Just came back from my first visit to Free Republic....

First of all, the site design is really bad. Not very negotiable.

After that, I saw a little bit of hate, some of these people have some serious issues with narrow-mindedness and intolerance of others opinions. But, I will say some do here as well. Not that it is rampant here or anything but it does exist. What I did see was a lot of hubris. A lot of rhetoric. I'd like to say they were sick puppies and all of that, but I'm not sure about that. I was quite curious about what the reaction to 7/7 would be, as opposed to our reaction over here. It was mostly along the lines of:" We are going to kill all of those bastards, we will win!!". That type of stuff. Plenty of a "We are at war, why don't some people realize that?" sentiment. There was a good amount of anguish, just like we had over here. But you could see the difference in philosophies. They seem more apt to support going off half-crocked and indiscriminately want to blow the shit out of everything. We seem to be more concerned with changing our administration's policy so we can fight terrorism in a more efficient manner. But they are much more inclined to knee jerk action with little thought or knowledge of what is actually going on. For example, I understand why someone would want to blow somebody up in an instance like this. I want to kick some ass too. But, blow who up? Kick whose ass? You can't fight what you don't know. If somebody say, punched my dad, I'd want to knock him out. But, say I heard my dad was punched by somebody and out of anger, I just walked outside and smacked the first person I saw out of retribution. What the hell did that do? Is that going to stop my dad from getting hit again by whoever did it before? No, it isn't because I hit the wrong guy, simply out of anger, even though they didn't have anything to do with it.

Freeper just want to go out and hit the wrong guy.

That's the problem.

Kind of like, Osama bin Laden attacked the US and we went and got Saddam Hussein?

But even on a larger level. Not just a country. A whole group of people. The Arabic people. And a whole religion. Islam.

Just indiscriminately kick some ass with little regard to what we are doing and the consequences. That doesn't win wars. It loses them.

We have to hose you down first before letting you back in to DU

Full cocking, as it were, requires both rational analysis and compassion, neither of which pastimes attract the jingoists.

They are there to chant comforting slogans at each other, frightened as they are by a big world full of strange, brown people who want to steal their women! They yearn for mastery over something, and the regime they love isn't sharing anything more than bring-it-on posturing.

They do, though, long for mastery of something.

Not very much fun:puke: poking about the "Mother Ship".:argh:

they weren't too bad, you know? I hate how we all have to hate each others guts? I just don't think they have the right philosophy, and are subject reactionary stances. But yeah, checking out people who believe something that is so different than what I believe, can make the blood pressure go up for sure.

and we both equally believe our form of hate is justified.