Posted on 06/25/2002 3:42:21 AM PDT by Jim Robinson
The following email is being circulated to our members by various disgruntled former FReepers:
Subject: The Future of Our Free RepublicDear Fellow Free Republic Member,
Many of us at Free Republic are distressed by the extraordinary level of censorship that has been so obviously going on. It is very obvious that individual posts, entire threads, and the entire work of members who have been highly regarded are disappearing into a Memory Hole.
Scores of us have organized an e-mail network that is independent of the communication controls presently, and sadly, being used at our Free Republic. We have carefully documented the unmistakeable evidence that most of the posts, threads, and posters that are vaporized completely are overwhelmingly targeted for their political stance on the Right. These are not Leftwingers. These are not even Middle-of-the-Roaders. These are not disruptors. These are not foul-mouthed delinquents. These are fellow patriots on the Right who disagree with the controllers of FR on specific issues that are now hotly debated by the Right. We have documented that FR will parade before you, as if to hide all of the great posters whose work has been destroyed, a straw-man delinquent that has been banned. This is deceptive.
Treating these fellow patriots on the Right so shabbily is not right. As shabbily as those banned into the Memory Hole are being treated, the most shabbily treated of all are all of the good folks on Free Republic themselves. We came here for honest debate. Free Republic advertised itself as a Forum for honest debate. Without that honest debate...everything at Free Republic becomes shabby.
We can do much better. As a measure of how intense the simmering feelings have gotten among members on this unjustifiable use of deleting, censoring, and banning please link to the following thread. You will notice that one simple and sincere plea from one of our finest members has spontaneously touched off a prairie fire of approximately 500 posts in a mere 18 hours. If it isn't Memory Holed this thread may shoot into the thousands.
If you would like to receive anonymous updates of information concerning the hundreds of Freepers who have networked via e-mail to restore the wonderful honest debate to Free Republic, just drop an e-mail of just one or two words if you like for extreme brevity to:
StopCensoringUs@hotmail.com
And, here's that link back to the snowballing thread at FR:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/704701/posts
Thank you so much for giving your thought to this vital matter for our Internet home.
Sincerely, StopCensoringUs@hotmail.com
What part of a planned attack on this web site do you agree with?
DD> There's one problem with that theory.
DD> One, you do not believe it. It's not a principle that you adhere to. DD> In fact, you ridicule it every chance you get on drugwar and other libertarian bash-fests.
I said legal property, which illegal drugs are not. But then, you are the odd fellow who tries to claim that Arlington National Cemetery is a 'socialist enterprise' filled with socialist freeloaders one supposes, so your opinion of the law is hardly credible.
"Oh my. A lecture on right and wrong coming from Demidog. I am thrilled." - Jim Robinson
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/704265/posts?page=826#826
You've said alot of things. You have never until now defended the right to do with your property as you see fit. Your insistence that there can be such a thing as an "illegal" drug proves my point. The first and foremost piece of property that you own and should be in absolute control of, is your own body. If I grow some pot on my land in order to ingest in my own body to remedy a malady, that is my right.
Your insistence that one's own body is subject to staturoty regulation makes you unfit to declare that one should be free to do as they please with their own property.
You have absolutely no belief in that principle whatsoever and anyone who's read your swill knows it.
Spoken like a socialist shill. Because you subscribe to the Wall Street Journal you should be able to publish communist propaganda in it? Think again, comrade.
Nope. Because I subscribe to the WSJ, I shouldn't have my subscription revoked because I disagree with something written therein.
However, this is a horrid analogy since the WSJ is not a forum.
The folks who come here to use this forum PAY FOR IT. They should get some consideration for their donations. There is nothing socialist about that.
Socialism is what YOU espouse with your notion that ones own body is subject to social legislation and enforced with money taken by the rest of society at gunpoint.
The responsibility to prove that LF's owner knew anything about that email falls on JR since it is he that asserts the proposition.
He has no evidence that this is the case. Neither do you.
Don't you have a guitar to strum or a government to overthrow somewhere? Seriously, the tovarich's who are whining ought to enlist the help of the Democratic Party to get a new law passed: "The Fairness To Ideologues and Whiners Act of 2002: Any privately owned web forum which accepts donations from the public must pay treble damages to any member of the public denied their posting privileges rights, unless a signed affidavit is presented to the local court of law affirming that the donors expressly grant the relinquishment of their 1st Amendment free speech rights."
Bawney Fwank, Bawbawa Boxer, and Diane Feinstein would like to hear from you!
That's not my style. That's YOUR style proven by the fact it's the first thing that came to your mind as a solution.
Invoking congressional help to exact revenge is coercion and contradicts libertarian principles. We want less laws not more.
This is JR's place. I believe that he should voluntarily afford his members the courtesy of restraint when it comes to censorship given that he wouldn't have a forum (or presumably a roof over his head) were it not for their donations.
Anyway, what was most amusing to me about their site was that those people seemed to have little to focus on but their hatred of FR. You'd think they would just continue the discussions of the issues that they used to enjoy here - only at a new location. But NO. Almost every post was about the evil Free Republic and what they read there that day.
If memory serves, most of the people from that purge were kicked out for engaging in relentless flame wars here. Jim warned them and gave them many chances before he finally canned them.
They were just angry, vicious people who were always lookin' for a scrap and eventually settled on chewing each other up. Some of them ended up at Lucianne.com in a leadership role and their bitterness went along with them and they crapped all over that board, too. Sad, sad people.
I'm about to spend another 3500 on other gear. I'm getting the new Vetta combo from line 6 to replace my aging AX2 and a fender P bass and bass pod so I can deal with complaints about the lousy bass sound on my mp3's....
If I can somehow squeeze in a PRS into the mix I will....such great axes...
Most of your screed is patently false.
What was your handle back then and why don't you carry the same handle here now? - demidog_fr
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