Will FR embrace socialism to make way for Rudy Giuliani as a Republican presidential candidate?

vanity | April 21, 2007 | Jim Robinson

[Jim Robinson]

We've got some real challenges facing us. FR was established to fight against government corruption, overstepping, and abuse and to fight for a return to the limited constitutional government as envisioned and set forth by our founding fathers in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution and other founding documents.

One of the biggest cases of government corruption, overstepping and abuse that I know of is its disgraceful headlong slide into a socialist hell. Our founders never intended for abortion to be the law of the land. And they never intended the Supreme Court to be a legislative body. They never intended God or religion to be written out of public life. They never intended government to be used to deny God's existence or for government to be used to force sexual perversions onto our society or into our children's education curriculum. They never intend for government to disarm the people. They never intended for government to set up sanctuary cities for illegals. They never intended government to “rule” over the people and or to take their earnings or private property or to deprive them of their constitutional rights to free speech, free religion, private property, due process, etc. They never intended government to seize the private property of private citizens through draconian asset forfeiture laws or laws allowing government to take private property from lawful owners to give to developers. Or to seize wealth and redistribute it to others. Or to provide government forced health insurance or government forced retirement systems.

All of the above are examples of ever expanding socialism and tyranny brought to us by liberals/liberalism.

FR fights against the liberals/Democrats in all of these areas and always will. Now if liberalism infiltrates into the Republican party and Republicans start promoting all this socialist garbage, do you think that I or FR will suddenly stop fighting against it? Do you think I'm going to bow down and accept abortionism, feminism, homosexualism, global warming, illegal alien lawbreakers, gun control, asset forfeiture, socialism, tyranny, totalitarianism, etc, etc, etc, just so some fancy New York liberal lawyer can become president from the Republican party?

Do you really expect me to do that?

[WorkerbeeCitizen]

Caught up again 6

[dirtboy]

. FR was having a positive effect on politics and had become a valuable resource in the fight against the left.

Sorry, but the recently departed were doing their best to drag FR to the left. And then they got both greedy and arrogant trying to force Rudy down our throats. And it backfired on them big-time.

Others revealed themselves to be far less than conservative. The trashing of the pro-life movement by many of them was despicable.

[Knitting A Conundrum]

I just got up, and I am behind, so you are ahead of me!

[si tacuissem]

A thread with over 14,000 posts in it tends to be either very serious or very silly. I read a couple of thousands posts and have to admit that - as a European freeper - I don't know where to place this one in, there're lots of things I just don't understand, and a lot of things, I just don't like, esp. the foul language which is used even by the management...

So, I took a look at the stats:

Over 800 freepers participated in this thread, 30 freepers of those now show a blue screen (quidnunc KATIE-O kellynch shaylalala stuned_beeber jasoncann GenuineChocolateFace BeHoldAPaleHorse AZRepublican motzman Al Simmons sully777 Just sayin NGRY Sam Hill Pukin Dog habs4ever Dominic Harr Zeroisanumber 68 grunt cicero's_son oceanview Howlin RadioAstronomer meg88 debg B-bone justshutupandtakeit Peach Texasforever )

I don't now, how many "opused" or choose a kind of "inner emigration"...

To put this numbers in a context, I tried to get some stats of this site. At the homepage, it just states: Over 200,000 people have registered for posting privileges on Free Republic since inception in 1996 and our forum is read daily by tens of thousands of concerned citizens and patriots from all around the country and all around the world.

Using the fact, that every freeper has a unique id-number (now going up to something like 280.000), I took a sample of 1000 feasible id-numbers and had a closer look at them. Here are my results:

• there are indeed ca. 200.000 accounts (either active or suspended)
• 25% (ca. 50.000) of these are banned or suspended
• another 40% (ca. 80.0000) of the accounts were never used to post
• the remaining 35% (70.000) were used the last time in

  2001	2002	2003	2004	2005	2006	2007
  1.3 %	2.1 %	4.4 %	6.8 %	5.8 %	5.9 %	8.4 %
  2600	4200	8800	13,200	11,600	11,800	16,400

It seems to be fair to say that there are 16,400 active freepers. Ca. 5% of those took part in this very thread. But I think that most of us other active freepers had a look at it. And we'll observe the development of this site:

• will it resemble a park where everyone willing to participate sensibly is welcomed as all the contributions add to the value of the site or
• will it become a backyard where there is no place for different opinions?

BTB: Of course, no guarantee can be given for the numbers - though they seem to be reasonable guesses. I'd be glad if someone could give the actual values...

[Mojave]

25% (ca. 50.000) of these are banned or suspended

Retreads, multiple fraudently obtained accounts. Probably more like 2 to 3%.

[Knitting A Conundrum]

honey do, honey do, do...

It’s my hubby who comes up with the honey dos to get me off the computer....

[si tacuissem]

Retreads, multiple fraudently obtained accounts. Probably more like 2 to 3%.

Of course, you're right...

[WorkerbeeCitizen]

Only figuratively - teach :)

[Moose4]

Aaaaand another troll rides the lightning. I’d sure hate to see the Viking Kitties’ power bill for this month with all these zots.

}:-)4

[Knitting A Conundrum]

I run a whole bunch of email lists...and those who post are always much smaller in number than those who have memberships...frequently less than 10 percent of a list membership might post.

That is the way forums and discussion groups work. More readers than posters.

As discussion groups go, FR is HUGE. You don't get 16,000 people together online most places. Lots of towns don't have populations that big.

People who hang here a lot begin to treat it like it was fully public space, but it's not. It's a private park. It's too big to ever get lockstepped, but occasionally the owner makes a effort to nudge the group along the lines he clearly has stated are the true purpose of the site.

