Posted on 08/18/2002 5:18:22 PM PDT by Auntie Mame
Dear Freepers:
I just returned from the First Annual Free Republic Network Convention in Las Vegas.
The Free Republic Network Cruise last October was the most fun I've ever had in my whole life. The Free Republic Network Conference I just attended was the most informative and inspiring two days I've ever had in my whole life.
The Free Republic Network is stretching its muscle, not by talk, but by action. The Free Republic forum is liberty's college. The Free Republic Network is liberty's workplace.
If you attended, please use this thread to post your observations, comments and highlights of the conference. I will give mine below. But before I do, I'd like to take this time to thank Bob Johnson and the FRN board for putting on this conference. It's hard for me to find the words to adequately describe how great this experience was--and how much I learned.
You're skewing the story! I put it down momentarily to help an elderly woman put her coat on, and someone lifted it.
I don't want to best them at their own game. I want to make them play MY game.
I just don't see how you rationalize compromising the truth so as to deliver it in incremental portions
You're putting words in my mouth that don't belong there. I will never compromise the truth. If I don't want the truth heard being said by me I will say nothing, although I can't think of a situation where I WOULDN'T want the truth heard.
I also wish to avoid anything resembling an apology or shame over my acceptance of the Scientifically Proven Fact that every human life begins at conception or the moral truth that taking an innocent human life is always evil.
I agree with you and will NOT debate those topics on this thread. If you want to debate the tactics and strategies of DEBATING this topic I have no problems. I won't debate the TOPIC on this thread.
When the left elects their representatives based on the stated Personal Convictions of the man or woman regarding abortion, the environment, gay rights, nuclear power, etc. etc. they rightfully expect and consistently receive votes that comport perfectly as promised.
I'm not sure that I understand this statement.
It seems that you are saying that the left gets votes and elects reps because they say that it's perfectly all right to have your own opinion on subjects. Those that agree with those opinions vote for that representative.
If that is the case, it seems to me that all we have to do is get the conservative opinion out there being heard with all the clamor that the liberals use and the people that agree with the conservative point of view will vote the conservatives in. That could be a part of the problem. Conservatives, many times, will not vote for a candidate unless they are in 100% agreement with EVERYTHING that candidate says. Not just the larger issues but EVERYTHING.
That is just one point of what should be a multi pronged attack. What was being deciminated at the FRiva conference were some ways to get the other tines on the pitchfork to move in concert with that one prong.
I coulda been a contenduh ...
You're not too far off the mark on your observation. While there is a finite and limited supply of money (chattel, currency, scratch, bread, whatever you wish to call it) in the world, women in their incredibly infinite varieties, colors, creeds, and degrees of personal morality are an almost inexhaustible, renewable resource. And, please don't get the impression that I think it is better to be lucky at finance than in love - I've known women for which I would happily throw away a fortune, but have never seen an amount of money that would induce me to give up female companionship.
While having both is admittedly the most desirable state, having only one is nothing to sneeze at either.
Won't do any good.
My point is that our representatives NEVER stick to the "Personal Convictions" they use to sell themselves during elections.
It's not just the way they preserved Clinton through impeachment -- folks like Bob Dole and Bush I stepping up out of nowhere to state that "actual removal" would sully the decorum of the semen-stained office -- it's the way they'll snow-job us with the news that they had to pass the Schumer Amendment -- 80-17 -- lest Gore get good press coverage for breaking a tie or stick it to us by confirming Roe v. Wade in the middle of the election season or passing PNTR for China.
In case you forget, here's only a part of the bounty our "GOP Congress" gifted us:
And I want to add OWK's laundry list of GOP Congressional Accomplishments. Incremental Conservatism in Action !!To this list, I'd add the "Deformed Baby Database" just for starters.
National ID Cards
Expanded (no warrant) wiretap authority for FBI
A national database for “employed people”
Asset seizure for Americans who establish foreign citizenship
The power to declare ANY group as “terrorist” without possibility of appeal (and subsequent monitoring of said groups)
Authorization of “secret trials” for “terrorists”
A national medical database with federal access
100 pages of new “health care crimes” and authorization of asset seizure for said crimes
Funding for the war in Kosovo without Constitutional authority
Continued funding for troops in Bosnia without Constitutional authority
Renewed funding for the NEA
Renewed funding for the NEH
Legislation harassing tobacco companies
Tobacco subsidies
Sugar subsidies
Ethanol subsidies
Agriculture subsidies
The largest Pork legislation in the history of the republic (highways)
IRS reform voted down
IMF bailout with taxpayer money
Russian bailout with taxpayer money
Forgiveness of debt of Billions in third world loans
Expanded federal involvement in education
Sham investigation of China money
Sham investigation of Waco
Restriction of Executive orders voted down
Mandatory restrictions on firearms transactions
Banning of high-capacity magazines
5 Posted on 08/22/2000 10:58:05 PDT by DAnconia55
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I think before we kid ourselves that we're equipped to make our arguments and persuade Libertarians or Democrats or undecided ... we ought to practice on our own representatives. Until their performance evidences anything even resembling a basic understanding of or belief in -- much less adherence to -- strict constitutionalist, conservative and pro-life principles, I don't see the point in electing more of the same.
