I don’t think anyone is afraid of FreeRepublic. But, this is not a discussion forum any more. It certainly was once, in fact the premise of FR was a posting of an article of interest followed by an often lively discussion with a number of different of points of view, all in the conservative realm. Many of these discussions involved people who were clearly the definitive expert on the planet on a particular subject. Spending an evening of FR was an education.
Nothing of that sort of thing exists these days, except by very rate occasions. Those people who lead or join in those discussions have either left or been chased off. What is left limit their comments to the Twitter 140 character limit, or less. Complete sentences are rare, and forget the hope of seeing a real paragraph.
FR is just another blog or news web site without Ads.
I don’t think anyone is afraid of FreeRepublic. But, this is not a discussion forum any more. It certainly was once, in fact the premise of FR was a posting of an article of interest followed by an often lively discussion with a number of different of points of view, all in the conservative realm. Many of these discussions involved people who were clearly the definitive expert on the planet on a particular subject. Spending an evening of FR was an education.
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that was so true. I remember when a jet crashed and there were at least a half dozen jet pilots discussing and posting pics and scenerios.
I agree with your post and miss the old Free Republic. It seemed that, no matter the topic, there were several people in that field, at that event, or living in the area that knew participants to a news item. The depth of knowledge we would all get from one little article posted and then the following commentary was amazing.
And also the immediate timeliness of the breaking news and events. I think we knew that the space shuttle Columbia was destroyed on re-entry before NASA did. There was a thread posted for watching the shuttle come back and land, and one of the freepers on the thread said he saw the shuttle overhead in his part of the state and it looked like it had broken in multiple pieces. After I read that, I looked over at my television and the personnel in the NASA control room were still trying to get an answer from the crew and looking very confused.
Free Republic was simply the greatest website on the internet in so many ways.