Email: The Future of Free Republic

Email | 06/25/02 | Jim Robinson

[Jim Robinson]

The following email is being circulated to our members by various disgruntled former FReepers:

Subject: The Future of Our Free Republic

Dear 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

[OWK]

Disagreeing?

Dissenting... (he stands corrected)

[cake_crumb]

LOL...sorry...she then. Your writing style...rather than your screen name...sometimes makes it hard to tell.

Your posts DO tend to liven up threads, though...that's the one thing I'm sure we can agree on <G>

[ScreamingFist]

"Dissenting... (he stands corrected)"

That's why I'll never be one of the "Great Ones".

[dighton]

Rhinotillexomania.

[dennisw]

Beautiful how these folks like to deny, minimize and denigrate the holocaust until the time comes for them to draw up dishonest comparisons between Nazi atrocities and what Israel does to fend off the Islamic Jihadists that seek to destroy her. Then they reach for the holocaust to use it for their own slimey purposes.

[Roscoe]

Dissenting?

Quite a petulant "dissent."

[Jim Robinson]

Ok. Thanks, Jim

[OWK]

Quite a petulant "dissent."

But dissent nevertheless....

And it's the dissent, any dissent, that just gets under your skin, doesn't it?

[Roscoe]

And it's the dissent, any dissent, that just gets under your skin, doesn't it?

Just the tantrums.

[BraveMan]

You're an Atheist. I'm a Religious Zealot.

We're both still here . . .

[gcruse]

I get hammered just as much--if not more--for my conservative religious beliefs.

Hardly.  Your insults march ahead of any
thought you might have like suppressive
artillery fire.

[Jefferson Adams]

I am not a libertarian and not an anti-Semite so what's in it for me over there?

Oh, I dunno - I'm neither of those things either. I just like freedom and enjoy being in the company of others who feel the same way.

Ain't saying LF's perfect. But I like it :)

[Rowdee]

Suspicious? I'm merely asking about your 'take or experience' based on what occured when I was sent a invitation....it was due to not having a lot of server (?) capacity that they weren't in a position to go wide-open public anyone can sign up at will. They were/are trying to keep it manageable until they have the programming performing the way they want.

Non members can read articles in most all areas of the forum over there. I find the forum not as easy as the old Free Republic software programming, but I get by...I don't see it as any worse than what we have at FR now.

Any comments about FR over there is no different than how a great many people here acted when lucianne went her way. And its been stated by management/owner over there that he doesn't want to see bashing threads because that is not what the vision of the forum is.

I see a place for a whole lot of forums and certainly don't want to be locked into just one. I've seen things happen here at FR that a couple of years back I'd have fought physically with anyone that would say such a thing about Jim Rob....I can't say that anymore and personally don't have much confidence in the direction FR has taken. Still, there are some fine, fine people here and we have lost a lot of good ones, too. I've been around long enough to see it happen.

Neither am I a Libertarian or anti-Semite. That said, the fact that someone says they hate Jews or Arabs or Americans doesn't bother me a whole lot--after all, I do believe in the first amendment. Soon as I determine who the, IMO, morons are, I ignore them. Sort of like reading--I don't like Science Fiction, so why would I read a book by a Sci-Fi writer. Ditto murder mysteries. I won't call for burning of the books these writers produce.

[PhiKapMom]

Thanks for your comments.

About the same time the attacks started on here, the DemocRATS tried to infiltrate the Bush/Cheney group I moderate. They couldn't get in there to post to the Group because we moderate all new members. But I found myself reading the emails that came in for moderating that were trashing the President and his supporters with the same words that I started seeing on here.

Then to read this today puts everything in focus.

[cake_crumb]

OOPS...shoulda gone back over them AGAIN!!

[Jefferson Adams]

Wowie zowie. JD, who runs Liberty Forum, managed to use the word "liberty" 9 times in his important missive to Freepers and Jim Rob.

I am so darn impressed. LOL!

That's really all it took for you? I rather liked the rest of his post, too. I think it said a lot.

And it wasn't to JimRob. I simply asked him if he'd mind if I posted it here, so that you all could see that LF is far from being an "enemy" of FR.

[Jefferson Adams]

Equally impressive was your desire to count them. ;^]

LOL

[Angelique]

Before coming to FR, I had my first encounter with political forums with my local radio show. There was this guy who came in with so many disguises, and I knew who it was. Sime did not believe me. Pretty soon, his friends did the same thing. Eventually, the forum was tossed.

I have noticed that most FReepers catch imposters, but for some of us, we are not as astute. Thank you for the alert, and kick the bums out.

[Reborn]

I appreciate Jim's (and others) hard work and innovation and I agree with nearly everything in this post. However, I sometimes think the 'tin-foil' label gets applied too often. After all, the lefties like to apply this same label to topics most of us agree needs further investigation i.e. Vince Foster, TWA 800, OK City. Some 'fringe' topics that some here freely cast the 'tin foil' label on include Danny Casalaro and PROMIS, vaccines, gulf war syndrome, HAARP and even chem trails. I wonder about some that jump so fast to dismiss these topics.

I DO agree with this statement. Heck I've even been told that the Vince Foster "murder" issue was tin foil, ugh. And some of this stuff like "HAARP" is better debated right here where the TRUTH can be studied and learned about uncertain topics, then to have to wander around on "unsafe" websites looking for Truth. Why fear tin-foil topics? Some of us don't even know what is being talked about, and I feel safer reading about it here than at other forums cause I know that my fellow FReepers will dig and dig until they get to the TRUTH.