I have privately told several friends here of my growing disinclination to continue participating in a board that I have enjoyed since Bill Clinton was being deposed in the Paula Jones fishing expedition.

At that time, a moderate, much less a liberal, could expect to be attacked for supporting his president, even if his president was right. Over the years, the general tone of this board has shifted to the center (despite the suggestions of some current denizens that it has moved to the left). Why is that?

One need only read a few of the leader's columns to understand the shift is not being led by a shift in his political compass. Unlike most commentators, Doug has stayed pretty much where he was when he started this public service.

When I think back through the years, the biggest changes I see are the many proponents of the politics of the right who cannot address the issues without vitriol. Many of them have been invited to cease and desist posting here unless they agree to abide by the simple and reasonable guidelines we all sign up for.

I admit to having not voted for a Republican for president since Gerald Ford ran in 1976. I admit to having not been a registered Republican since 1990, when the pandering to the zealots began taking that party away from its historical roots to a party wholly committed to expanding the Nixon doctrine to every trailer court and evangelical church in America. When one's reading of the 2nd Amendment became the most important issue in assessing one's party loyalty, I left that party.

Throughout, however, I stayed here and quickly abandoned all other boards I found because here one could find reasoned discussion and a sanity maintained by a group of self-less moderators who carried out Doug's vision with dedication. Engage in reasoned discourse or find another board.

For whatever reason, the tone here has changed of late (and read "late" in the context of having been around for a dozen or so years).

In an attempt to keep the board "balanced", those who advance the theories and rhetoric of the right or serve as apologists for the right as a way of playing nuisance, have come to dominate the discourse. Not with the weight of their ideas but with the rhetorical and intellectual violence with which they post their thoughts. And repeatedly they get away with it.

Despite having sworn off RR, I am compelled to write this morning because of what has gone on in the thread about the assassination attempt against a sitting member of Congress. I can only pray that in the end the attempt will have proven unsuccessful. But still we have the collateral damage of the death of a sitting federal judge and several others.

Phil Hoskins represents what I have most enjoyed about my time here. Yes, it is true that I agree on some level with what Phil posts. But that is not what makes his presence here enjoyable.

Rather, it has been his role in moderation of the site that has earned my respect. There have been others (NW Ponderer comes to mind) but Phil has stuck it out through some very trying times and many very blunt attacks on him. It was a very sad moment when I read he was setting us aside, but I certainly understood why.

Now this morning I read the attacks on his post in the Arizona shooting thread. The hatred in those attacks is palpable. The variance those attacks represent from the tone of what I have so much enjoyed about RR over the years is nauseating.

Yet in the current RR tenor, those attacks are allowed. Posts such as these (and it is not a single poster who engages in the practice) are informed by the knowledge that unless one openly and slanderously attacks the person, they are allowable under the rules as those rules are being implemented.

I find myself thinking more about how best to zing these charlatans without running afoul of the moderators than about how to discuss with them rationally. Because they have shown no desire to engage in rational discussion. Some have even acknowledged that the point is not truth or reason, it is victory in the rhetorical debate.

So far have we sunk.

Last edited by loganrbt; 01/09/11 03:35 PM.
"The white men were as thick and numerous and aimless as grasshoppers, moving always in a hurry but never seeming to get to whatever place it was they were going to." Dee Brown