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.
YES!
Not yet,but he may. :-)
I guess. Unitarians tend to be in love with rather dogmatic socialism these days, among other things. I am not a Unitarian. I have no religion. My mother is, or at least was, when she was sentient. She no longer is sentient in general. She suffers from senile dementia. But she is very happy. There are no plans to speed her final exit at present. :)
LOL!
Nope...still "broke". I wrapped my LOL with it.
Remember the magic bullet string? Someone put together a long string of off-codes in HTML, and when stuff was left on, one could put that string in a post and regain control...usually with the word "fixed?" as the text.
Do you have one too?
I bet there's at least one up on Jim.
LOL! I remember that trying to get bold or something else to stop. Those were the days on here! I was so glad when Jim went to have so many posts per page. I remember refreshing those long posts and they took forever.
I had a huge list of about a hundred close tags that I would just throw up if all else failed.
I remember that -- I had forgotten all we went through on here years back. It is so easy now.
That too! And they used to always post that to me and I was NEVER the one who had done anything, because I was on WebTV and could do any HTML.
{runs ... hides}
This thread is beginning to read like a wake..."remember when..." and "Hey, remember that time..."
Me too. :-)
Horse feather me all you like, but the Liberals have been acting like Nazis for years, and you know it - the brownshirt tactics, the constant demands to control speech, gun control, hatred of Jews and others who believe in God, dehumanization (abortion), militant homosexuality, and more.
They're trying, and we need to be aware of it.
Yep. That was like kind of a scattershot method! Fire everything at it, and see what happens! :-)
They call me Nobody.
jellybean's gone now, but Deb still posts.
LOL. I did that a few years back.
LOL!! I think it is funny when Jim posts all the names of someone he zots! Ash would probably take up a whole page.
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