The Logic of the Anti-Paul Forum Poster

This was my response to the discourse on the message board of this attack on Ron Paul:

JINGOIST, your post perfectly illustrates the defining difference between Paul supporters and those who support an aggressive, interventionist foreign policy. The difference in the views are obvious and don't need to be dealt with further. However, what has become obvious between reading this message board and others similar to it is the dramatically different standards of epistemology between the two groups.

Paul supporters are used to operating in a broad coalition that includes people from a wide range of view-points coming together to work for a common cause. It'd be a lie to say that there aren't Leftists in the RP movement; I know because I'm one of them. However, I can also say that I'm in a small minority, and that most of the left distrusts Dr. Paul because of his views on limited government. This being the case, we Paul supporters find it hard to make *a priori* ideological assumptions in our own community forums, since there are people who we respect as allies and friends who will happily and decisively refute a poorly reasoned argument. Therefore, claims made by Paul supporters to other Paul supporters must be based upon facts whose sources are from outside of the Paul community. This dynamic is reflected in the Pro-Paul positions taken in this forum. Since Paul supporters are used to discourse that is both contentious and rational, the statements made by Paul supporter in this discussion are verifiable external to both the Ron Paul and the FrontPageMag milieus.

The epistemological standards for the FrontPageMag community, on the other hand, have a different basis. Rather than being and ideologically heterogenous group who come together for a practical purpose (electing Dr. Paul), the primary tie of the FrontPageMag community is shared ideological commitment. To be part of the community, one must accept a certain set of *a priori* beliefs, and all action by the community flows from those beliefs. Therefore, while Paulite arguments require the invocation of independently verifiable sources in order to be considered valid by Paulites, FPMagers do not. Rather, for an argument to be valid it must first adhere to the ideological framework of the community; only after it has done so will it be entertained as a possibility.

This dynamic is beautifully outlined by the following exchange:

"Posted at 10:09PM on 11/29/07 by Tesla921
Why do you suppose Dr. Paul gets more donations from military personell than any other candidate? Why do you suppose he wins almost every debate that you can't spam?
Reply To This | Flag As Offensive


Posted at 6:38AM on 11/30/07 by JINGOIST
Tesla you radicals are almost exactly like leftists, you seem to lie about everything. Let's go through the whoppers and the slanders that you've vomited forth at this fine forum.

1. Ron Paul gets more donations from the military than anyone else. I was active duty for six years and I can tell you that's a load of CRAP! We would NEVER have sent a backstabbing buffoon like him one thin dime.

2. "Why do you suppose he wins every debate"...and then Tesla wakes up! I felt like changing the poor guy's diaper DURING the debate. The poor fool soiled himself! The truth is that he loses EVERY legitimate poll surrounding those debates. YOU weirdos are the ones that spam the text polls, you think we didn't notice that?
I guess the ends justifies the means, eh tesla?

3. "How many innocent children has the Administration killed this month?"
Now I see why you support Ron Paul, you're just as stupid as him! You guys need to grow up! Loser."

First, Tesla makes an externally verifiable statement that Ron Paul has received more donations from active duty military personnel than has any other Republican candidate. Evidence of this can be found outside the Ron Paul community; for instance, this article in the Weekly Standard, which is opposed to Dr. Paul and tries to downplay the significance of the donations, nonetheless doesn't deny reality: http://www.weeklystandard.com/weblogs/TWSFP/2007/10/the_fantasy_of_ron_pauls_milit.asp
However, since such a situation does not fit into the FP Mag's community's ideological framework, it cannot be accepted as true. Thus, JINGOIST responds; not with an external source attempting to debunk the importance of the donations (such as the one that I just cited above), but rather with an unverifiable personal anecdote concerning JINGOIST'S experience in the military many years ago. Since the "evidence" is entirely based upon JINGOIST's subjective perception, it has no external validity as a statement.

