Posted on 06/16/2002 10:48:35 AM PDT by spycatcher
Here, everyone can be a blogger. And talk about peer review, you're flamed, lauded, ignored, or laughed at in about two seconds! Yup, nothing beats the opinions and discourse of Free Republic!
Well said.
Today I found Justin Raimondo reviewing his list of news sites/blogs: Take his ratings with a large grain of salt, but he sort of praises Free Republic...
"FreeRepublic.com is the original conservative news and discussion site, and it is still the biggest. But much of the elan is gone, and I fear that dear old FR shows definite signs of senility. Gone are the free-wheeling ways of the 90s, when Jim Robinson's virtual community of conservatives was, paradoxically, an oasis of freethinking revolutionary thought on the internet – and downright fun. Also addictive. But the post-9/11 FR is quite a different place. The free discussion of ideas that operated as a general rule – the exception being personal attacks leveled at founder, usually posted by a group of nutballs whose goal in life seemed to be harassing Robinson – has been replaced by a regime of "administrative monitors" who censor individual comments and often pull entire threads.
"However, the endearing chaos of the place is intact: FR is still very freewheeling within certain parameters (the new rules are enforced unevenly, if at all). A lot of the more independent souls among the longtime Freepers (as they call themselves) refuse to be driven away by an influx of nutballs and an awful lot of PWAs – posters with an agenda, usually involving a foreign country. We aren't just talking about Israel here, whose partisans actively campaign to ban anyone and anything deemed "anti-Semitic" (i.e. anti-Ariel Sharon) – India, believe it or not, also has its little amen corner on FR, which actively campaigns to push the line put out by New Delhi: Pakistan is supporting terrorism, all Ay-rabs are evil, and what is needed is an Indo-American alliance against the whole of Islam.
"The site has also undergone a redesign, one which I'm not sure I understand, but which somehow seems like a watered-down, albeit zooped-up, version of Classic FR. I may be an old traditionalist stick-in-the-mud, but, then again, I've never denied being a reactionary of the blackest sort: in any case, I usually hate redesigns, and so, I suspect, does everybody else but the designers themselves: that's one reason for Drudge's enduring success. He's never changed the stark Courier typeface that looks pecked out on an old Royal. It goes with the hat.
"Yes, change is usually evil: or, at least, it is nowadays. I know another change I'm not looking forward to, and that is the demise of FR, where they've been posting material from Antiwar.com since before the Kosovo war. For news junkies like me, FR is still one of the best sources on the internet. Not only that, but Jim Robinson is still being pursued relentlessly by the evil Los Angeles Times and the quintessence of evil, otherwise known as the Washington Post, for alleged "copyright infringement" – because FR members post articles from these publications and then discuss them online. But a simple search for articles from both newspapers posted, in their entirety, on other sites – such as the left-liberal Commondreams.org – turns up thousands of similar violations of their precious copyright. So why pick on FreeRepublic.com and its wheelchair-bound founder, suing them for millions and trying to put them out of business? Check out the Free Republic Defense Fund – because your favorite site could be next."
Well, there goes that premise. Maybe, people are tired of journalists passing themselves as "objective"---as if failing to register with a political party can make someone "objective". Please.
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