Posted on 08/27/2010 11:45:13 AM PDT by Hank Kerchief
This is merely one example of one sort of posting behavior that your rules have, so far, protected.
Here's the situation:
1. I make a complaint about the new rules.
2. The poster involved posts a post directly to me (but covers up by posting a bunch of other folks).
3. In it, the poster posts a picture of a crying baby.
4. The accompanying text is an incoherent, border-line psychotic harangue about how “AGAIN!” the “poor RCs” are whining and are thin-skinned.
In what way is this not a personal attack? Because the attack wears the nanometer-thick veil of speaking “generally” about RCs, rather than specifically using my screen name?
LOL!
Yet, the poster who posted this posts such attacks multiple times per day.
Ironically, it appears that this sort of behavior is only protected if one is a NON-Catholic, as when a CATHOLIC poster did much the same thing, he got dinged for it. You called it “finessing the guidelines.”
But the poster who posted this garbage does this sort of thing - “finessing the guidelines” - many times every single day.
Frankly, if direct accusations of lying, etc., are to be forbidden, I don't see why this sort of thing shouldn't be forbidden. And if this is NOT to be forbidden, it would be nice if the rule were applied even-handedly.
My own preference is either to recognize that the rules for “open” threads do NOT in any way resemble a town square, and then to balance the rules by restricting personal attacks through group attacks, OR make the place MORE like a town square, with actual freedom of speech, and permit the impeachment of the credibility of posters.
sitetest
So what
“Since there is no mention of denominational affiliations, it cannot be biased against one group or another.”
If you gave any posting evidence whatsoever of being open to an explanation, I would say why I don't believe this to be true.
However, your posts that attack the Catholic Church, Catholic practice, Catholic faith are so devoid of actual facts about Catholicism, so devoid of any sort of logic or reasonable apprehension of all the data, in context, that from them, I can discern no such openness on your part.
sitetest
YET AGAIN
WE HAVE THE RELENTLESS, SUPREMELY VATICAN TRADEMARKED ARROGANCE THAT
Ain't that just sooooooo cute.
Mary must have a fresh dump-truck load of white hankys all ready to dump out of Heaven into the put-upon laps of the faithful for such parochialism.
Obviously, what we have here is another reference to a new STATION OF THE WHITE HANKY. THE:
18. ICON OF THE GILDED BROOM TO THE INQUISITIONAL-CLEARING-THE-DECKS-OF-ALL-PRODDYS SWEEP.
Soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo charitable and impressive. I'm sure Mary's sweetness is greatly honored thereby.
NONSENSE.
In this post, you show what may be an inkling of insight.
Take it a step or two farther.
Think about why “personal attacks” are forbidden: to prevent flame wars; because they're flame-bait.
Think why they cause flame wars, why they're flame-bait. Because many people are most offended when directly attacked. This is ESPECIALLY true when the attack has a good deal of truth about it. If someone is an embezzler, and you call him a glutton, he'll laugh it off, especially if he's six feet tall and weighs 180 lbs. But if you attack him as a thief, it will strike most deeply (and most accurately), and he is more likely to be offended, especially if he has any number of defense mechanisms telling him why his sin isn't a sin (”I'm underpaid and unappreciated, I DESERVE the money I take...” and so on).
But now think that perhaps not everyone is most offended by a direct attack on them. If you call ME a glutton, even though the attack is just, I'll just chuckle. “Yes,” I'll say, “I already know that.” And if you call me an embezzler, I'll laugh even harder. As I own the business, it would be difficult to show that I embezzle from... myself. LOL.
For many, if you really want to start a flame war, if you really want to throw out flame-bait, then you should attack, mock, ridicule and denigrate what they hold sacred. Don't just argue against the belief, using reason and logic, Scripture or whatever else you want to bring to the table. Twist language to insult, to degrade the things that such a person holds holy. THEN you can cause some REALLY GOOD flame wars with the person!
sitetest
GIMME A BREAK.