This is obvious to Paul supporters; however, it is not so to members of the FP Mag community, since it adheres to their standards of epistemology. Since Tesla's statement does not present a view of the world that is consistent with their ideology, the must either reject it unexamined in order to preserve their belief system or experience the cognitive dissonence that would be generated by the modification of FP Magers' view of the military as an entity that is undivided in its support of interventionist foreign policy. This would in turn undermine the idea that it is war critics who are undermining the war effort and betraying the idealized, mythic concept of "the troops".

JINGOIST's other two points follow the same logic, privileging the subjective over the objectively verifiable. In terms of the debate, "who wins" is determined by who JINGOIST believes wins according to his individual value system, rather than being reflected by the plurality of those who responded to viewings of the debates. In his last response, he doesn't even engage the statement. Rather, he invokes the bogeyman of the "leftist", as he cannot understand that the Paul community is an alliance of people with many different ideologies, as opposed to a community that defines its identity in relation to one monolithic ideology.

Finally, I'd just like to point out how Paulianwatch is the platonic ideal of the thesis of this post. Whereas most of the anti-Paul people at least pay some respect to the idea of rational discourse, e.g. using correctly constructed grammatical structure, Paulianwatch is a typing pure form of ideology. Instead of arguing when responding to a post, he simply spits out disembodied concepts. For instance:

Posted at 6:59PM on 11/27/07 by paulianwatch
OHHH Frank,You big patriot you ....Dr no has voted not once but twice to CUT OFF FUNDS FOR THE TROOPS ! Is that patriotic ?.......ITS POLITICS BUD ! YOU SHOULD KNOW BETTER ! ITS THE JOOOOS THE JOOOS LOL LOL !

By looking at Paulianwatch's many posts, it is possible to construct a fairly compete pictures of the boundaries of this ideology; e.g. fear of "Islamofascism", unconditional support of Israel (with any hesitation or skepticism to be punished with accusations of antisemitism), the fetishization of the abstract idealized concept of "the troops", etc. Paulianwatch's responses to the slightly more rationally oriented responses of other anti-Paul posters further reinforce this idea. He responds uncritically and in such a way that indicates an intense emotional response, e.g.

Posted at 4:33PM on 11/28/07 by paulianwatch
So true it hurts !!!

He is the pure form of the true believer who attempts to gain acceptance into the group by believing uncritically the pure version of the group's ideology. He receives emotional gratification every time it is affirmed, but receives a terrifying threat to his tenuous identity (and therefore social acceptance in a community) every time it is challenged. To use a high-school sports analogy, he's like the towelboy on the basketball team. All of the other people actually have skills and social status, so he makes up for his inadequacy by being as ingratiating as possible to the team and having obsessive school spirit. If/when his current identity and ideology receives a death blow, he's the sort of personality who will perform the same role in whatever belief system he ascribes to. He couldn't make it in the Paul camp, since the specifics of the beliefs he holds aren't important; what is important is that he has beliefs given to him so he doesn't have to face the terrifying prospect of thinking for himself and coming up with new and critical ideas. A community in which there is more than one belief system floating around would be too terrifying for him.

In conclusion, if any of you are interested in truly rational discourse, you're welcome to shoot me an email or post on my blog (I'll be posting this post there) at http://libertyalliance2008.blogspot.com. I'd be happy to engage most of you, as we all care deeply about the future of this country. This invitation does not, however, does not extend to paulianwatch; you've proven yourself here to be immature and to contribute nothing to the dialog aside from worthless affirmation. In any case, thanks for reading this ridiculously long post ;)
RP '08

And then they fight us...

And here I was, beginning to have hope for the mainstream media. In the last few Republican debates, it almost seemed that Dr. Ron Paul was almost getting a fair shake. Perhaps that perception stemmed from the fact that many of the more recent debates were missed by the "first-tier", or perhaps it was because Fox News is far more shameless and less subtle than the other networks. Either way, after tonight's debate in Florida, one thing is now clear. The authoritarian media establishment no longer views Paul as a farcical side-show; rather, he's now a serious threat, and to be marginalized as such.

