Did you ever frequent the Rush Room on the "old" Townhall.com chat?
I got my first graphical browser capable computer back in May of 1996 and sometime after that I sought out Conservative web sites to soothe my clinton-induced depression and found Town Hall chat, some nice lady on the chat pointed me to FreeRepublic.
Like here over there I was mostly a listener too and lurked FR for about a year before I got the itch to post and had to join, so sometime in the fall of '97 someone pointed me here and I'm trying to remember who.
I also remember IRC chat on the FreeRepublic channel, the name of which I can't remember the exact syntax, but do remember it was during the Clinton bombings of Iraq because I talked a lot to a FReeper who was stationed in Kuwait, he also moderated the channel.
Man things were different then