Posted on 05/11/2012 5:04:25 AM PDT by Lazamataz
How do you take over Free Republic? You can't. You shouldn't even try,
Recently, a friend came to me with what he perceived to be the failings of Free Republic. I wrote back: "....JR is really not interested in people advising him on how to run the forum. He's had success with his own direction.......Seriously man. Don't stress this so hard. It is what it is, and you have no power over other people/places/things. Hell, you don't even have power over YOURSELF. That's GOD'S power. Just suit up, show up, color in within the lines, and enjoy what you can in the forum. You know what's off limits. So do I. I live within the boundaries, without complaint and grateful for my blessings."
It is a good life lesson, using Free Republic as the catalyst. How many of us struggle mightily against the circumstances in our life, only to find that we have made utterly no difference? Maybe we have even made things worse, for our interference. We human beings have tiny little three-pound brains. What makes us believe we know best, how our reality should be? Often, what we believe is best for us, turns out to nearly kill us. Similarly, that which we believe is horrible for us, turns out to change us, positively, for the best. It is clear we do not know what it is that will make us prosper.
Many of us live in a perpetual state of anxiety or fear, or regret or remorse. These are wasted emotions. These emotions sap your energy and have no positive effect. Regret and remorse are utterly incapable of changing the past, and since we truly cannot know what is good or bad for us, how can we profit from fear or anxiety? It is best if we leave the particulars of our lives to the will of our God, however we understand Him.
This suggestion works well for atheists, too, since all of us have a God of our understanding. Perhaps, for the atheist, their God is an impersonal and uncaring universe. It still works. Let the results be decided by someone or something other than yourself. When we stop trying to control events around us, much better things come to pass than we had ever envisioned.
This is not to say we don't participate. We do. We show up every day, and we do the next right thing. This is not to say we don't make plans. We do. We are simply willing to get out of the way should the God of our understanding have something better in store for us. In my experience, when I get out of the way of God, the most amazing things happen to me. When I try to control some things, my fat sausage-fingers manage to make it much worse.
Back to the topic of this forum: We all have directions we believe the forum should go. Yet, if we did succeed in altering the forum's direction, we might end up destroying it outright.
So, how do you take over Free Republic? You can't. You shouldn't even try.
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He is. He's also very consistent, and I appreciate that. He's very human, of course, and I've seen his human side; irascibility, on occasion, and with consistency comes stubbornness. But even for his flaws, I'm still proud to call him FRiend.
Keep coming back!
LOL thanks
I did!
Not necessarily.
SA-LOOT!
Got me standing at attention...
Awww, [blush] thank you, honey, but you were shining so brightly, I couldn’t miss it.
Words of wisdom.
It certainly worked for me..... sometimes the phrases just ring so true.
Just says you practice these principles in all of your affairs...;)
Add me to your ping list, please.
Sorry I’m late. Is this the Occupy FreeRepublic thread?
We want change!
We want pictures! (Threads are worthless without pictures)
We want cowbells! (Because we need more cowbell)
Attica! Attica! Attica!
Now where’s the free food?
Gen. George S. Patton despised defeatists and quitters and reminded us that all real Americans do too.
Winston Churchill is revered to this day for his dogged determination in leading his country against a dominant adversary alone.
Ronald Reagan was defined by his sunny optimism, but he had a steel spine too. His attitude toward the Cold War? “We win, they lose.”
Rush Limbaugh, our greatest conservative voice today, is known for counseling optimism at the moment when things look most bleak. He predicted our 2010 comeback in February 2009 and he has been proved right in every particular.
Free Republic today is marked by negativity, pessimism, and defeatism to a degree never before seen around these parts. Every political thread has FReepers chiming in to trash the GOP nominee, and to declare the election over and Obama re-elected. Every single one. These posters are not providing data, analysis, and insight for the purpose of turning things around. And they make no rational, honest argument why giving up on the White House now helps preserve our liberty over the long run. These people are depressed and miserable and want things to get worse just so they can wallow in being “right”.
This is a new development as of this year. Never before has FR been so pessimistic, defeatist, and ugly.
Now you, Laz, come along singing “Que Sera Sera” and asking everyone to join in on the chorus. Well, let me say this about that:
Nuts!
I knew Doris Day before she was a virgin and I’m here to tell you that that song is bunk and real Americans don’t just go with the flow, least of all when the flow is circling the drain.
Defeatism is for pussies. Obama sucks and America knows it. We are going to kick his skinny Marxist butt right back to Kenya and anybody who doesn’t pull their oar with all of their might is a Frenchman!
Fie!
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