The marginalization began early, before the debate had even started. Frank Luntz, the noted Republican political pollster and operative who has so mastered the art of ideological manipulation that he was featured in the PBS Frontline documentary The Persuaders, was tapped to "moderate" a focus group of twenty-five preselected people (the methodology of their selection was not revealed in the broadcast). Luntz is someone who is not exactly an impartial fellow; according to cited references in his Wikipedia article, he has been "accused of skewing research results to reflect more favorably on specific clients. In 1997, he was reprimanded by the American Association for Public Opinion Research and in 2000 he was censured by the National Council on Public Polls." Therefore, it without great surprise but with disappointment that I watched him guide the group through a textbook example of groupthink. One member even went so far as to refer to plant the seed, before the debate was even begun, that Ron Paul was crazy.

Finally, the debate started, and immediately it became apparent that the structure of the questioning functioned to create an in-group, out-group dynamic. The first questions centered on things that Fred Thomson had said about other "first-tier" candidates. This drew the rest of the pre-selected "first-tier" into a network of responses and counter-responses that created a sense of dialog. This lasted at least ten minutes before the "bottom-tier" got to speak. At this point, the effects of this first ten minutes of top tier dialog became apparent. Whereas the top tier seemed to be part of a community of competitors, Paul, Hunter, and Tancredo seemed more to respond to isolated questions. This created an entirely different atmosphere when they responded; almost as if we were watching a separate amusing, but irrelevant, debate. I believe the top tier, and the media groups that support them, have recognized that allowing Paul to engage in dialog with the "contenders" gives him credibility and was the driving force behind the materialization of the Ron Paul RevolUTION. Therefore they, by the structuring of the questions and dialog, were able to subtly split the candidates into two groups. By treating the group that Ron Paul was consigned to as less important, they were able to avoid any messy confrontations and minimize the effects of his far too occasional responses.

Paul was further hindered and marginalized by the makeup of the crowd in the auditorium. It actively booed him on many issues, which had not happened in earlier debates, and he implied in the Post-debate interview that the organizers purposely limited the number of Paul supporters in the hall by issuing each candidate the same number of tickets. With pro-war supporters outnumbering anti-war supporters 7:1, the crowd was guaranteed to be hostile to Ron. Ron is smart enough that he called Hannity on this when Hannity tried to imply that the crowd was more representative than the phone poll. Fox, realizing what a liability that the text-in poll has become with Ron Paul's consistent domination, again called upon Frank Luntz to utilize the deceptive manufactured consent of his focus group. He asked for a show of hands of who thought Ron Paul had won the debate. No hands were raised. Luntz peered into the camera meaningfully, as if a hand selected sample of 25 pre-screened individuals was a better indication of electoral strength than thousands of dedicated activists voting.

Fundamentally, this debate taught us a few things. We've learned that Ron Paul supporters MUST NOT become complacent, thinking that the momentum from the jump-start that the campaign has experienced will carry Ron to the White House without massive further effort. Ron Paul in power would be incredibly detrimental to the ruling elite of our country, of which the media elite are but one segment. He would cut off the free flow of grants and Federal largess to their pet projects, would favor labor over speculation as a way of making profits by shoring up the dollar and eliminating the income tax, and would end the enormous profiteering opportunities of continuous warfare. Now that they see Paul as a potential threat rather than as an eccentric oddity, they will fight his candidacy with every tool at their disposal. Experts like Luntz are only the visible tip of the iceberg of the massive social scientific apparatus that can be arrayed against the Paul campaign. We'll have to continue to participate in the main stream media games, but they'll no longer bring the massive jumps of support that the first few debates brought us due to the new tactics of the "first-tier". Rather, we need to continue exploiting those media that WE dominate in order to level the playing field and we must continue enthusiastically spreading the revolution virally. Keep those shoes pounding the pavement and those blog posts rolling in. We're in a battle over who defines public discourse, and victory is by no means guaranteed. However, for the first time in my life, I feel like we have a chance for real, constructive, radical change, and I'm going to do everything in my power to ensure that that chance doesn't slip away.

Goats, Private Property, Karl Marx, and The American Dream

The other day I was visiting my father, step-mother, and half brother, who live in a rural town in central Maryland. The house they live in is a moderately-sized single family home with a large grassy yard; seemingly quintessential “American Dream” material. However, one only has to walk into the back yard to depart radically from that ideological fantasy scape. This is because, as you round the corner, you're confronted with a small herd of sheep and goats.