I think we should probably consider holding our elected representatives accountable before we go waltzing around convincing others that we've got what it takes to restore this nation's integrity.
As an example. I can't think of anyone who's been more consistently in our corner politically -- and personally at FR -- than Bob Barr. The dearth of support for him on this forum is an embarrassment and indicative, I think, of how specious is most of the talk around here about "principle" or the Constitution. I cannot fathom how it is a champion of all we hold dear like Barr could be defeated by a bunch of pantywaist gleeful Libertarians who specifically targeted him for his anti-drug stance ... a stand extremely popular here at Free Republic.
Doesn't make any sense to me. We seem quite willing to trash or allow our opponents to decimate exactly the individuals who've been most steadfast. It reeks of hypocrisy and it suggests to me that perhaps we don't necessarily want the Bob Barr's around because they make us feel guilty for pandering like we do to the opposition instead of standing up for and consistently acting in comport with what we say we believe is True.
Please not that the laundry list of GOP accomplishments (which I reposted as part of my Salute to the GOP was originally posted by Libertarians. I am an Independent. We are exactly the target audience for your Big Tent conservatism by which you hope to get the Numbers necessary to win.
Rotsa ruck. From the outside, it looks like one big fat load of hypocrisy to me. While it's possible Barr's support for the GOP's wholly unconstitutional War on Drugs(1) cinched his defeat at the hands of big-L libertarians, I suspect you might have had an opportunity to win many to Barr's camp by pointing out his consistent conservative bent ... particularly where issues of privacy and government crime and corruption were concerned.
Instead, we're far more likely to cheer as a "clever compromise" Bush's decision on ESCR which not only resulted in a wholly new definition of Non-Personhood but nailed open the most profitable window of non-personhood.
I fail to see how the Republicans are going to convince Democrats that human beings have a right to life from conception to natural death if our own George Bush doesn't buy it.
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(1) -- The War on Drugs was called by Nixon even as Kissinger and Haig -- on his Narcotics Council -- were stopping overflights of Burmese poppy fields to appease the Chicoms as part of our "winning" strategy in Viet Nam.
Appeasing Chicoms? Studiously ignoring the Tri-Continental Conference in Havana and the subsequent setting up of Cuba as terrorist training base AND launch pad of Leninists into Latin America as we sent American men to their deaths and destruction ... fighting in utter ignominy in some funkhole in the Far East?!?
This is your brain, this is your hypocritical, pragmatic brain on Drugs.
Without a doubt -- from the RICO prosecution of abortion protesters, to the GOP's morphing of population control into a State-provided healthcare mechanism, to the confecting of a War on Drugs police force to the PATRIOT Act, I think the argument can be made that this "War on a Noun" series inevitably ends up a war on the lives and liberties of Americans, and not the boogyman threats -- Organized Crime, Poverty, Drugs or Terror -- used to justify them.
There is a saying in anthropology: Action precedes thought. It applies nicely in neuroscience as well (watch a child learning to speak). Does it apply to politics?
Consider slavery as an example. Slavery became a moral outrage, worldwide, when it became impractical.
But pragmatism is slippery as mercury. If we view change as process, then catastrophe often results when the process is rushed along too fast. Communism is an example. Socialism moves slowly, and hearts and minds adjust.
Now I see that, all along, I was assuming a posterity
Of gentle hearts. Someone, however distant in the depths of time,
Who could pick up our signal, who could understand a story.
There won't be.
So scratching out the good fight allows the gradual construction of the "barrier across which no voice can ever carry".
It's not how well you play the game, it's what game you play.
That "someone" was HangFire :-) (Who was sitting right next to me)
But I digress, AnnaZ won that debate, not because she was a woman, but because she was right and the other side was wrong (Though it didnt help their cause much to send a man to represent the commie mommies side).
Now I know better than to take this bait, BUT how in the hell do you pretend know what's in my FReep mail, put-up or shut-up.
I mean that in a nice way of course.
I'm moaning about being abused and attacked?
I asked OPH yesterday on his vanity thread to please resist the urge to continue the personal attacks ... but only because they made him look like an idiot.
I think the use of character assassination, bullying, personal smears and such are poor form, that's all. It's not as if they have any effect on me else my tender sensibilities and I would have have fled the forum years ago.
Posted by Interesting Times to Gore_ War_ Vet On News/Activism ^ Aug 21 9:57 AM #566 of 696 ^ If the DC chapter is the "targeted group" (clearly you've been taking victim lessons from Askel)
Please don't go there, Interesting Times. Regardless whether or not you believe it, there are many of us who still remain hopeful you guys will get your act together despite some embarrassing displays -- and rationalizations -- to date.
For example, it flat-out amazes me you can follow that remark with this one:
Why not just stick with your freepmail character assassination campaign, and leave these good folks alone?
Are you trying to deliver ammunition into the hands of those who allege FReepmail is not secure? What in the world do you have to gain by accusing GWV of masterminding a campaign of character assassination via FReepmail unless you back it up out here on the forum where you made your allegation?
I think perhaps the FRN BOD should consider "Anger Management" as a required course for their next confab. I don't think I've ever seen a group of folks willing to go to such lengths to destroy their own credibility.
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