It's still and always has been here to be a conservative forum.

All opinions have never been welcome here. But within its subset, there is room for differing opinions, interests, viewpoints.



If you don't fit within the dark area, which includes an emphasis on social conservativism, you will find at time, things might be uncomfortable.

When subcommunities arise that are too far away from the mission statement, things happen too.

It really doesn't matter what we think of as the ideal diversity of ideas or viewing things as lockstep. This site was created for a certain form of political viewpoint, by the owner's wishes.

[Mojave]

This thread currently shows 301,416+ views.

[KentTrappedInLiberalSeattle]

If I invite someone to my home, I usually respect that they may differ in opinion.

There is a marked and painfully obvious difference between a "difference in opinion" (which doesn't even come within a seven league stride of the repulsively swinish and disruptive behavior engaged in by the Rudybots these past few weeks, in particular) and flagrantly disrespecting the host and actively, aggressively disobeying his stated rules of conduct.

The first one is defensible; the second... not so much.

Some may deserve to be banned but I don’t think many did.

... and, without any undue kindness meant: were you actually the host in question, that opinion would count for something.

Again: none of this is in any way "new," or "sudden," or "unexpected." Jim's rules for conduct on this site (HIS site!) -- e.g., "Free Republic does not support pro-abortion politicians"; "Free Republic does not support pro-gay 'marriage' politicians"; etc., etc. -- have been posted on the main page for (literally) YEARS. The commonly accepted internet term for someone (ANYone) who goes onto a site and willfully and repeatedly violate its rules for discussion, after multiple warnings not to do so, is: TROLL.

They trolled. The fact that they had managed to post here previously without trolling does not in any intellectually honest way, shape or form mitigate the plain and unvarnished fact that they willingly trolled now, again and again and again.

I have no patience for trolls, and cannot be bothered wasting either precious time or energy working up sympathy for them.

[sodpoodle]

“””This thread currently shows 301,416+ views.”””

How are ‘views’ counted? By login or peeks?

i.e. if I go back & forth between threads?
or
log off & log back in and peek?

just curious

[jedward]

And those would be unique views. Just wanted to mention that. I’m sure you meant that, but I thought I’d mention that for others.

[jedward]

Morning Knitting!

[new cruelty]

ROTFLOL. Sorry, there really isn’t a such a site, patrolman kevmo. For what it’s worth, what Lando says at babysonthehalftip.com or tenthousandnunsandorhpans.net for that matter is his business and not really up to me to police.

[Bigh4u2]

“I hardly think my response was “snarky”. “

I’m sure you don’t.

“You think it is “Freepercide” - fine.I happen to think diferently.”

Then you didn’t read the thread and the statements made directly to Jim Rob.

“If I have ofended your sensibilities - well, that is okay too, I guess.”

Hardly. It is you who seems to be sensitive to the fact that the Rudy supporters were banned because they just couldn’t control their enthusiasm and just HAD to ‘make their point’. Well it was made. And they lost.

“I hate the celebratory tone that is taken every time that someone is gone - for whatever reason or rationalization. But I have come to know some of these people over years and thousands of comments.” -

I’ve been here from the beginning and from what I’ve read of some of the posters who are ‘celebrating’, it seemed a well deserved critique of how they had been treated.

“For you to judge them over their last how-ever-many posts is patently wrong. It is sad. It is wrong. It is punitive. And it is telling.” -

I judge them, as I see them. When someone tells me “If you don’t support Rudy, and Hillary becomes president, then it will be YOUR FAULT! if you don’t vote for him”, then I have a tendency to take a little offense to that. Apparently, my ‘choices’ are fine as long as they agree with THEIRS. Sounds a little bit PC and ‘liberal’ to me.

“The witch hunt must stop. It must. If you wish to flush out those who think “differently” you will find only an echo chamber left behind. Tell me that isn’t wrong.”

It would be wrong, if it were true. But it’s not. You have it backwards. No one here, from all the posts I’ve read, started a ‘witch hunt’ against the Rudy supporters. They, by there own writings and attitudes, managed to get themselves banned from this site. You don’t think they committed Freepercide, but that only tells me that you either didn’t read all the posts and comments made by them, or you just don’t care because, after all, ‘Can’t we all just get along?’.

“They hate the far-left, the liberalism that threatens our immediate well-being. And, I must say this, despite my hesitancy to speak for others.”

Yes. They may hate the liberalism that threatens our security or, as you put it, our ‘immediate well-being’. But what of future childrens well-being? The 3000 daily abortions. They don’t count? How about gun control? That type of ‘liberalism’ isn’t a threat to our well-being?
Their argument were ‘we’ll just worrry about that later’. What if there is no ‘later’ because a democrat Congress passes even stricter gun control and a ‘liberal’ Rudy signs it into law? Impossible you say? If so then your dreaming.

“Please, call for a stop to this nonsense.”

I’ve read the rest of you post, and it’s nothing more than a repeat of what you’ve said before.

If you want to stop the ‘nonsense’, as you put it, then maybe you should talk to some of your ‘friends’ that just can’t seem to stop theirs.

Every story has two sides. And you seem only inclined to believe one of them.

I probably won’t be here for your reply, because I have to work. But it doesn’t matter because until you can come back and tell me that you’ve read through this thread and gotten the ‘whole’ picture of what went on, then replying to me would be a waste of my time and yours.

I find that you seem to have this ‘noble’ idea that no matter our differences, some hear should just ‘shut up and take it’.

The owner of this site isn’t going to ‘shut up and take it’, and neither am I and many more here.

[Knitting A Conundrum]

Morning!

[new cruelty]

So, I took a look at the stats:

Great googly-moogly, I like the way your mind works.

[Knitting A Conundrum]

You log off?