Replies

"Well I'm with you on your goals. I think you should just go ahead and spill the beans on the plan at this point. Too much buildup is hookey...Free Republic is a wonderful cultural treasure for conservatives. But the focus and POWER that we had early on (I've been here since 1998) has largely disapated."

Your insight is excellent. Some of your other comments are also very salient, "..place for conservatives to chat..What you don't see is any particular focus on anything like restoring the republic." And, "If that's what you want I think you need to go elswhere (and drop in here once in a while..from what you've said I am broadly in support of your concerns and goals. Please accept this as the constructive criticism I intend it to be."

Our group considered everything you said, including your recommendation. We decided to make our case on FreeRepublic for several reasons:

First, FreeRepublic is large enough and has enough band width to not only accomodate conservative chat, but also plenty of room for serious discussion of any number of conservative issues including the restoration of the Constitution. Since the virtual space of our discussion hall is essentialy infinite, there is no reason why all of these discussions cannot take place side by side without disturbing any other discussion. And on occassion, these side by side discussions might become resources for each other.
Secondly, I suspect there are more conservative eyeballs that grace these pages than other conservative forum environments. Exposing our material to more eyeballs increases the odds that it will ultimately connect with the individuals that can actually effect the restoration.
To some extent, the actions we would like to produce resemble the chain reactions of a nuclear reactor. If we can incite a reaction in one individual, that individual may contact and incite reactions in many others. Eventually, we might reach the people that can actually put our in plan into effect.
Quanity of reactions is not the only thing offered by FreeRepublic. Important conservatives commonly peruse the site. If we capture the right hit on FreeRepublic, in truth, as you will see, we only have to change a single mind if the right individual happens to review our material and realize what we have to offer.
It is literally true, we only need to convince a single individual of our plan, and assuming it is the right individual, that person will change the minds of all the other millions of minds that will need to be convinced.

As for the stringing out of the material, there are several reasons why we have chosen to do it, and a couple of reasons why it absolutely necessary. If you have paid attention to the number of views of articles posted on FreeRepublic, you have undoubtedly noticed that some can produce more than 100,000 views while others may produce less than a hundred. Some articles similar to some of these were published on another site with average hits in the high hundreds or low one thousand range without producing a critical mass reaction. We don't want to be a one shot flash in the pan; we want to generate a sustainable reaction that it will see itself through to completion. One of the prior articles alluded to our main reason for not presenting too much in a single article.

Slogans and sound bytes are great for selling Christmas cards, "When you care enough to send the very best," or winning elections, "It's the economy stupid." We admit that we aren't salesmen, but we do believe that to change 90 years of history in less than a decade and pursuade hundreds of millions of people to end socialism before socialism ends the United States is going to take more than a slogan or a sound byte. We are going to have to present a truly great debate that carries the day.

We hope you will join us in this effort and invite you and every Freeper to conisder taking The Pledge.