As a note to new list members, a couple years ago, I created the
exi-freedom email list at eGroups (now yahoogroups) for people who want
to freely discuss ANY freedom enhancing technology, past, present, or
future.
This was in response to a call by Greg Burch to have a one month
moratorium on posts containing any discussion involving the dreaded and
scary word 'gun', primarily because one Joe Dees was adamant about
spamming anyone who participated in such discussions with his venomous,
hate filled attacks on the posters' manhood, sexuality, sanity,
intelligence, and loyalty, etc., in an attempt to drive this subject
forever off the list of acceptable topics for the extropians list (I
shall note, for the record, for those who are aware of the politics,
that Joe's full last name is 'Dees-Thomases', and leave it at that).
Joe's posts in this guerrilla campaign ran up into the many hundreds of
posts, which resulted in Greg kicking him and several other violators of
the moratorium off the list for a month.
Within a month, about 40 extropians had joined the exi-freedom list, and
a large number were rather ticked off at how such an obviously
freedom-enhancing, and therefore extropian, technology like guns could
be chased off the extropians list. A number wanted to quit the
extropians list altogether and just do all extropians discussions on the
exi-freedom list. I discouraged this, because I didn't think that
rewarding the behavior of collectivists and demagogues in debasing a
good list was something I wanted to encourage.
For the record, gun topics have not been permanently banned outright
from the extropians list. Max More and Greg Burch asked me, and I
agreed, to encourage such discussions as they arise to move to the
exi-freedom list, but there is not, nor has there been since that
moratorium ended, a formal ban. This gentlemans agreement between
myself, Greg, and Max has somehow transmorgrified in Joe Dees-Thomases'
mind into the idea that there is a total ban. Joe also thinks that I was
kicked off the list when I was not, but he hasn't reiterated that
particular lie yet in this most recent discussion.
I have also repeatedly invited Mr. Dees to join and participate in gun
discussions, since he seems so enamored of spouting HCI Party Line in,
on the Exi-Freedom list. My only caveat to this invitation was that he
had to tell the truth. He has yet to take me up on that invitation.
So that is the story of this subject. For those new list members who
would like to discuss gun related issues, you can go to the following
link:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/exi-freedom
and sign up there to recieve it by message, by daily post, or by
browsing messages on the website. Membership is currently 53 members,
and it is moderated by myself, Lee Crocker, Brian Williams, and James
Rogers, but posting is currently free for members. List traffic is
currently ranging between 20-140 high quality messages a month, so its a
decent low traffic list to belong to. We've also got a list of good
freedom website links on the links page, and some articles in the files
area, including a few written by myself, one of which has been published
in L Neil Smith's Libertarian Enterprise.
All are welcome, respect is the word.
Mike Lorrey
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Fri Oct 12 2001 - 14:39:44 MDT