Posted on 04/01/2005 2:39:59 PM PST by hchutch
Six months ago, Free Republic was riding high, and I was proud to be a part of it. It was coming off having blown the cover off of Dan Rather’s use of forged memos against the President. The President was well on his way to winning re-election. It was a great time to be a Freeper.
However, things have changed. It started with the justifiable removal of ALIPAC. I supported that move by Jim Robinson, but the ugliness directed towards Alberto Gonzales. He was accused of everything under the sun, and Senator Mel Martinez was viciously attacked for speaking Spanish on the Senate floor. The tone and outright viciousness (terms like FROBL and traitor were fired off at anyone who did not toe the line established by Michelle Malkin and Tom Tancredo) on immigration threads had concerned me, but I had concluded it was an isolated incident. After ALIPAC was removed from FR, I had hoped the tone there would improve. But it only got worse. I was point-blank called a traitor because my views on immigration differ from those of Michelle Malkin’s groupies. On immigration threads, questioning the questionable is not allowed. One must accept the unacceptable and allow folks to defend the indefensible. Never mind that VDARE, American Renaissance, and other sites are racist or have no problem hanging out with those that are racists (I’m just going to call a spade a spade here).
There were folks who had the long knives out for Senator Rick Santorum, one of the strongest pro-life members of the United States Senate. Why? Because he endorsed Arlen Specter over Pat Toomey. It was stunning to see these long knives out for a conservative. And all it would accomplish would be his replacement by a Democrat. How in the world replacing Rick Santorum with a Democrat would aid conservatism is beyond me, but it was demanded because Santorum endorsed Specter. The long knives were out, and I suppose it was a sign of what was to come.
The whole Terri Schiavo case has changed everything for me. A mob mentality took over the first few days after the order to pull the tube was given. Anyone who did not toe the line was attacked. I saw a dedicated active-duty member of our armed forces called a “Maine liberal” for simply asking why troops in harm’s way did not get the same sort of “all-nighter” attention that Terri Schiavo got. It was a reasonable question – we have 40-year-old P-3s still out there. We have a war on terrorism still going on, in case folks have not noticed. We have to get Social Security fixed. I say this as a person who believes that at best, Michael Schiavo’s relationship with a woman (and having two kids with her) meant he had a conflict of interest – and that he had decided that Terri was inconvenient. I cannot take his word alone that Terri would have wanted this. I also believe that George Felos is a supporter of euthanasia, and that he is using this case for his own ends. Those folks give me the creeps, and I think that Jim Robinson was on the right side of this issue. However, I also got a very bad feeling when the Schindlers embraced the likes of Randall Terry and Bo Gritz. I had to wonder what has happened to the conservative movement when the threads were allowed to spiral so out of control. The concept of euthanasia is repulsive and disgusting, but it does not excuse allowing the threads to spin out of control.
I have seen the President of the United States, George W. Bush, and the Governor of Florida, John Ellis Bush, take huge political risks in an effort to save Terri’s life. I believe they were doing their best to do the right thing, and that the original law passed in 2003 was a reasonable one that was wrongly stuck down by Judge Greer and the Florida Supreme Court. I think that the Republican Party has taken a huge risk to give Terri a chance at life, and I am disgusted with those who seek a pretext that will justify leaving the GOP in the lurch. I’m sick of the way the Terri threads spun out of control, and the vicious attacks launched at reasonable people who came to a different conclusions about the situation or who pointed out facts that certain people found inconvenient. This is not what I signed on here for.
I believe in a strong national defense, cutting taxes, and in general trying to keep government involvement as minimal as possible (there are times when the best one can do is to limit government involvement in a situation). I am pro-life (with exceptions for rape, incest, and to protect the life of the mother) and pro-Second Amendment. However, I do NOT want the federal government to be involved in any culture war. “Culture” was never mentioned in the constitution, thus I believe it is left to the States or TO THE PEOPLE (see the Tenth Amendment). I do NOT think immigration is a problem, but I believe some mistakes were made along the way (like eliminating the bracero program). I also think that the President of the United States has proposed a sensible plan that will go a long way towards solving the problems on our border with Mexico and do much to alleviate the problems surrounding illegal immigration. Therefore, I have come to the conclusion that it is time for me and Free Republic to part company, because Free Republic has left this limited-government neoconservative. In the process of Free Republic leaving me, I now find that I fear the social conservatives as much as I fear the loony left. As a result of coming to this conclusion, I ask that my account be deleted and all posts I have made, save for this opus and the ping to my friends be removed.
