Eschoir was a problem way before I came into this forum.
Your bashing helps exactly nothing, including restoring this site to its original glory.
I am answering two questions that were solicited by the owner of this site. I answered them honestly. I don't think the site can be restored because
1. Times change and people come and go. Today's issues are not yesterdays issues.
2. The original core of conservative Republicans were alienated from this site. That included Matt Drudge (Who delinked the place) and Lucy Goldburg who had invested a lot of her time to this site. It also includes the Don Morgan's, Navigator's, Bostons, and Mojo's whose only sin was that they actually LIKE the constitution we already have and happen to have found George Bush prefferable to Al Gore in early 1999.
There have been bad decisions made regarding the LAT/WP lawsuits and the Eschoir action.
Exactly, and I don't think it ius unpatriotic of me to simply say " I am not going to pay for those mistakes".
Some of the players were less than honorable, and the results certainly not what we desired. But Jim Robinson was, is, and always has been an honest man who took on the establishment with his bare knuckles. If he got beaten, we all got beaten. Freedom got beaten. The Constitution got beaten. And our Republic got beaten.
I do not have a strong linkage in my mind between the integrity of our Constitution and institutions and the financial success of Free Republic.
For you to glory in that defeat, or to slink away in fear shows your moral mettle. Thank God Jim had more guts than you.
I don't glory in its defeat. I have followed this saga, on and off, for over two years. It is a very interesting soap opera. I enjoy the site, I just do not politically identify with it quite like I did when I joined it in 1998.
If he needs help patching the bullet holes he took for us,
How did he take a bullet for you? I really am curious.
I for one will be glad to pitch in and do my part. If that means funneling money into the Defense Fund, nobody ever said freedom was free. (Not that facts matter to you, but Jim hasn't paid one dime to the Times/Post for their "judgment.")
If your sense of freedom depends on the Free Republic surviving in spite of its bad decisions then mortgage your house, I really would appreciate it, because I DO enjoy the site. I will even thank you in advance. I just don't find its survival to be a make or break kind of thing for our country.
You are at best a sunshine patriot, a fair-weather friend. The loss of folks like you -- and the company you keep: Don Morgan, Nav, Mojo, et. al. -- is no great loss for this forum, or for this Republic.
I think their loss was THE BIG LOSS to this forum. And it was the underlying reason's for their going that was the big loss.
If Free Republic is not free to dissect the news our media report, the so-called "fair use" doctrine is dead. That makes the media the effective arbiters of our society's standards, unchecked in their monopoly of our information. Since information is power, concentrating the dissemination of that knowledge in media hands undermines one of the cornerstones of liberty. This isn't about Free Republic's "financial success." This is about the LAT/WP lawsuit, and their blatant attempt to crush dissent on this medium. How you can miss that "linkage" is beyond me.
How did he take a bullet for you? I really am curious.
The defendant in the LAT/WP lawsuit is Jim Robinson and Free Republic LLC. Jim Robinson IS Free Republic, LLC. The thousands of users of this site weren't named. There is no Board of Directors or Corporate Officers to share the liability. This whole thing fell on Jim Robinson's shoulders. Does Jim run this forum for himself? Does he enjoy the continual sniping and character smears spread by whiny malcontents? Or the thousands in bandwidth costs? Or the countless hours he spends shepherding this group? I don't think so. So this site exists for US, for ME. And yet, when the firing squad loaded up, they didn't sight in on me, or you, or Harry Callahan or Arator or some newbie who'd just gotten new batteries for his Timex Sinclair. They pasted the target over Jim's heart.
I don't owe the LAT/WP a million bucks. I still have a forum to use. I'm not caught up in an endless nightmare of appeals and motions and summary judgments. But Jim is.
Why?
Well, I miss them, too (especially Mojo), and said so at the time of their departure; but there was more involved in it than your Exodus 101 suggests (maybe you've expanded it as I write). Jim made a fool of himself re Bush, granted, but that was just a part of a bundle of gripes (and to me Jim is just another poster, and his comments did not influence the site in any practical way: it was solid for Bush). The "crisis" involved problems larger than the election; in fact, although The Case of IHC is pretty silly, the issue is the same: decorum. At the time of the tempest in the FR teapot Jim's notions du jour co-incided with a series of racist and anti-homosexual rants; Rivero held forth at length; A+Bert was embraced. Flame wars and general disarray.
So "good" people left, but the valid gripes they had (their "big reasons" for the "big loss") have been pretty much dealt with.
Big deal.