MORE UNMITIGATED ARROGANT PAROCHIAL BALDERDASH
RC’s have almost a monopoly on
outrageous flame bating thread titles, posts, attitudes, fantasies, fabricated history, fabricated theology, fabricated accusations; fabricated idolatries, fabricated blasphemies, fabricated heresies, etc.
Here's more of precisely what you suggest should be forbidden in your worthy post 2698.
sitetest
It seems that those posters who most approve of these proposed new rules have responded by making it very personal in their replies to those who do not approve of these changes. That alone concerns me.
I can assure you that I never meant it as a slur and that the origin of the term was anything but a slur.
In 1529 a group of German princes united to sign a letter against the decision at the Diet of Speyer to essentially ban the Reformation in the Holy Roman Empire. These noblemen began their letter with the words, "We protest" and they were called the "Protestants" and proudly used that name to describe themselves. The end result of this was that "free states" were allowed to continue in Germany where the Reformation flourished.
Now, the term "Lutheran" DID begin as a slur and was certainly used as such when Henry VIII sought to kill all of the Lutherans in England.
No, because it is irrelevant to the answer I gave you. We share a common belief in The Gospel that is what unities us in the Body of Christ.
How is it irrelevant that the beliefs of Southern Baptists and High Church Anglicans are contrasting in so many areas?
Aside from the rejection of papal primacy, at least a nominal adherence to sola scriptura and possibly the rejection of Purgatory can you name a SINGLE tenet that Evangelicals/Protestants agree upon that Catholics do not also agree upon? Just one.
It almost seems to me that some Christians use the term "Evangelical" as a method to exclude non-Catholic Christians who do not believe exactly as they do.
The official name of the Episcopal Church when I was young was “The Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America.”
It wasn’t considered a slur.
I lived in a predominently WASP neighborhood in NY and the word “Protestant” was used self-descriptively by Episcopalians, Methodists, and Presbys. The only family not to call themselves Protestant was the Christian Science.
Saying “I am Protestant” to the only Catholic kid in the group was a sign of solidarity among themselves and certainly not a slur.
As I said, Lutheran started out as a slur (but was eventually adopted by Lutherans), but I don’t believe Calvinism and Arminianism were ever slurs. RC is most certainly a slur (the English pronounced it as “arse” and not RC like the cola). But, there is nothing to suggest that Protestant was ever used as a slur, though I will certainly agree that “Proddy” is a slur.
New rules? What new rules?
It’s a change I’m thinking about making. See post 2630 and if you have an opinion, I’d like to hear it.
Okay, here’s my suggestion. Any single post be restricted to the following:
1. A single font (preferably from a limited list).
2. No more than two font colors (with an exception for blue hyperlinks).
3. No more than two font sizes and nothing larger than 16 pts.
Boldface, italics, underlining, etc. are fine.
Let me get this straight.
If I say, “You are lying about your source.”
That’s verboten.
But, if I say, “I doubt the source you posted and the content is verifiable,”
or “The source you posted sounds like unadulterated sewer water,”
That’s ok.
I can’t say, “You are going to hell, are a sinner,” or otherwise impute one of the seven big sins to the person’s character.
But I can say, “Has it ever occurred to you that all Southern Baptists are gluttons because all of them are at least 70 pounds overweight?”
or,
“All Pentecostals who believe in demons pretending to be angels and elaborating tales of gross science fiction are perverting Scripture and leading people to the pit of hell?”
~And I know that person is a Southern Baptist or a Pentecostal?
If this it? Seriously, I thought generalizations were the rule anyway.
I’m gettin there ~ so in 2698, the “ALL” would be verboten.
That leaves “SOME” or “MANY” and that would be verboten?
So, I reply to someone who posts something absurd, and say,
I think your beliefs are a perversion of Scripture and leading people to the pit of hell.
That article you posted is garbage from a garbage site of Krishna-loving dung beetles.
What a relief that would be.
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