Mr. Nystrom: Please Update Policy or Change the Name of the Site
Hi Michael. Hope you are well. I'm writing because I have been coming to Daily Paul for awhile to learn, discuss, and support Congressman and presidential candidate Ron Paul. It certainly made sense that a place called "Daily Paul" would be the right place. Now I have a hard time doing this, because it is not about Ron Paul anymore but a certain Libertarian candidate whom I won't name.
But first let us examine the possible parameters of one thing we all hold dear, free speech. It is admirable and fitting that on a Ron Paul site, speech would be hallowed. And it is. So the next question is, does it fit into a website which hallows free speech to constrain the parameters of that speech? I submit, good sir, that it does.
Now it would be peculiar if a handful of stock car, NASCAR racing aficionados, were to gather enough numbers to vote enough articles up to make this look like this was a NASCAR site. Would that be right? Naturally an article here or there about Danila Whatsername, or whoever that hot babe race car driver is, would be welcomed. We are not afraid of free speech and we like variety. The question is at what point, in a concerted assault, does Daily Paul become Daily NASCAR?
If I want to discuss and learn about the thinking, writings, policies, campaign strategies, and the general politics of Richard Petty, I'll go to Richard Petty dot com.
Let us see what others have done when confronted with the same problem. One example is one of our nemesis, the evil orange empire, Daily Kos (yes sign of the cross here!) They as well had numerous episodes of hijack, in which a cabal of gleeful partisans, non-Democrats, caused holy hell and took over the thread lists and had operator names going to utterly derail any discussion about Democrats, which Markos, who owned the servers and the bandwidth, wanted it to be about. He finally put out a
mission statement:
<i>This is a Democratic blog, a partisan blog. One that recognizes that Democrats run from left to right on the ideological spectrum, and yet we're all still in this fight together...It's a Democratic blog with one goal in mind: electoral victory.</i>
Marko's ball, Marko's call. More over it made sense, since sticking to a topic of discussion is a very reasonable way to run a discussion without impinging on free speech. When a person gets off the topic now and then, no problem. When too many do over and over, perhaps it is time for the founders to say, you are in the wrong place.
It is neither fair nor right to allow anyone but Ron Paul to profit, trade, and imply some endorsement by overwhelming a site using Ron Paul's name. I propose that this site clarify that it is a vehicle for the discussion of the thinking, writings, and campaign news for Ron Paul, dedicated, as that devil Markos might say, to the electoral victory of Ron Paul. We say this about his write-in campaigns now, and about Dr. Paul's possible run for president in 2016 as he hinted on the Jay Leno Show.
It's not fair. I came here to read about Ron Paul.
JML