I've always found it interesting that the culturally encouraged “ideal life” for a member of the American middle and lower class is to own a house on a small slice of land. Intuitively, this seems to go against the logic of the capitalist system, as interpreted by Karl Marx. Marx put forth the idea that society is divided between two classes: the class that owns (as private property) the means of production (e.g. factories, tools, real estate, etc.), and the class that survives by selling its labor-power to the owners (Wal-Mart clerks, factory workers, and high-paid corporate lawyers would all fall into this category). It would follow from this that it is in the interest of the owning class (bourgeoisie) to discourage the working class (proletariat) from owning any property that has the potential to create value. It would seem that, if the capitalist owns the worker's dwelling, the rent value extracted helps to expand the owner's total accumulated capital; if the worker owns his own dwelling, however, the rent value of the home belongs to him. By owning property that creates value, the worker would need to work less to maintain him or herself, reducing the coercive power that the capitalist can exert over him. A striker who doesn't need to worry about rent or eviction can last longer on the picket lines than a striker who rents.

The answer to this seeming irrationality, I believe, can be found in several factors. First of all, it has been noted that, in terms of making a profit, rental housing is a poor and risky investment. Renters know that they don't own their homes, and so they care very little about maintaining the property beyond what they need to live comfortably in the short term. This can lead to the infrastructure of a house gradually breaking down, causing the value of the property to decline and often leading to eventual expensive remodeling or demolition. Furthermore, even with a well-maintained dwelling, the average return on a house's value (the current credit-bubble induced housing price bubble excepted) is about 0.2% per year. The combination of these factors makes renting in general (excepting certain niche markets) a poor use of capital.

The capitalist system has found a way to circumvents this issue through the use of mortgages, a strategy which brilliantly kills a whole flock of birds with one stone. First of all, it shifts the responsibility for the upkeep of the property onto the debtor, and gives the debtor motivation to invest labor in it on the premise that s/he owns it. In reality, though, it takes the debtor thirty years to actually own the house, and, during that period, the capitalist is guaranteed a much higher rate of return with none of the headaches of being a landlord. Furthermore, this theoretical “home ownership” creates the illusion that the worker is actually the owner of property, and is thus psychologically (and is thus led to believe, materially) invested in the capitalist system of property rights (which, in actuality, allows the surplus value generated by his/her wage labor to be appropriated by capitalists). By following this path, the capitalist accrues all of the political benefits of giving the working-class control over property without having actually done so.

With the nature of the house explained, lets now bring the yard part of the “American Dream” into focus. At first glance, it seems like a trivial afterthought to the house, which contains the potential for $1000+ per month in rent-value. However, the way the lawn is viewed and treated by American homeowners is actually quite telling. In the past, land has always been a source of wealth and subsistence. In premodern Europe, peasants would often support a family off of the produce of an acre (a much smaller area than many suburban yards). Immigrants came to America, lured by the promises of free land in the empty West, and this old idea of land equaling prosperity has been distorted by capitalist ideology to create the lawn. The distortion occurred thusly: originally, land produced value, it was an investment. Therefore, owning land was evidence of prosperity because it was a means of production. Capitalist ideology appropriated the cultural significance of land, and re-packaged it as a consumable good, devoid of value generating capacity. Instead of being a source of wealth, land in the form of lawns have become resource sinks for “homeowners.” They expend resources fertilizing it, and then expend more resources on equipment and gasoline to cut it down, meaning they have to work x-more hours per year to maintain their “property”. This is justified because it supposedly increases the value of the property (while it actually increase the price while reducing the value), which is the justification for coercive rules enacted by homeowner associations to codify this ideology into laws (of sorts) in many communities.

