Regarding tenure and effort as security...
There is a whole body of works on “Gift Economies” that have been common in Third-World countries and more recently applied to the Open Source Software movement. A lot of ‘gift economy’ premises are valid about FreeRepublic.
There is a somewhat antithetical concept of “The Tragedy of the Commons” — the concept that people will take selfishly advantage of common areas, various liberties, etc. at the expense of others.
FREEDOM is like that too.
The bigger picture is that, while there is a sense of family and loyalty that hopefully can exist, Liberals and Unions focus primarily on tenure. Conservatives focus on merit.
And the loyalty / tenure-AS-merit premise must be examined carefully in a situation where the ‘family’ very likely has Manchurian Trojans at the dinner table, including some that can wait for a decade before germinating.
It’s a shame that some good people who get too testy get banned. It’s a greater shame that they don’t see the truth and become genuine Conservatives!
But it would be foolish to imagine that all will see the light. The reality is that some seek to neutralize Conservatives. To give them a continued soapbox for subversion is self-destructive, unilateral disarmament in the ideological war.
I have posted several times on FR that I thought George Bush was borrowing his “ownership society” mantra from Garrett Hardin. It’s one of the simplest and yet profound analogies.
The Tragedy of the Commons
Garrett Hardin (1968)
“The Tragedy of the Commons,” Garrett Hardin, Science, 162(1968):1243-1248.
http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a391f6d546577.htm
I have no doubt that we'll get that happy family feeling once again, if Hillary Clinton and Bubba move back into Pennsylvania Avenue.
Our differences of opinion on various issues will once again take a back burner and we'll hopefully look back at this and laugh...together.