I've just finished Hunter's excellent diary on community standards, and I've chimed in elsewhere (comment to Kos' original post) in support of the general principle that wildly unsubstantiated stupidity undermines the effectiveness of this site and this community.
Still: I have a thought problem that I think is worth considering on this question. It's about a central meme--possibly THE central meme--of the 2000 election, and it is this:
(flip to see)
If it were now June of 2000, but DailyKos had the same positioning and stature it does now, would someone arguing that the Democratic and Republican Parties are "the same" have been banned by Kos?
I ask because I have always been of the opinion that only a wildly and willfully ignorant or delusional person (that includes Ralph Nader, in my book) can ever have made such a claim. Nonetheless, it was widely bandied about, and the evidence is pretty strong that it put the embarrassing low-life fratboy thug we currently suffer through into the White House.
So: what do you think? Would that claim have been grounds for banning from DailyKos? If so, is that a good thing, or was that such an important debate that it would be valuable for it to play out here?
I'd like to hear Kos' thoughts on this, actually.