Replies

Thank you for your apology the acceptance of which conclusively closes the matter. There are other issues raised in your reply which deserve some thoughts having nothing to do with you personally and should not be regarded by you as a personal criticism.

I have never taken note of Wagglebee or of his posts which is not surprising considering the great number of contributors to Free Republic so I have no way of judging your description of him as having a "history of "outing" trolls on Free Republic." Nor is it surprising because I tend not to look at the names of contributors because I am simply not interested in personalities. There are of course a few who contact me privately or who have made signal contributions which draw attention whose names I recall but Wagglebee is not among them. My conscious experience with Wagglebee is limited to his drive-by criticism of me on this thread. I described his criticism as "drive by" because my response to his intrusion into the discussion has never been acknowledged by him. He has no doubt moved on to find other prey.

I do not mean to lend prominence to Wagglebee, there are others who have behaved the same way on this thread.

Hence apart from a single unpleasant exposure, I have no way of knowing whether your description of Wagglebee is deserved as one who outs "liberals, libertarians who violate core conservative views, or others." As a self-confessed conservative with a "pesky libertarian streak" I suppose I would fall into the category "of others" which you catalog. I have no objection to debating the merits of my position at any time, in fact I do it all the time but I do object to being "outed" by a drive-by vigilante who throws his bombs and moves on.

If you look at my about page and I infer from your remarks that you already have done so, you will find a decade-old description of: "those Posters who evade unpalatable reality by resort to name-calling, ad hominem attacks, zotting, and just plain old-fashioned hardheadedness" who are to be compared unfavorably to Nathan Bedford Forrest who was possessed of "unflinching fortitude to behold, accept, and deal with reality no matter how unpleasant the prospect."

Troll vigilantes do not throw truth bombs, they throw anti-personnel weapons and move on to the next victim. Like all vigilantes they are self-appointed and responsible to no one. They further evade responsibility by de-legitimating their victims who cannot effectively respond on the merits. Invincible in their self righteousness, they think they're performing a great service for Free Republic and for conservatism when they are the mortal enemies of conservative principles. They are cancer which can metastasize and kill everything that conservatism strives for. Troll police are intellectually arrogant because they assume that their fellow conservatives are too stupid to think for themselves and must be protected from dangerous error by censorship.

Of course, in their intellectual vanity they assume that their version of conservatism is the one true faith.

Paradoxically, their inquisition mentality means that at root they do not believe in conservative values, they do not think that conservatism can morally or intellectually prevail against other ideologies so they protect the ideology just as Torquemada protected the faith. They patrol up and down the bandwidth of Free Republic shutting down debate with personal invective, believing all the while that they are strengthening the very philosophy they are wounding.

Conservatism does not need the protection of censors, it is morally and intellectually superior to any other political philosophy. I am not afraid of the debate and I resent those who would protect me from heresy when they are only depriving me of the truth. It is only by testing our political beliefs that we can distinguish what is good from what is mere claptrap or wishful thinking.

Political correctness is not a disease without a cause but a deliberate infliction of statist mentality on the body politic and conservatism is nearly as prone to enforcing it as is liberalism. Conservatism thereby becomes at once oppressor and victim.

For God's sake let us leave off this lazy tendency of debating not by considering the merits but by characterizing the messenger. When we indulge this temptation we are prone to error for we either whore after a Messiah as the country initially did with Obama and end up with a demagogue or we stick our heads in the sand and get destroyed by reality as the country did once more with Obama in the last presidential election. Choosing a president should not be a function of his charisma and judging the merits of an argument should not be dependent on the character of its messenger.

Thank you for your forthright apology which is unreservedly accepted.

My conscious experience with Wagglebee is limited to his drive-by criticism of me on this thread. I described his criticism as "drive by" because my response to his intrusion into the discussion has never been acknowledged by him. He has no doubt moved on to find other prey.

Actually, I was rather busy yesterday and didn't find time to respond to your drivel.

I do not mean to lend prominence to Wagglebee, there are others who have behaved the same way on this thread.

I'm curious, what is the proper response to this:

This is not a conservative question, we don't have to deny that there is insufficient habitable and desirable land for the doubling of American population every fifty years in order to maintain our conservative credentials. I don't know where this notion that growing population is good comes from among conservatives. Is it because misguided conservatives do not want to admit a predicate that allows for abortion?

You have been all over this thread pushing the Malthusian overpopulation lie, a lie that has been used to kill more than ONE BILLION innocent people in the past century.

To your previous posts, NOBODY is suggesting that the entire population of the earth SHOULD be put in Texas, merely they have pointed out that this COULD be done.

Hence apart from a single unpleasant exposure, I have no way of knowing whether your description of Wagglebee is deserved as one who outs "liberals, libertarians who violate core conservative views, or others." As a self-confessed conservative with a "pesky libertarian streak" I suppose I would fall into the category "of others" which you catalog.

Conservatism and libertarianism are largely incompatible. Pushing the overpopulation lie is not a mere "pesky streak."

I have no objection to debating the merits of my position at any time, in fact I do it all the time but I do object to being "outed" by a drive-by vigilante who throws his bombs and moves on.

None who know me would suggest that I "throw my bombs and move on." I go after trolls until they're gone.

If you look at my about page and I infer from your remarks that you already have done so, you will find a decade-old description of: "those Posters who evade unpalatable reality by resort to name-calling, ad hominem attacks, zotting, and just plain old-fashioned hardheadedness" who are to be compared unfavorably to Nathan Bedford Forrest who was possessed of "unflinching fortitude to behold, accept, and deal with reality no matter how unpleasant the prospect."

Really? A founder of the Ku Klux Klan had "unflinching fortitude"? How did this penchant for "dealing with reality no matter how unpleasant the prospect" reveal itself when he LIED to Congress about his KKK membership?

Troll police are intellectually arrogant because they assume that their fellow conservatives are too stupid to think for themselves and must be protected from dangerous error by censorship.

Of course, the libertarian fall-back position that it's "censorship" to not allow them to push their garbage.

Paradoxically, their inquisition mentality means that at root they do not believe in conservative values, they do not think that conservatism can morally or intellectually prevail against other ideologies so they protect the ideology just as Torquemada protected the faith. They patrol up and down the bandwidth of Free Republic shutting down debate with personal invective, believing all the while that they are strengthening the very philosophy they are wounding.

No, if I want to see leftist positions espoused I can simply turn on the television, I come to Free Republic to avoid it.

89 posted on 10/8/2015, 8:52:47 AM by nathanbedford: “Thank you for your forthright apology which is unreservedly accepted.”

Thank you, Nathan Bedford. Disagreeing without being disagreeable is important (assuming, of course, that the disagreement is among people of goodwill, which isn't always the case, such as when dealing with true enemies of sworn oaths taken to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution).

So is following the agreed-upon rules of discussion, which includes PINGing people being discussed. I blew it, I was wrong, and the apology on my part is needed.

I'm probably going to bow out of this debate and go back to reading without writing. Real life politics of city councils are going to consume much of my time for the next few days and weeks.