Look, trolls disgust me. I've given the anti-Apple trolls a lot of grief in recent months for their disruption of the Apple threads. I prefer reasonable discussion, and actively have tried to foster it and discourage trolling and pointless arguing. Swordmaker will attest to this.
And I am disgusted when threads get twisted and corrupted by hate-filled, provocative, pointless comments that are only intended to insult and incite flamewars.
But I must remind you of Voltaire's statement about defending the right of an opponent to say what he wants.
Your freedom to discuss is not being infringed by the trolls. Your sensibilities are being assaulted, but nobody is taking away your right to post comments on the thread.
You could look into one of the tools that allow you to block certain posters by name. I don't use one myself, meaning that I have to read past all the crappy troll posts manually. And I seem to recall that those tools are generally frowned upon by the management. But you can find them if you are sufficiently grossed out by the troll posts that you feel your freedom is being infringed.
Lighten up a bit. I mean, FreeRepublic is a blessing and by the grace of God it will continue to provide us with a forum for discussion. But geez, it's an internet forum, not your backyard.
Driftdiver has a right to mouth off, and we fellow FReepers have cannot deny him that right (the Mods can!). We can ignore him, but not shut him up.
Let us, rather, engage in reasonable discussion, and draw him into it, ignoring any trollish tendencies, and encouraging more mannerly conversation.
OTOH, if driftdiver shows up in your backyard, yelling about how Apple sucks dead monkey d*ck, call me, I promise I'll show up and help you throw him out. :)