Posted on 05/03/2009 12:32:07 PM PDT by Jim Robinson
I'm going to try one more time to explain what FR is all about.
Free Republic is a conservative site. That does not necessarily mean it is a Republican site. In fact there may be many Republicans we don't support and some Republican issues we cannot agree with.
I'll throw in Arlen Specter as a prime example of a Republican we cannot support. Should be obvious to all why not. Should also be just as obvious to all that we cannot support Olympia Snowe, Susan Collins, John McCain and his lap dog Lindsay Graham, Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney, et al.
Some of the issues we cannot support as conservatives even though sometimes initiated by so-called Republicans include TARP, or any kind of government bailout of private enterprise, federal intrusion into free markets, federalized education systems, government provided or controlled health care systems, abortion, gay marriage, amnesty, global warming, gun control, etc.
I guess there is more than one definition of conservatism floating around out there, and this won't be text book, but the one we use involves defending, preserving and protecting our constitution, our unalienable rights, our traditional family values, our American heritage, our nation, our borders and our sovereignty.
We aggressively defend our rights to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness!
We aggressively defend our rights to freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom to keep and bear arms, right to due process, right to equality under the law, right to be governed under the rule of law, right to constitutionally limited government, right to corruption free government, right to self-government and our private property rights, etc.
We also aggressively defend our right to state and local government for all issues not expressly delegated to the central government by the constitution.
We aggressively defend our rights to free markets and our rights to live our lives free of government intrusion, interference, coercion, force, or abuse of any kind.
We aggressively defend our rights to national sovereignty, state sovereignty and individual sovereignty!
And this definition also includes aggressively fighting against all enemies foreign and domestic who may try to deprive us of our rights or sovereignty. This would obviously include all foreign enemies, but also we defend against RINOS, Democrats, liberals, socialists, Marxists, communists, militant feminists or homosexualists, radical environmentalists, etc, etc, etc.
And we expect our elected representatives to also aggressively defend our rights and fight against all enemies foreign and domestic. We do not elect people and send them to DC or our state capitals, etc, to reach across the aisles or to be bipartisan or to negotiate or compromise away our rights. If you're not going to aggressively fight for us, and for our rights, STAY OUT!!
We bow to no king but God!
Our God-given unalienable rights are NOT negotiable!
Do NOT Tread on US!
Thank you very much!
f there is anyone here who doesn’t understand why we cannot support a slick socialist politician like Mitt Romney, God help you, but you’re on the wrong website. We went through this with the abortionist, gay rights activist, illegal alien supporting, gun grabbing Rudy Giuliani until someone created another website call WAnkers for Rudy and they all flew the coop. Hopefully, before too much FReeper blood is shed, someone will create a WAnkers for Romney site and we can be left to fight the good fight as we see fit!
FR is not for everyone!
amen Jim! As a mormon who initially supported Romney, I am completely out of his camp - for me it is Palin in 2012 all the way...
Jenny
I agree with your comments. And I’m glad you mentioned the animosity towards President Bush too. He deserves far more respect and gratitude than he’s been given here.
Well, if you'd rather have a frown-free approach be my guest. Of course, you'd have to be consistent. Anybody that joined Jim Jones' group as a result of proselytism & headed off to Guyana pre-koolaid would be in your eyes, "equal opportunity 'evangelism.'"
But what you've failed to consider is that the literal meaning of "evangelism" is "good news." Frankly, I don't consider Jonestown as being a "good news" event. Do you?
Don't you see how political correctness ("equal opportunity") has in your mind turned the very meaning of a great word like "evangelism" on its head?
Or what about people who were recruited into the alien-focused Heaven's Gate cult in San Diego -- the ones who were taught that the way to meet the aliens was to commit mass suicide? Was that a literal "evangelism?" (Good news?)
'Tis always amazes me how...
...political correctness...
...& subjectivism (feelings-based ethical approach)...
...& a twisting of words (evangelism = bad news vs. good news)
...can be so rampant in a supposedly "conservative" thread.
Two words. Good. Grief.
Thank you, kind sir.
Did you initially support Romney because he was mormon, and then find through investigation that his policies were not worthy of your support?
Placemark
read
I’m not sure I see an important distinction.
***The distinction is in the scope of the thread. This thread has now become primarily antagonistic towards Mitt Romney followers by virtue of the reduced scope. Prior to the change in the title, the scope could have been antagonistic towards all RINOs, which is what the GOP needs as well as what FR needs. Instead, it’s just a beat-up-the-Mitt-followers thread.
