A few around here need to listen up!
We are Democrats, Liberals and Progressives. We are not clones of Hamsher, Greenwald, Moulitsas, Maddow or Olbermann.
If you want censorship, go to the Huffington Post ... I make no criticsm of that, they run their site how they wish, but here? Not so much.
We have ONE Community Moderator, who has the lightest touch of any Moderator I ever came across.
Read on ....
What is it with some people?
There is a whole cross-section of the "left-of-center" community that makes up the Liberal base.
We, at DailyKos represent but one branch, and even here we rarely all agree on anything but the headline topics.
And that is how it should be
We are not clones, marching in lockstep behind a Party message, or a Corporate Banner. We think, critically ... Here is what that looks like. We argue, we toss around points and we reach either a concensus or a workable position.
When our opponents want to know what to think, what to say, what to feel, they turn on Fox News, or Sarah Palin's website (who IS that woman?), or ... or ... or ...
Is that what we want to be? The opposite of Palindom? Wanna know what to think, feel, type? Go get the latest bullet points from Markos, or the DNC, or The Rachel Maddow Show (Bless).
The fact that Jane Hamsher was detained, however briefly, is not a cause for celebration, nor a reason to feel gleeful. She is one of us, and she and her co-visitor were treated very shabbily for doing nothing more that representing the branch of thinking that says that Bradley Manning is innocent until proven guilty, and should be treated like a human being, not a caged rat.
Jane Hamsher, whatever her personal motives, was being the very embodiment of a Progressive Activist, and we, and you know who you are, should stand fore-square behind her on this.
Tomorrow is Monday, and on Monday we might have issues with the way she, Greenwald, blackwaterdog etc do business. Today is Sunday, and today she did a good thing!
So why is it so damned hard to say so?
Guys ... colleagues, friends, comrades, brothers and sisters ...
There are no straight lines here, no quick fixes or easy answers. Markos isn't always correct, Greenwald, Huffington, firedoglake ... they and we all have our hits, and our misses. The trick is making the former a greater number than the latter.
We do not win either the Culture War or the Electoral one through division, ridicule and glee. We do it the only way it can be done; by building a broad concensus among a rich tapestry of views and opinion, then using that coalition to fight for what we all believe is right.
Rant Over .... I'll leave you with Will Rogers:
"I belong to no organised Political Party. I'm a Democrat!"