[Guenevere]

Your one sentence clarifies much.

Many of us thought...and still think...of this site as a 'conservative site'....

..and this opinion is backed up by the website owner, Jim Robinson, in his own words, mission statement, etc.

Although the Clinton years gave most of us common ground & somewhat united us...

..the prevailing years revealed that many who come here are not the strong social conservatives, I, for one, expected at such a website...

..instead I find libertarians, moderate conservatives or fiscal conservatives, and some liberals/infiltrators.
...Mr.Robinson graciously made room for many opinions/ideologues....while trying to keep the infiltrators out.

Maybe this mix was present all along..

...but it took the loss of conservative proponents in government to separate the wheat from the chaff at FR.

Those of us who won't yield our vote or our allegiance to a so called 'moderate conservative' who doesn't value life, family or the 2nd amendment are routinely ridiculed.

...As much as you've been a part of the solution through the years, BobJ.....I hope you're still aligned with Jim Robinson ....

..and won't become part of the problem .....by aligning yourself with those who seem to want many of us to disappear.

Any good church, any good organization can go bad.....from within.

But if it has strong leadership, the foundation will stand!

[La Enchiladita]

Wonderful post, Guenevere. Your assessment is accurate in my view and comprehensive. A bit more respect for the site owner and moderators is in order around here. They do an awesome job.

Many of us came here with absolutely zero HTML skills and slowly acquired them, so we can post photos and graphics, format text, etc. It is generous of the site owners to allow this much individual blogging on their website.

If posters would give more attention to issues and less to personalities, maybe we could actually become a leader in the conservative movement again.

The fact that Vietnam veteran Jim Robinson is imminently en route to Washington DC to defend the memorial to his RVN brothers and to support currently deployed troops and their mission SHOULD BE an inspiration to FReepers to grow up a bit and dispense with some of the nastier, divisive posting that has been going on recently.

As I stated earlier on the thread, the big problem is EGO. Everyone take a swallow. We are going to need conservative UNITY.

At least we can all agree on 2nd Amendment rights.... right?

[NathanR]

When I first signed on, Free Republic was a place where both conservatives and libertarians could discuss political issues freely and mostly politely. As time went on, social conservatives gained more and more power within FR and other views were discouraged. Now more heat than light is generated. You can see this in the Giulaini/Hunter threads.