Every few years, JimRob generates a great general-scope thread, such as the one that he put up on the front page of FR:
Statement by the founder of Free Republic
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1103363posts
The scope of that thread is very general and FReepers still log onto that thread, even 5 years after it was first generated. But this thread will fizzle away due to its reduced scope. No one will log onto it 3 months from now unless it generates the kind of heat that the Bugzapper thread did. That does not appear to be likely.
Here’s the Bugzapper thread:
Will FR embrace socialism to make way for Rudy Giuliani as a Republican presidential candidate?
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1821435/posts
Part of the difference between that bugzapper thread and this thread is that Mitt’s minions are much more polite than TootyFruityRudy’s were. So this thread probably won’t even be close to a Mitt-Follower-BugZapper thread.
If JimRob wanted to clean house of RINOs, he would have kept the thread more general in scope. But it appears he’s just irritated at one particular group of RINOs.
...my salvation comes from God not some tradition of man church in the world which will parish when the earth is translated. [Restornu]
I'm sorry, Resty, but according to Mitt Romney's father's cousin, Marion G. Romney, who was one of the top three Mormon leaders (First Presidency) in the 1960s, your salvation is indeed only "church-based" and is no more transcendent than that:
"This Church is the ensign on the mountain spoken of by the Old Testament prophets. It is the way, the truth, and the life" (Conference Report, April, 1961, pg. 119).
[Boy, that's "funny." I could have sworn that Jesus Christ reserved for Himself the titles of "I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life" (John 14:6)]
In fact, one of the ways we know that the "salvation" offered by the Mormon church as being a mere man-made tradition is that they insert themselves as the very "saviors" of mankind:
Example #1 -- From 1974 LDS copyrighted book: "When living persons are baptized for the dead, they literally become saviors to others..."
(Don't you see? The problem we're dealing with here is that Mormons place themselves on par with Jesus re: godhood & saviorhood, calling themselves "literal...saviors")
Example #2 -- an LDS "prophet" speaking who was one of Joseph Smith's right hand men, John Taylor: ...we are the only people that know how to save our progenitors, how to save ourselves, and how to save our posterity in the celestial kingdom of God;...we in fact are the saviours of the world..." (Journal of Discourses, vol.6, p.163).
No, Resty: "saviors of the world" are not plentiful (1 John 4:14; John 4:42)
Example #3 -- another LDS "prophet" -- this one a nephew of Joseph Smith who was talking about what LDS do with the genealogical research uncovered: "... mortals have to be saviors on Mount Zion, acting by proxy for the dead." (LDS "prophet" Joseph Fielding Smith, The Way to Perfection, p. 325)
Example #4 -- Taylor again: "We know something about our progenitors, and God has taught us how to be saviors for them by being baptized for them in the flesh, that they may live according to God in the Spirit." (LDS "prophet" John Taylor, March 20,1870, Journal of Discourses, Vol. 14, 3/20/1870)
Example #5 -- the Mormon "why" of genealogy: "We have a great work before us in the redemption of our dead....There are fifty thousand millions of people in the spirit world...Those persons may receive their testimony, but they cannot be baptized in the spirit world, for somebody on earth must perform this ordinance for them in the flesh before they can receive part in the first resurrection and be worthy of eternal life." (LDS "prophet" Wilford Woodruff, JoD, Vol. 22, p. 234)
Example #6: “Some may feel that if they pay their tithing, attend their regular meetings and other duties, give their substance to the poor, perchance spend one, two, or more years preaching in the world, that they are absolved from further duty, but the greatest and grandest duty of all is to labor for the dead!” (Joseph Fielding Smith, Doctrines of Salvation, Vol II, pp 42-44).
So, one LDS "prophet" -- Woodruff, the same one who had the authority to clamp down on polygamy, said before the 1900s ever arrived that there were 50,000 million people in the spirit world awaiting Mormon conversion & salvation...[uh, I've got news...the total has only greatly expanded since then]...
You can't get more appropo verses that's been raised in recent posts than Jesus saying "Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light."
(Please drop your "goal" of necro-baptizing billions of souls post-death...Jesus doesn't need savior competition)
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I believe that this thread is a follow-up to this one:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2241437/posts
Jim has posted a number of threads that address the possible candidacy of Romney in 2012. I'm afraid I don't understand why limiting the criticism to Romney and his fans is an issue.
