which will not be helped in this case if the pro-Terry side becomes associated in the media with Christian Identity, white supremicists, neo-nazis, racists and/or anti-semites.
Diva Betsy Ross made a valiant attempt to...ahem...whitewash Christian Identity, but it didn't work.
To top things off, we had people embracing as some sort of conservative icon, to the extent of posting a fundraising link.
I always thought that conservatism valued thinking over feeling, careful contemplation of facts over wild-eyed repetition of every damn rumor to come down the pipe, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. For a while, Free Republic met those criteria in spades.
Those days are long gone, and I have serious doubt as to whether or not they're coming back.
I know that many of the usual suspects will cheer this on, as their longtime nemesis is leaving them the field.
Be careful what you wish for; you are in the process of getting it. You may succeed in driving the folks who disagree with you from the site; but you will end up being just another collection of shrill voices in Bedlam. When everything is an over-the-top scream, no one will be heard.
Farewell.
Wow, that's a name I haven't seen in AGES... just gave me flashbacks of trying to strangle an Ayn Rand novel.
My art on the freeper mug as well
heck yeah I'm semi-famously nobody :) lol
see you around, have a good night
Ditto Pal, keep your monumental stupidity locked in that vacant spot you call a brain housing group. If you don't resist tyranny then tyranny wins. If you are so dumb you can't realize that then this country will lose it's freedoms.
Some of us will NOT live under tyranny and when the laws fail, as they did in the case of Terri and good men do not protect the helpless, then Tyrants win.
But then you obviously don't give a damn if the helpless are murdered by Judges.
Absolutely, 100%, spot on correct!
There was so much conjecture, mixed in with facts, mixed in with innuendo, mixed in with rumor, mixed in with fantasy, that it completely drove everyone off the deep end in a desperate attempt to help Terri or at the very least figure the dang thing out.
How do YOU know about Eschoir, with your signup date?
I wish I had had broadband back then instead of an original WebTV.
Threads weren't broken up, so I would click on the BigSigh/DITHF threads....go make a sandwich and hope it had loaded when I got back to read the next two or three, new posts. Then.... Refresh...wait wait wait.
(or, God forbid, get the dreaded "Page To Big To Complete"... arrrggghhh!!!)
I use to bless the folks who started a "Come over here....page two!"
Knock off the attacks please
I did not say "idiots are running FR" - I said "running things" - which means - taking control the threads. Sorry if you midunderstood.
He's got this thread running on LP? Why am I not surprised? :-(
As I said, go on out there and take on the "tyrant." What's stopping you? Resist to your heart's content. Try getting others to take up arms with you. See how far you'll get.
No, it isn't. The Nazi party was about exterminating people, not just Jews...but gays, Christians who disagreed with them, etc.
The Nazi party was about control of the lives of its citizens, getting rid of guns, for instance.
As a history major, I can assure you there is a big difference between Nazi eugenics and an American court saying pull her feeding tube because it ruled it was HER desire....not the state or a political party.
Big difference. Of course, I believe the court was wrong that it was her desire. But, the comparison is not an accurate one unless we start offing people just because we find them inconvenient.
I'm 56 and I never heard of them either.
I guess I'm just too dumb to.
I didn't see anything wrong with DBR's response.
I think you may have nailed it -- I couldn't believe what I was reading sometimes the past couple of weeks. I never thought of the Buckhead factor.
We appear to be 2 out of 1,000s.
Nam Vet
Oh yeah. Blame the libertarians.
The days of dial up -- nightmare! When I first came on here I didn't even realize I had to refresh the page to see new comments but when I learned, it took forever. It was so slow -- I had forgotten about that. Now I have DSL and would really hate to go back to dial-up.
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