Furthermore, what kinds of animals are acceptable to have running around on a suburban lawn? The simple answer is, pets. By very definition, a pet is an animal kept for sentimental, not economic reasons. The difference between having two dogs and two sheep in your yard is simple: sheep produce income while dogs consume income. That a middle class person would get a lot of strange looks for the sheep, but not a second glance at the dogs, is evidence that generating value independent of wage labor is the anathema of the "American Dream" ideology. All of this is ample evidence that a house, which was, incidentally, the cornerstone of Bush's "Ownership Society" initiative, is a very different kind of property than capitalist property. What capitalist would be willing to pay more for a piece of property after its value-producing capacity has been reduced?

In essence, the house of the working and middle class person is not an investment; it is a culturally sanctioned consumptive activity that is given the illusion of value-generation to convince working-class people to feel invested in capitalist ideology. Owning a home is a way in which working people are encouraged to work more hours so that capitalists can more efficiently extract surplus value from their labor, both directly and in the form of mortgages, lawn care, and many other small things that quickly add up. With all of this in mind, I would assert that my father's family grazing meat-goats and sheep (along with planting a garden) in their back yard is something of a revolutionary act. It has turned a source of consumption in their lives into a source of real value that, even if only marginally, decreases their reliance on selling wage-labor to survive and thrive. Capitalism doesn't only require the exploitation of workers to thrive; it also requires the diversion of their independent creative powers into consumption rather than personal investment. While small, this act is a window into the nature of the system, and one countless small nudges that are hopefully leading us towards a better future.

The Ron Paul Internet Phenomenon and the Return of Public Discourse

Just in case some of you have been living under a rock over the past month, Texas Republican/Libertarian Congressman Ron Paul is running for President, and has gone from being a complete unknown to the toast of the internet in a matter of weeks. Much of this was a result of his performance in the the Republican Presidential Debates, in which he distinguished himself from the crowd by questioning the validity of the Iraq war, by candidly attacked the growing authoritarian power of the Federal government (in the guise of the National ID card and the Department of Homeland Security, both of which he called for the abolition of), and by calling for *gasp* adherence to the Constitution. His performance in the first debate at the Reagan Library turned a few heads, but it was in the South Carolina debate that he truly broke through. In an exchange with Rudy Giuliani, he argued that the hatred that inspired the 9/11 attackers existed as a result of interventionist U.S. foreign policy. Responded Giuliani,

Can I make a comment on that? That's really an extraordinary statement. As someone who lived through the attack of September 11th, that we invited the attack because we were attacking Iraq. I don't think I've heard that before and I've heard some pretty absurd explanations for September 11th. [ applause ] I would ask the Congressman to withdraw that comment and tell us he didn't really mean that. [applause]

This sophism awarded Rudy many applause points and the praise of FoxNewsChannel (Seig Heil) conservative pundits, and, had the debate occurred even four years ago, would have crushed Paul and rocketed Rudy to the top of the polls. However, we now live in the age of the internet, the blog, and YouTube, and the results were explosive.

The implications of this state of affairs extend far beyond the purview of Ron Paul's campaign; rather, I believe that it signals the beginning of a reversal of the trend that was brilliantly observed and critiqued in Neil Postman's 1985 book, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business. In the book (which is a quick read), Postman bemoans the displacement of in depth political debate and engagement over the course of the 20th century society by shallow, image-based campaigns that led us to the current environment of "sound byte" politics. The source of this downward slide, argues Postman, was the gradual displacement of text based discourse by image based discourse as the dominant source of information about society. The differences between the two forms of communication aren't merely topical; rather, they each effect the consumer of the information in fundamentally different ways.
According to Postman, discourse in the first hundred years of American society was text based; people got their information about the world from newspapers, books, pamphlets, etc. A description of Postman's views on the effects of print based discourse on culture can be found in the Wikipedia entry:

Printed material inherently makes assertions. It is almost impossible to write a meaningful sentence which does not make an assertion; and as such, when reading, the reader is being presented with assertions which they are required to agree with, to suspend judgment upon, or to refute.

A book is essentially a very long set of assertions which build an argument. The reader has to keep track of the assertions, build up an overall picture, and come to a conclusion of his own, which may or may not match or fully match the view of the author.

Postman asserts print as a medium encourages thought and judgment upon arguments and so that when print is the primary means of communication (as it was in the USA, for example, up to the late 1800s) then culture as a whole has a strong, effective public discourse on important issues. People are not only well informed, but have a strong understanding of the issues of the day.

