Free Republic?
As all of you that read this web site are already aware, I am a Conservative and a true believer in Free Speech. I do not believe in censorship at all. In fact, I even believe the Supreme Court has allowed too many exceptions to the First Amendment guaranty of Free Speech. For those of you that have been avid readers of this column, you have seen me defend Free Speech even to the extent that I believe being politically correct has stifled it. See e.g. “Has Being PC Taken Away Free Speech,” “To Be ‘PC’ or Not To Be ‘PC’,” and “Of Free Speech Illegal Immigration and Border Wars”
Imagine my surprise when a well known and highly Alexa ranked, (aproximately 5,000 in the world), web site such as “Free Republic” deemed it necessary to ban myself and my partner Ira Schwartz. I was shocked and hurt to put it mildly. After all, we are all Conservatives; we both advocate the defeat of President Obama in 2012 and we both advocate the repeal of Obamacare.
What we don’t seem to advocate is the Presidency of Sarah Palin. And, based upon the one article that I was permitted to post on Free Republic and my replies to the Comments thereto, that was enough to get us banned.
And, how did I find out I was no longer a favored member of the web site? I was not sent an email warning. I was not even sent an email telling me I was banned. I found out when I tried to post another article and was classlessly told that my account was either “suspended or banned.” Nothing more, nothing less.
During our weekly conference call this morning with the managing editors of the web site, I mentioned that I was no longer permitted to post on Free Republic and I was informed by our web designer, John Hauser, that when it also happened to Ira Schwartz, he Googled “Banned from Free Republic,” and discovered it was not just us that had become unwelcomed participants. After the weekly conference call, I did the same Googling that Hauser did. If you do it too, you will be very surprised at the results. Pages and Pages of articles and blogs from people who were either banned by the web site or knew someone that had been banned by the web site. In fact one of the articles even states the Sean Hannity has distanced himself from them because of their hypocricy. See The Conservative Express.
Steven Miller on FamilyFirst.com states:
“You have to be very careful what you post at Free Republic. One comment that goes against the sensibilities of one of the moderators and you will be banned. At Free Republic that generally means banned for good. After that they will still take your money, but they won’t respond to appologies or any emails from you at all. I don’t know exactly how that goes along with being deeply patriotic, or anything else. I posted there for years; it is a shocker when you get kicked out with no recourse.”
And, in my case with no reasons or explanation either.
The references go on and on with pages and pages of articles regarding people that have been banned from the site. There are also pages and pages of comments stating that the web site is Anti-Mormon and other religions. If all this is true, then I can only wonder how this web site can maintain its high ranking and its following of Conservatives. After all, aren’t Conservatives believers in the First Amendment and all that the Constitution stands for? Wasn’t it Conservatives that demanded the Constitution be read by Congress for the first time in history?
Apparently not the Conservatives running Free Republic. But it is even deeper than that, becaues Free Republic even goes against its mission statement which states:
“Free Republic is the premier online gathering place for independent, grass-roots conservatism on the web. We’re working to roll back decades of governmental largesse, to root out political fraud and corruption, and to champion causes which further conservatism in America. And we always have fun doing it. Hoo-yah!”
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Anonymous: Comment on “Banned By “Free Republic!””
The wind of conservative prudent reform is at the backs of wise Republicans, Conservatives, Independents, pristine Progressives, and honorable Democrats. Regardless of the selfish “push-back”, censorship, banning, acts against parity in the concept of free speech, an informed electorate is astute enough to put the “future” of America first and foremost, while sharing the stage with opposing points of view. Parity on the world stage of dialogue is not negotiable in a Republic. Then we all move up and down with reasonable Constitutional interpretation. Censorship, of any form, is a conspiracy, the historic, and regular, manipulation of the “truth.” What say you? Ask the radical progressives.
How is the “truth” manipulated as a “conspiracy” by Cass R. Sunstein and Adrian Vermeule? Their strategy would be to ban the theory, impose a tax or penalty, engage in counter speech (Edward Bernay’s scientific engineering of consent), or enlist credible parties to engage in counter spin (Google & Egypt), or engage in informal counter spin. (Conspiracy Theories, Cass R. Sunstein, Adrian Vermeule, Harvard Law School, January 15, 2008). Beware, “Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive!” This is “insidious control”, the engineering of consent, and censorship.
