Replies

They are sick people so you never know, with sick people like the anti's I wouldn't put anything pass them.

I've had some fairly sickening exchanges with people still on this forum. I don't think you can make an us/them generalization with Freepers being completely untainted...I absolutely agree that over time poor impulse control will weed out the disturbed types from the mainstream...Hearty Rule enforcement that is clearly supported with feedback is a great way to do that. I just hope that rational criticism is given as FRee a reign as possible...I LOVE debating! I'd hate to come to FR and not see any hard journalism disclosing facts that I found deeply disturbing...I might as well watch Baba WAWA!!!

I just hope that rational criticism is given as FRee a reign as possible...I LOVE debating!

Methinks we would all of us do ourselves and such forums as the FREEP a huge service if we held fast to counsel offered in 1949 by Frank Chodorov. He was writing then on the Communist issue (this was a year after you-know-who held you-know-what in his hand at Wheeling, West Virginia), but it does, truly, apply to any and all with whom we disagree in terms of issue, policy, or philosophy:

Heterodoxy is a necessary condition of a free society. When two people are in disagreement, both may be wrong but both cannot be right...(T)he important thing is not the wisdom I display in the choice of ideas but the right to make a choice. It is important to me, for the freedom of selection is necessary to my sense of personality; it is important to society, because only from the juxtaposition of ideas can we hope to approach the ideal of truth.

Whenever I choose an idea and label it "right," I imply the prerogative of another to reject that idea and label it "wrong." To invalidate his right is to invalidate mine. That is, I must brook error if I would preserve my freedom of thought. When I presume to be in possession of "absolute truth," and maintain that those who disagree with me not only are in error, but are wickedly or sinfully so, I lay myself open to similar judgment; in the end, then, the "absolute truth" becomes a matter of power to constrict thought.

...The danger, to those who hold freedom as the highest good, is not the ideas...espouse(d) but the power...aspire(d) to. Let them rant their heads off - that is their right, which we cannot afford to infringe - but let us keep from them the political means of depriving everybody else of the same right.

A reasonable proposition, that. Though I am certain that even those of us (including myself, perhaps, being only too human) who might hold tightly enough to that proposition are once inawhile imperfect in exercising it.

I'd hate to come to FR and not see any hard journalism disclosing facts that I found deeply disturbing...I might as well watch Baba WAWA!!!

Depends on which Baba Wawa. If you mean an old video of the Gilda Radner caricature, that wouldn't exactly be as hazardous to your health... ;)