Posted on 06/25/2002 3:42:21 AM PDT by Jim Robinson
The following email is being circulated to our members by various disgruntled former FReepers:
Subject: The Future of Our Free RepublicDear Fellow Free Republic Member,
Many of us at Free Republic are distressed by the extraordinary level of censorship that has been so obviously going on. It is very obvious that individual posts, entire threads, and the entire work of members who have been highly regarded are disappearing into a Memory Hole.
Scores of us have organized an e-mail network that is independent of the communication controls presently, and sadly, being used at our Free Republic. We have carefully documented the unmistakeable evidence that most of the posts, threads, and posters that are vaporized completely are overwhelmingly targeted for their political stance on the Right. These are not Leftwingers. These are not even Middle-of-the-Roaders. These are not disruptors. These are not foul-mouthed delinquents. These are fellow patriots on the Right who disagree with the controllers of FR on specific issues that are now hotly debated by the Right. We have documented that FR will parade before you, as if to hide all of the great posters whose work has been destroyed, a straw-man delinquent that has been banned. This is deceptive.
Treating these fellow patriots on the Right so shabbily is not right. As shabbily as those banned into the Memory Hole are being treated, the most shabbily treated of all are all of the good folks on Free Republic themselves. We came here for honest debate. Free Republic advertised itself as a Forum for honest debate. Without that honest debate...everything at Free Republic becomes shabby.
We can do much better. As a measure of how intense the simmering feelings have gotten among members on this unjustifiable use of deleting, censoring, and banning please link to the following thread. You will notice that one simple and sincere plea from one of our finest members has spontaneously touched off a prairie fire of approximately 500 posts in a mere 18 hours. If it isn't Memory Holed this thread may shoot into the thousands.
If you would like to receive anonymous updates of information concerning the hundreds of Freepers who have networked via e-mail to restore the wonderful honest debate to Free Republic, just drop an e-mail of just one or two words if you like for extreme brevity to:
StopCensoringUs@hotmail.com
And, here's that link back to the snowballing thread at FR:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/704701/posts
Thank you so much for giving your thought to this vital matter for our Internet home.
Sincerely, StopCensoringUs@hotmail.com
Shigure was being sarcastic.
Is FR going to continue to be a resource for Conservatism,
Or is FR merely going to devolve into being a chat group for people with identity politics and whose beliefs manage to only momentarily coincide with Conservatism.
My wife is a better student of the Bible than I, but she tells me that God instructed the Jews to kill every man, woman, child and domestic animal when they conquered a land. They didn't and were punished for their stupidity. Are you second-guessing God?
Provocative posts like the one at the top of this thread are part of the reason. The relationship appears to be symbiotic.
Hm.
Were you trying to make some kind of point?
As an administrator of a large hobby-site messageboard with many moderators I know how difficult it can be to keep the lid on the whackos and malcontents who believe that they have a constitutional right to post any kind of trash they please on another's website and are offended and haughty when challenged or outright banned. Too bad.
Your post explains a lot of the weird and nasty stuff we've been confronted with on FR lately and that has dismayed a lot of regular FReepers. Thanks for taking the time to lay it out for us and explain what's going on.
As a conservative website FR is always going to be a lightening bolt for the angry, the discontented and those who will not accept the slightest authority or supervision due to ego or other problems. That's been obvious for a long time and the urge to argue seems to be ingrained in many folks, anyway. This very thread is a demonstration of that inclination.
Thanks again for a great site and the answer to some questions we've all had.
Oh, yeah; I'll stick around, too.
SPOOK ELITE, EYES ONLY:
I never talk about our daily NSA briefings.
This encrypted FReepmail will self-destruct in five seconds.
cc: Amen Corner Hatchet Team, Lincoln-Worshippers, Fiat Money Fan Club
I would second guess anything claiming to be a "god", that instructed me to kill every man, woman, child and domestic animal.
Such a creature would be evil.
I'm not really sure why you felt it neccesary to even make this post. The internet has always been nothing but a series of conversations...some polite...some not. Sometimes, I feel like being polite, and at other times, I feel like being free to call an @sshole an @sshole.
To me, it is simply a matter of deciding in which sandbox I want to play at any given time. To stand in one sandbox and throw sand at others in another sandbox seems rather pointless, IMO...Regardless of which sandbox one is standing in, or who is throwing the sand.
I play in the sandbox that interests me at any given point in time.
There is a mirror thread of this at LF. So, people there are talking about FR as people here, are talking about LF. Pretty pointless...but everyone gets to spew.
Regards,
LOL
Where do you people come from?
Jim, you seem to have spawned "Welfare Freepers", those who think that you owe them a forum.
Grampa Dave add on: Then these clymers actually believe that we have to read and agree with the spew they post as Welfare Freepers!
To me, it seems more a matter of which catbox to play in at any given time.
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