Just like one plane can hit a tall building by accident, when two hit adjacent buildings if just might be something diabolical in the works.
Note, if you will, that the allegedly conservative (actually pretty close to the middle) large media outlet on TV has been hosting anti-FR spew lately, from O' Reilly's nonsense to this frontal assault.
These (media) people know the bottom line is about image. The facts don't mean diddley-squat, it is what they make you look like, and The Fox bunch has increasingly had people on trying to make us look like some sort of "hate" site.
What matters is the public perception, especially the perception of those who do not ever come here. Once branded as a "hate" site, it is as difficult to get rid of as fresh dog poop on your sneakers, even though it is undeserved. This could lead to everything from reduced readership, (fewer 'hits') to other sites dropping links, to even being shut down in an extreme case, although that would not occur without all of us digging deep to fight it.
The problem, though is that properly timed, such damage would effectively muzzle us in the most critical part of the runup to the Primary season or the POTUS election in '08.
Good people will be deterred from coming to the site, and those who admittedly do will be lumped in with actual philosophies fomenting hatred.
As a conservative, I see nothing conservative about hatred. I do not hate my country's enemies, only their warped philosophies and the sick results thereof.
Make no bones about it, there are many who stand to benefit by marginalizing Free Republic, and not just on the Liberal side of the political spectrum.
From Democratic members of Congress to their presidential candidates, and as much as I hate to think it, even a couple of Republican Candidates would benefit by not having us pull their previous statements out of the sockdrawer of history and demonstrate that their current professed positions are either bunk or representative of a St. Paul-on-the-Road-to-Damascus style epiphany.
Maybe some of the folks who are allegedly playing on the same team do not want to play a clean game either.
Maybe they are just that afraid of a candidate many of us support gaining traction and blowing them out of the water.
The mods do a great job of stripping a lot of ill made statements out, but it would be best for all of us to be aware of this every time we post, to read over our comments and make sure they cannot be easily taken out of context and used against us.
Just my $0.02.
Nicely stated, Joe. We Men of the West hold ourselves to a higher standard.
Please: NO profanity, NO personal attacks, NO racism or violence in posts.