I do this with regret, since I will miss some of those who I have met here, but I feel no other choice. So long.
You spent all that time on that post and decided not to use paragraphs? Why? I'd bet only one in ten bothered to read that big glob of words. I'm with the nine who didn't bother.
thank you. it is good to get some support because I'm getting flamed but this makes me really angry on such a somber day.
Thanks, I couldn't think of that at that moment, momentary aphasia, but I wanted the allusion to goose-stepping to be in there so I wanted to use geese instead of ducks.
I agree with what you have said...my advice, just take a breather, that is what I did for a while...
We all have real lives(I should hope we do), that have nothing to do with FR...go back into real life for a while, and then return to FR time to time...you might be pleasantly surprised...
I hope you will reconsider.
Cordially,
Congressman Billybob
Latest column, "The Fatal Attraction of the Inside Straight"
I do. Our health care system is breaking down and hospitals are closing due to bankruptcy because of it. Prisons are largely populated by violent illegal alien criminals. These things cost money.
You declare you are for lower taxes.
For every thread calling M.S. a murderer, there was one accusing the Schindlers of glorying in the media attention or being out for monetary gain.That's some alternate universe. An easy search of the archives will prove that to anyone. And it's just not a count of the threads, but the behavior on those threads. Anyone who defended the rulings of the judges based on the actual legal issues before them was shouted down.
The truth is that the Schindlers did not have very good attorneys. They made the wrong case and they did it in an awful way. Even when that was clearly demonstrated, most here felt the judges should have been activists in the cause of Terri and ruled on matters not even before them.
I understand the passions involved and I even understand wanting the judges to be activist judges when the cause is so dear, as hypocritical to the conservative movement as that is.
What I don't understand is the nastiness in which that was expressed. The countless calls for Greer's and Michael Schiavo's death from pro-lifers? Calling people here with long track records of reasonable, intelligent, and conservative posts "nazis", "pro-deathers", ad nauseum? Even when some of those posts got pulled, the damage is largely done.
We've had people here calling for the drawing up of lists of Freepers they hate so they can do something with it; I'm not sure what.
So, I don't buy that it was even-handed or merely rough and tumble stuff here at the forum. It was ugly, and it was largely one-sided.
The DEAD THREAD has 65,000+ posts.
So? Maybe I like some cry babies.
Well, maybe I don't, really, but I do like and appreciate hutch, don't consider him a cry baby and I'm truly sorry to see him go. You, on the other hand, I know nothing about except that you chose to criticize my post.
The extremist kookery took over sometime around the 2000 election. Before that, this was a grassroots conservative forum making a positive difference.
Then came the mad dash to the left and GWB worship....
Thanks. It is very difficult to get through to his show.
Reformat with paragraphs and maybe I'll comment on what you said. I'm not going to read it as it is now.
This guy is not a "Braveheart" sort of man. Yet.
Get the I.D. card from him and keep it at the guard shack for when he wants back in:):)
Tell it to someone who cares.......newbie.
So, my comment seems to be reasonably accurate so far. I hope they are the only two, but it's really not disputable that the ugliness that has pervaded FR in recent weeks was the reason.
FR will survive, I think. We'll see how the fundraiser does, and I'm still a member of the dollar a day club. I'm hopeful the forum will return to normal. If it remains a hostile environment, I'll reconsider that.
And let me make one further point. I didn't take much abuse on the Terri threads. Way more than I liked, but not much compared to others. Maybe it's because I made it clear that I thought it was wrong without any new tests. Maybe it's because my comments were more of a legal nature. So, this isn't about me. It's about what I saw on those threads. We were eating our own.
Do you hold your signon date with some sort of pride or something? Like it's a rank? That it actually matters?
So you actually admit you post without reading the article? Paging Laz, paging Lazamataz.
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