As we muse about issues like national security, foreign policy, border security, illegal immigration, ObamaCare (now the Affordable Health Care act…semantics count), Cap and Trade (now “Pollution Reduction and Investment”), Stimulus (Now “Investment”), Bailouts, taxes and wavers (exceeding 1000 and now to include states?)/special treatment for privileged groups one is “constantly” reminded of Fredrick Douglass. Fredrick Douglas (“…a Republican, a black, dyed in the wool Republican”) said “Find out just what any people will quietly submit to [censorship, redefinition, political correctness, sexism, racism, homophobia, Islamophobia et al. and banning of “free speech” is the ultimate tool] and you have the exact measure of the injustice and wrong which will be imposed on them.” Will we quietly submit, a return to a modified, or not, intellectual or real Holocaust?
Well, welcome to my world. A ban by Free Republic is one of the events that was a catalyst in my current politics. I voted for Bush in 2000, but made a rather innocuous post there questioning his immigration policy in 2005 or so. WHAM! Ban hammer.
And yet Jim Robinson manages to get his crowd to contribute six digits every year. Astounding.
PS – You might want to update your “Favorite Links” section.
Well I guess were in good company. Welcome to our site and thanks for catching that link.
Maybe you shouldn’t have been cross-posting, err, I mean spamming that site. Posting article after article after article for the purpose of trying to get free advertising. Even after warnings you kept doing it. Now, it seems that you may have another account doing the same thing. It is an old blog spammer trick to try to get hits to their site, go around the internet and post over and over and over and over to other sites links back to their own. That kind of crap would get you banned from almost any site.
Some would think that we would delete this comment. We leave it because we believe in free speech. We also believe that there are some good and intelligent readers that follow Free Republic. Those are the readers we are looking for. The people that should be banned from Free Republic are those who post the nonsense that clutters 2/3 of your post replies. We welcome you if you have something to say and voice it clearly and intelligently. We submit our post to your site through the proper channels. We only submit what we think is relative to your site. We never submit more than once per relevant post. We only submit original content. We try and promote clean and intelligent dialog with your group. We do not fit the definition of spam. Which is “Spam is the use of electronic messaging systems (including most broadcast media, digital delivery systems) to send unsolicited bulk messages indiscriminately. While the most widely recognized form of spam is e-mail spam, the term is applied to similar abuses in other media: instant messaging spam,Usenet newsgroup spam, Web search engine spam, spam in blogs, wiki spam, online classified adsspam, mobile phone messaging spam, Internet forum spam, junk fax transmissions, social networkingspam, television advertising and file sharing network spam.”
So thank you for your comment and please enjoy the rest of our site.
Have a nice Day.
Jim Robinson has made FreeRepublic a “Palin or bust” website because he got all “starry eyed” after he shook hands with her and was kissed on the cheek. It’s just like a groupie who met their favoritie celebrity or rock star. Common sense goes out the window.
If you so much as attempt to endorse another candidate, you’re either banned, called a RINO or accused of being a Democratic operative.
For all intent and purposes, Palin isn’t the Republican nominee in 2012 and no amount of posting “Ronald Reagan with Sarah Palin” pictures by the posters on Free Republic is going to change the outcome one bit. Independents don’t like her and Republicans can’t win the White House in 2012 without Independents.
I still lurk there but no longer post because the attacks have gotten vicious and sickening.
I was banned because I didn’t gush Palin platitudes as well, I actually said something pretty negative about her
All ‘conservative’ websites seem to be doing this, sorry but Palin makes my stomach turn. Is it too much too ask to have a candidate with class and intelligence who doesn’t run around to gatherings of people and inserts herself into them
Don’t get me started!
I have been called a rhino, a retard, a moron, a liberal and some other sweet colorful phrases.
As far as I am concerned that is an example of her base.
She can’t win – she isn’t running and all she wants is money but the zombies can’t see it, they are bad as people of color voting for Obama because he is black. Sarah carries a gun and hunts and stuff, she’s hot too, how stupid can you be?
Don’t answer that
I wrote an original article on Palin for Free Republic and it had great responses. A while later however, as I was pointing out the downfalls of crony capitalism and outlining my personal experiences with wealthy who are out of touch with the middle class, I was banned for life as a “troll” from Free Republic. Yes, I did make a comment about the guillotine and the French Revolution, but in the full context of my comments, and certainly my previous writings on there, I was obviously a staunch conservative. As a matter of fact, the following week, Sarah Palin wrote an article on her Facebook page espousing exactly what I was saying in my comment on FR! I pointed this out to Jimbo to no avail. There is no “Free” in Free Republic. It’s kind of sad to think Conservatives can be such (plural expletive) to each other.