Such a culture is, by its nature, rational, and approaches problems in an intellectually rigorous way. Political positions are analyzed as texts to be proven or refuted, as was aptly demonstrated by the Lincoln-Douglas Debates, in which:

"The first of seven famous debates between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas took place on August 21, 1858, in Ottowa, Illinois. Their arrangement provided that Douglas would speak first, for one hour; Lincoln would take an hour and a half to reply; Douglas, a half hour to rebut Lincoln's reply. This debate was considerably shorter than those to which the two men were accustomed. In fact, they had tangled several times before, and all of their encounters had been much lengthier and more exhausting. For example, on October 16, 1854, in Peoria, Illinois, Douglas delivered a three-hour address to which Lincoln, by agreement, was to respond. When Lincoln's turn came, he reminded the audience that it was already 5 p.m., the he would probably require as much time as Douglas and that Douglas was still scheduled for a rebuttal. He proposed, therefore, that the audience go home, have dinner, and return refreshed for four more hours of talk. The audience amiably agreed, and matters proceeded as Lincoln had outlined.

"What kind of audience was this? Who were these people who could so cheerfully accommodate themselves to seven hours of oratory?"

In contrast, today, a candidate is given 30-60 seconds to respond to a debate question, which makes it virtually impossible to carry on a meaningful, rational discussion of a topic. Instead, candidates are required to become sophists, relying on rhetorical flourishes and logical fallacies to "score points." In fact, the sports analogy has become explicit and acceptable, as is evinced by this clip of Tim Russert analyzing the third Republican debate.

This state of affairs isn't just an unfortunate deviation from a healthy political culture, argues Postman. Rather, it is inherent to an image-based mass media. Unlike a text, which consists of a series of rationally arranged assertions, an image (in this case, video) can only be interpreted. If this is a bit confusing, an example of advertising will clear things up. Imagine an ad for McDonalds that had to be exclusively text based; it would be absurd for it to follow the format that it's T.V. commercials follow. Imagine being convinced to eat there by the text versions of these ads. It would be ridiculous and people would feel insulted; a good text based ad would lay out the rational reasons for eating a McDonalds, e.g. menu, nutritional value, selection, price, quality of ingredients, etc. Image based advertising, however, allows McDonalds to ignore the substance of their product in favor of developing an image of said product. While this practice isn't terribly harmful to society for restaurants to engage in (besides encouraging obesity), when politicians engage the same logical process, you have our current political nightmare. Candidates hire image consultants, develop catch-phrases and soundbites that are short enough to be mentioned on the evening news (which Postman argued, and John Stewart confirmed, is an entertainment program), and avoid taking clear positions like the plague.

On the last point, a few weeks ago, I decided to check the democratic candidates websites to see what their platforms were (e.g. where they stood on a host of issues). The first site I went to was hillaryclinton.com, and I was shocked to find, despite a good 20 minutes of searching the site, not a single mention of issues. I sent in an email about this, and soon after, an "Issues" section appeared on her site. However, If you actually go through and read what is said (and I've found this to hold true for all of the "first tier" candidates' sites), all the section consists of is generalities that serve to create the image and subjective feeling of a progressive or conservative, while leaving the candidate with infinite practical wiggle room. One doesn't risk breaking campaign promises when one doesn't ever promise anything.

Into this fray came Ron Paul, a (according to the media) second tier candidate who is extremely ideologically consistent and, within the irrational environment of televised debates, attempted to engage in rational discourse. A few years ago, the image based mass-media as described by Postman would have buried him in a short time. Pundits mocked and dismissed him after the first debate, and, in an internet-free world, that would have been the end of things. However, youtubers and bloggers rushed to his defense and fought back, giving his campaign a wave of support from extremely dedicated supporters that continues to rise. The importance of this fact extends far beyond this one campaign; I believe it represents the beginning of the transcendence of the limitations of image-based discourse. The videos released by the television media are no longer one-way transmissions of opinion and feeling into the minds of the public. Internet video now allows for those transmissions to be shared, analyzed, deconstructed, and responded to. Finally, it is possible to engage in RATIONAL image based discourse, which means that the theatrical gig is up on all of the "Frontrunners." The paradigm that they've based their careers upon is unraveling before their eyes, leaving an opening for an honest ideologically consistent, intelligent candidate to surge to the fore and hopefully start correcting the damage done by 40+ years of actor/psychopath rule. I'm sending in whatever measly amount of money I can scrape together and will be campaigning on the street in Burlington. I encourage everyone who feels as I do to do the same. A new age is possible, but the old system won't fall by itself unless we fight. Let's kick ass and take names.

