Posted on 05/12/2016 12:03:49 PM PDT by nhwingut
On the right, weve grown to pride ourselves on our greater openness to debate and ideas, on having no need to toe a Politically Correct line or crawl into a safe space like pampered college kids who just cant handle hearing from anyone who disagrees with them.
For myself, I am so personally dedicated to this ideal that I even perform the great personal sacrifice of reading the comments field beneath my articles.
Yet somehow I wasnt surprised to see Donald Trump supporters, those swaggering tough guys, turn one of their favorite Internet forums into a safe space where they no longer need to encounter criticism or opposition. Earlier today, Free Republic proprietor Jim Robinson announced that the discussion board would no longer tolerate opposition to Trumps candidacy.
(Excerpt) Read more at thefederalist.com ...
50 years for me.
Never got a dime for unemployment.
Very thankful for that.
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This is only as difficult a concept as you intentionally elect to make it.
Regards,
onyx Since Nov 30, 1999
Newbie! :)
Congratulations....
Maybe we should charge them a $100 re-entry fee.
It's hysterical pronouncements like that which show just how detached from reality these deranged Trump-haters really are.
There was a contingent of the site who supported Ted Cruz. Initially that contingent was probably around 80-90%.
Then the primary happened.
Donald Trump won that primary, in the face of a relentless propaganda campaign, one which Ted Cruz and his supporters embraced wholeheartedly.
Thus, the entire Cruz campaign became a festival of parroting the identical talking points and character assassination that was emanating from the Left, Media, and GOPe.
For whatever reasons (many valid ones have been cited), Ted Cruz's support in this community steadily eroded, until his supporters were a minority of less that 20%, with Trump's support increasing to 80-90%.
Now that Trump has won the nomination and Cruz has lost, there's no utility in endlessly repeating the same propaganda that has been so forcefully repudiated over the last 6 months.
The time has come for unity.
Policy discussions are one thing, but attempts by bitter malcontents to use this site as a distribution point for ongoing anti-Trump propaganda are being met with stiff opposition, and rightly so.
It's pretty obvious when someone is trying to be disruptive to the community.
Such behavior is anti-social, and, in extreme cases, can result in a zot.
Contrary to the hysterical tone of this "journalism", there has been no mass exodus. Obviously, such a thing is something that FR-haters would love to be true, in order to soothe their self-righteous anger at being disciplined, but fortunately, repeating a lie endlessly doesn't make it any more truthful.
Jim has spoken. When he talks, members should honor his requests. In my near 20 year experience with his administration of this site, I've found him to be eminently fair, certainly no bully, and forgiving to those who are willing to admit when they've crossed the line.
So this article, as are the ones that come around approximately every 4 years, is "much ado about nothing".
Frankly, those who feel that the proper thing to do is to undermine Donald Trump, and thereby potentially help Hillary, are exhibiting questionable judgement. It is they who need to re-evaluate their mindset and decide whether they want to remain as members of this community.
That essentially involves admitting that one has lost "the debate", and moving on after a sufficient period of self-reflection.
Trying to damage Donald Trump's candidacy, under the clumsy guise of re-litigating the debate of the past 6 months endlessly, is an overtly disruptive behavior, and members who insist on doing so should really take a look in the mirror.
It's not that Trump supporters can't defend him just as well (or just as poorly) as they have in the last 8 months; it's just that most people who are connected with objective reality realize that we've entered a new phase wherein there's no justification for undermining Donald Trump the candidate, because he has secured the nomination and there are no other GOP candidates left in the race.
Members of this community are, for the most part, quite savvy, and it's pretty easy to see when someone on the losing side of a debate is being needlessly antagonistic.
For example, running around saying "Donald Trump is a charlatan", or some similar version of that, on every single post. While it's obviously someone's valid opinion, it's equally obvious that it serves no constructive purpose. Indeed, the only result of such speech, whether intentional or not, is to be destructive.
In times of War, there's no inherent right to run around aiding and abetting the Enemy, and if that happens on this forum, I'm all for Jim putting a stop to it whenever he sees it.
The reason Jim doesn't generally have to do that too much is because normally members of this community can exhibit enough control to self-censor without it having to be done for them.
The fact is, I don't feel entitled to flout the posting guidelines of this community, even though there may be cases where I'd like to.
There's plenty of Free Speech on this forum, so let's all try to make Jim's life easier by not putting him in a position to have to undertake potentially controversial decisions.
End rant.
Vote Trump
I got a half-zot.... for about a month intuitions keep whiffing around me that DT is trying not to say ‘look, something bad is about to happen and afterwords the least of your worries will be where my dot sits on the conservative spectrum’. Just a bad feeling lately.
Thank you. I save a few things here and there. Never know when they’ll be needed. :)
Now the curtains have to go to the cleaners!
It is called “Hush”. As you might have guessed, I’m a big Buffy fan.
Most of them I didn’t know. A few, I saw some of the posts.
Thanks. I’ll try to see if I can find it.
Bam! Perfect
Perfect explanation.
Vote Trump
This is simply another article from the #NeverTrumpsters... I really wasn’t for either Cruz or Trump, like Trump more... but was ALWAYS supporting whoever the nominee was. And Jim has always had FR support the nominee.
I would say it differently, to the same effect: FR is an exercise of freedom of the press - not by the public at large, but by Jim Robinson, owner of the forum. Registered members are permitted to post to FR - but always subject to the approval of the owner of the forum. The owner of the forum delegates that approval authority to moderators, at his discretion. Any thread or post which is disapproved is removed, without recourse.Everyone else has freedom of the press, too - but if they do not meet the approval of the owner of FR, they can exert their own freedom of the press by founding their own web site, blog, or whatever. This will of course not be free of cost, any more than FR is free of cost to its owner. And attracting an audience is not a trivial problem. But, dear reader, you do have freedom of the press. On your own dime. Not on FR.
I wonder would someone who makes a statement like this get zotted?
“Trump is NO conservative. Hes a self-dealing charlatan and hes got a lot of fall-for-anything chump types fooled.”
Oh, snap.
I was just trying to write a funny, off the cuff sort of thing, perhaps a bit of an homage to Art Bell.
I’ll try to do better research next time :)
Cue the cute little kitten with the maching gun already. It’s Trump or Clinton (?) - what’s the big deal?
Trump is not exactly my kind of conservative; but anybody with a brain has to respect his accomplishments in life.
He will certainly get my vote in the California primary and get it again in November.
My kind of conservative would be calling for donations of ROPE and LAMPPOSTS, for every currently elected politician in DC and California.
Of course that’s just me, and I have been told I can be kind of extreme.
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