[Alas Babylon!]

IMPORTANT—PLEASE READ!!!

This thread is well-known as a place you can post your opinion on without being attacked for it.

As much as I am able to, I want to ensure this thread stays on the straight and narrow when it comes to insults to the posters here.

There is NO room to insult someone here.

I’m a lot less worried about seeing my candidate get insulted than a long time participant of this thread. The former I can laugh off, the latter I won’t.

I’ve asked the moderators ahead of time to support my goal—not to support or detract from any candidate, but to prevent FReepers getting into a flame war on this thread.

Please work with me!

All I’m really asking folks to do is to be civil and act like grown up people. This is, after all, a familiar place with a host of regulars, each with a different opinion. Last week someone said to me that this thread is becoming a home of the Trumpbots. Well, I guess many of the regulars here support Trump, but not all of them. And everyone has a right to be here and voice their own opinion; WITHOUT, of course, resorting to insulting someone else.

We’ve been posting FReeper Bray’s Sunday Bray essay as part of our regular features for many years now. He has come out with several posts favoring Donald Trump. If anyone wishes to counter him, feel free to do so. As I always say at the end of Bray’s post “The above opinion is not necessarily my own, but FReeper Bray’s. If you wish to discuss this, please ping Bray.” I do this not because I won’t back up Bray, but sometimes I disagree with him! And I let him know. But I’d never call him an idiot for having a different opinion from mine.

The animosity and invectiveness of some people on Free Republic is getting downright ugly. I’m not saying the forum is falling apart. It isn’t. We’ve had worse. But it is getting pretty dang bad.

Here’s my challenge: Don’t say anything to someone else here that you’d legitimately worry would get you punched in the nose, or you wouldn’t say to their face because you aren’t that kind of person. Try to also be the kind of person you are face-to-face from behind the keyboard.

Stop it with all the Trumpers, Cruzbots, etc. It really is crass and extremely juvenile! You’re just insulting half the people on the board. Are we really that petty? Cannot you advocate your candidate without putting down the people who support the other candidates? No? Barring that, can you at least RATIONALY put down the other candidate without also insulting those here who promote that candidate? Show some decorum!

People are not just “for” one candidate over the other because they’re stupid, or rabid worshippers or non-thinking sheep. At least not on this Forum, and especially this thread.

Thanks and God Bless you all!!!

[going hot]

That’s going to cut down the number of words per post by 50 percent or more. LOL

[Undecided 2012]

almost as if jim himself posted.
good job

[rodguy911]

Great idea AB and hopefully those posters here will stick with their opinions and leave the invectives behind.We are all guests of JImRob. Let's not abuse the privilege.

[animal172]

Worse yet to me is that sometimes we sound like the folks we are supposed to against. The Democrats.

[onyx]

Alas Babylon!
BTTT

[Gritty]

Thanks for bringing a worthwhile plea for civility to this thread, AB.

It has been getting downright heated on some of the other threads as emotions and tempers flare (some I believe deliberately stoked by trolls). Most of us here are really on the same side, but just see the solution to our nightmarish national dilemma differently. We all feel strongly about what is happening to our country. We really should stop eating each other and save our deadly ammunition for the real enemies of America. They are the ones who deserve our scorn and disgust and not our own friends and potential allies.

[altura]

I don’t know what I said here to incur the wrath of Alas Babylon.

I haven’t participated in 3 weeks, except for one mild comment.

But Alas felt it necessary to send me a private mail admonishing me for being a disruptor, apparently because I’m not in favor of Trump for president, which I innocently assumed was my right.

So, since it’s His thread, well I’ll see you here after he sends me a private mail asking me to come back.

[Jeff Chandler]

Killjoy.

[pugmama]

Thanks for posting this Alas B.
I am at a loss for words as to why things have become so hostile here. Why support a site when you might be insulted on it for sharing a thought or an opinion? This is happening on many sites it seems.FB is worse than ever.
I have also turned off talk radio. I was a long time listener to Rush and Levin and others, but I found myself getting really angry with them. And then, listening to Romney try and take out a leading candidate from his own party, then tell “the little people” how they needed to vote, was the final straw. The sheer arrogance of the Republican elite is breathtaking.

[RedMDer]

Try to also be the kind of person you are face-to-face from behind the keyboard.

Thank you. Very well said.