Crypto-Fascism in a "Free Republic"

A few weeks ago during the big flap over the immigration reform bill in the Senate, I was linked to an article on freerepublic.com. The article discussed the bill, and, as is usual in an internet forum, had a space underneath for discussion. Upon reading through the thread, I immediately deduced that this was a conservative forum due to the fact that everyone was up in arms about howthe flood of brown people who would supposedly pour across the border if the bill was passed would culturally (and implicitly racially) destroy America. Having just read Naked Economics by Charles Wheelan, the idea of human capital was very fresh in my mind, and so, assuming that conservatives would respond favorably to a free-market argument, I composed this:

Immigration laws are to human capital are what tariffs are to manufactured goods; wasteful. Protectionism has been long discredited by economists; immigration barriers are based on the racist assumption that an unskilled american is somehow worth more than an unskilled Mexican. Closed borders make Americans fat and lazy, just like welfare. I say open the borders; any American who was too lazy to get educated because they thought their citizenship entitled them to $12 an hour (or any more than a Mexican factory worker makes) deserves what's coming to them. Bring on the competition; closed borders are communist.

I hoped that this would, at the very least, spark some discussion. Instead, the next person to post sent a report to the moderator, and, within 15 seconds, my post was removed and my account was suspended. Supremely confused, I checked the poster guidelines which I had not violated in any way, and then mailed the webmaster, who never replied. Confused and a bit hurt by my quick and effective censorship (my privileges were completely revoked so I couldn't even send a question to the moderator), I decided I wanted to learn more about this "Free Republic".

I started my journey by reading the "Statement of the Founder." The text of the statement has a certain totalitarian air to it, but what was really amazing to me were the responses (numbering over a thousand). Including such gems as:

Sir, being right means never having to apologyze [sic] or explain! Bless you and yours!

and countless "dittos," FR exudes an thick atmosphere of groupthink. In fact, in the Statement, the founder says that

I'm biased toward God, country, family, liberty and freedom and against liberalism, socialism, anarchism, wackoism, global balonyism and any other form of tyranny.

"Wackoism" and "global balonyism"??? The fact that the governing ideology of this website contains terms whose definition can be redefined at the whim of the owner is bad enough. That more than a thousand people responded to this post with some equivalent of "right on" is downright terrifying. They've, in effect, given the owner of Free Republic complete control over what it means to be "conservative." Since they label themselves as such, their lives are made much easier. Instead of having to think critically about a particular issue as it comes up, all a Freeper (as they call themselves) has to do is log on and check the FR consensus. As any opposing views (even those that deviate slightly, like my post), are immediately squelched, the illusion of consensus is maintained, and the ideological front of the Freeper community remains rock-solid.

On the face of it, this seems unfortunate, but, as the internet allows all sorts of marginal communities to form, it isn't all that surprising that a nest of right-wing cryptofascists such as freerepublic should exist. What's disturbs me is that a few members of the administration, like press secretary Tony Snow, are known Freepers, and we don't know how many more lurk about or post with pseudonyms. The nationalist (read: dominant and authoritarian) wing of the Republican Party blows a lot of hot air about "freedom", but actions speak louder than words. Free Republic is a case study on how the authoritarian tendencies of the conservative ideology dominate any "ideals" that its adherents may pay lip service to. On the macro-level, the result of this state of affairs, of course, is the Iraq quagmire and our newly shredded Constitution. On the plus side, though, I did get to experience a little Verstehen: This is what using the whole internet must feel like in China.