The Democrats are clicking their heels.
I’m afraid I don’t understand why limiting the criticism to Romney and his fans is an issue.
***Because there are a lot more RINOs than just the followers of Mitt Romney. It’s RINOs who crossed over and voted for Obama in the last election. Instead of rounding up the whole herd of them, JimRob is picking off the stragglers. The net effect with that approach is to make the herd stronger, rather than weaker.
Well, I would much rather see Romney drop out -- and stop pro-life & conservative pretenses...because many are being taken in by them...and he's diluting the people & $ resources we'll need to expend energy on our real enemies like 0bama, Axelrod, Emanuel, Reid and Pelosi.
We don't him repeating his spoiler performance of '08.
...but now seems but now seems to be pro life...
OK, one of the reasons I said Romney's "pro-life" comments are a "pretense" stems from this comment he made just 18 months ago. I'm going to post this interview excerpt with Katie Couric...please note the bold-faced phrases (source: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/12/04/eveningnews/main3572685.shtml):
Couric: You said you have personal views toward abortion but felt that in the public arena, another position could exist. What is wrong with that? What's wrong with having a personal view and feeling that it's the right of individuals to make these difficult choices?
Romney: Well, what I recognized is that in a civilized society that there has to be a respect for the sanctity of life - that if you put that aside, if you say, "We're gonna start creating life and then destroying it," you're, in effect, playing God. And I think a civilized society has certain rules of conduct that it live by and one of those is to respect the sanctity of life. Another is respect in the sanctity of marriage. And…so when…I was faced with not a theoretical question of, "What do you think about abortion?" but, instead, the reality of being a governor who would sign a bill that would create life and destroy it-this was an embryonic cloning bill--I said, "I simply cannot become party to something where life would be created and then destroyed." And that made the decision for me that it was impossible to have a strong position personally opposing abortion and, at the same time, to say that we're going to have laws which permitted and permit the destruction of life throughout our society.
Couric: So are you opposed to stem cell research?
Romney: No, I'm very much in favor of stem cell research, but in a way which I believe is moral and ethical. And creating new embryos through embryo farming or through cloning, I find to be unethical and I would not pursue that course of stem cell research.
Couric: So what kind of embryos - embryos that are created for procreation and then would be discarded? Are those the ones that you feel are perfectly fine from which to cull cells for stem cell research?
Romney: Yes, those embryos that are referred to commonly as surplus embryos from in-vitro fertilization. Those embryos, I hope, could be available for adoption for people who would like to adopt embryos. But if a parent decides they would want to donate one of those embryos for purposes of research, in my view, that's acceptable. It should not be made against the law. I wouldn't finance that with government money because it represents a moral challenge for a lot of people and I think we're better investing in places where the prospects are much better. And I think that's something like something known as alter-nuclear transfer where you create new embryo, like, entities, but they're not human embryos. And you can take stem cells from those.
So. Romney says parents who want to adopt out their embryos is the way to go -- and I agree with that. But then note what he says in the very next sentence: But if a parent decides they would want to donate one of those embryos for purposes of research, in my view, that's acceptable. It should not be made against the law.
Say what? Could you imagine Romney saying, "But if a parent decides they want to donate one of their week-old infants for purposes of research, in my view, that's acceptable"??? But because the age of the embryo 'tis a bit younger, it's OK???
And this is the very sanctity-of-life issue he supposedly heard the altar call on?
Thanks Jim for what you do! BTW... I LOVE SARAH PALIN!!!!
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You may be right, but I fail to see how.
Perhaps that is a good reason as to why it isn’t a good idea to tell our fellow Americans that they, “RINOS”, aren’t welcome in the Republican party. I’d rather a “RINO” vote for a Republican than a Democrat. We might not have gotten Obama if we’d stop shooting those who at least agree with us on most of the issues.
Seems to me that anyone who disagrees with a self-described “conservative” on even one issue, is then labeled as a RINO and told they are not welcome anymore. Since when do freedom loving Americans refuse to allow any disagreement whatsoever on the issues?
I know people that you would call RINOS. And yet not one of them voted for Obama. Anyone who thinks that the majority of Americans should or will march in lockstep with the “perfect conservatives” on every issue are living in la-la land, in my humble opinion.
Sad
Mark Sanford please. And Jim, I hear ya!
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