Posted on 01/19/2017 2:10:23 PM PST by HiTech RedNeck
Well.
It has been 16 years more or less that I have been on FR.
My participation began with the contested Bush-Gore election in late 2000.
I've seen a lot of debate, a lot of discussion, and a wide palette of points of view from left to right and on many spiritual subjects.
I believe the present season, with not just Trump but a new salvational consciousness on the horizon, is an answer from God to the confusion.
Anyhow, as the "age of Trump" comes upon us, are there wiser ways to use FR than to chew the fat on behalf of particular parochial views? Perhaps it would be the time, instead, to look at how a full-salvational God consciousness can bridge what looked like unbridgeable gaps.
I got into a debate today on Facebook. It was with a women's protest movement that, typical of our modern Left, took the LGBT etc. under its wing. Well we know that's folly. I tried to sell them on the point that it was folly. I got asked back whether I'd ever met any of these folks. Well here's where I took a turn I might have taken differently. Rather than saying yes, I've seen them do thus and such, which emphasized how much I knew, I could have pulled the mirror out right there and then, and asked how many conservatives or even centrists that person had met, and are they all the same?
Conservatives can get so fixed on the idea that the Left is ghastly wrong, that they can also forget that even blind squirrels smell out some nuts. A full authoritarian brain wash job towards the Left isn't needed, if we can rightly capitalize on, even empathize with, what they correctly identify as desiderata. Sometimes it's just our own pride or lack of patience that has caused us to get frozen into a certain attitude. As even Trump said, "I'm going to bring us together." Let's give both God and Donald a chance.
I saw that, and I counter with “how about helping them on the way to where America needs to be, if we now have the wind at our back for the purpose?”
“I got asked back whether I’d ever met any of these folks.”
A typical libidiot response to bail out of the conversation. Their knowledge is a mile wide and an angstrom deep.
Well yes, this can be picked apart.
But it could be picked apart respectfully. Not that I did such a bad job even where I was coming from. They deleted the whole thread. But I want to constantly improve.
That is a good idea! Drive-by users simply are popped into debates, etc., which is entertaining in itself, but perhaps not as non-emotional as might be for them to take more interest. What you are talking about is a FReepOpedia, or the like, covering main topics in the media, and supporting facts, and not a string of heated posts.
Don’t sweat it - be prepared for anything in the next 4 years.
All this Inauguration material is making me remember Bush 2001. Compared to Trump’s transition and agenda - LAME.
I remember sitting next to a cute little new grad Bush intern girl on a plane right before the 2001 Inaguration - she was reading Hume. All I could advise her with (me being from the era watching Reagan) was “cut those middle class taxes”. Now, there are about 20 things Trump has promised that are critical, and do-able.
Not to mention the fake news that’s been exposed. Hold on to your seats.
“lots and lots of vanities and opuses “
rofl!
Ex-Leftie here, to be sure. After UC Berkeley, I voted Dem for about a decade. When our son was older and I wanted to get back into politics, I thought that car/lawyer leftie was about right, until I read his policy statement online. Voted for GWB after about an hour of agony in the polling place, but have never looked back. FR has been a place of solace and of great learning. And good friends.
I joined FR about the same time as you after lurking for over a year. I’ve learned a thing or two here, that’s for sure; one of the biggest is that smartass and clever commentary is as educational in its own way as well thought out discourse.
I’ve also learned that it is truly impossible to have a cogent discussion with a real liberal. It’s like trying to reason with a narcissist. They will deflect, lie, threaten and cry. But when you look back on the conversation you realize it’s all crazy - making. That’s because they don’t speak for the truth of the matter. They speak to control. Fruitless.
Our only hope is to get to the do-gooder types, that really are good people, and speak some sense to them. That’s where I have found FR to excell—prepping me for those conversations.
I think FR is doing exactly what Jim wanted it to do.
2. There should be a daily posting of The FR Pressroom Report.
Ah, I remember that. George Herbert Walker Bush.
Was it he, or Bush the Younger, who had been into pagan rituals in college? Or both?
Try to do kinder and gentler, but DON’T do it in the name of the God of Israel and of Christians, but rather in the name of some hypothetical god, and yes! It will be a flop!
To refer to this as a counter example to a godly application of the principles, is simply to stumble over a silly straw man.
Once God has your back, then you can dare to be kinder and gentler (as the bible says, meek, even if the Harley ads claim they don’t inherit anything).
People in the first group, and perhaps people drifting to the second, might benefit from conservatives asking them socratic questions about their positions.
http://www.umich.edu/~elements/probsolv/strategy/cthinking.htm
Free Republic is a wonderful think tank where chewing the fat on conservative and constitutional freedom makes everyone who comes here more capable of dealing with those who wish to remake our country into something else. It also does a great job of keeping up on the news and tracking what is relevant. How much each one of us uses that knowledge to promote what Free Republic stands for is up to each individual. I would say that I began lurking on Free Republic when Drudge outed Monica and this site has been a bastion of stability and with stood the test of time. It does not happen overnight, but just like Limbaugh was a beach head in talk radio, Free Republic was a beach head on the internet that has successfully seen many things it stands for overcome vast sums of money and power in this election if Trump will deliver on his promises.
Bboop and I and many other FReepers are ex-Lefties. Would you have thought we could not be converted? You’d have been wrong.
Have a Trumperrific day!
Can we ever master truth that is powerful enough that it is the lefties, not us, who come away from the encounter saying “Wow”?
Don’t go native on us.
What any lib I am talking to drops that line, they are feeling cornered and are looking for an out of the conversation. Typically, they then skip to other topics, and when fail to again provide a cogent response, they jump to another topic. When I steer them back to the original topic, they then get irritated. Depending on who it is (e.g., a sibling, relative, acquaintance, etc.), I will then back off and even help them to move along their side of the debate. But eventually, it again turns to drive-by shots on various topics. One needs to have some understanding of both sides of the topic. What is quite interesting is to have them argue YOUR side, and you argue THEIR side. HAH! They simply stare in shock! Absolutely no idea how to begin!!
Oh, FR most certainly has been a keystone of my political education.
The general press is so sickeningly bowdlerized. I’d sooner take some righty opinionation in the context of a broader open debate (notice Jim Rob has not deleted any of my sentiments, nor have I asked for others’ to be treated in that manner) than the rotten pablum that most American news treatment has become.
But I can answer the righty opinionation as well as the lefty pablum. I believe a wise God has put Donald Trump in a wise center. If anything, I’ve followed in the coattails of this.
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