What about your First Amendment rights?
Actually, the First Amendment applies only to Federal government restrictions. Private groups such as Free Republic are free to to ban all sorts of speech. The Ga Tech Boosters Club is free to ban any speech extolling the virtues of the University of Georgia Bulldogs. And so forth.
This is right and proper.
Free Republic is a place where people may “gather”, albeit electronically, to discuss, in a gentlemanly manner, the issues of the day. At the end of a tiring day I was about to let a poster “get my goat”, so it was time to opt out.
“It is better to keep one’s mouth shut and be thought a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.”
or, the version popular in Kenya, “Never argue with a fool. Bystanders may not be able to tell you apart.”
BwanaNdege has a propensity to forget this axiom.