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Originally Posted by Nadval
But banning an opposing political view on a patriotic forum... Seems less easy to justify*t
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Phang is correct - it doesn't matter what the argument is, it depends on what the forum is there to do, that's my point.
To give an example, I was on a Marxist mailing list which was for Marxists to discuss activism, literature, economics, etc. Every once in a while someone virulently anti-Marxist would sign up to either troll or have some basic very tired arguments. The moderator after a period (say 48hrs or after 20-30 posts) would ban them. Why? Because that wasn't the purpose of the list. The list was for Marxists to discuss Marxism, not trolls to argue about the Soviet Union.
Similarly, from the same mailing list there was a case when the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia (Serbia) started. Of the regular posters maybe 50-60 people were against the bombing, and 1 was for. After some prolonged arguments lasting many days the list maintainer asked the argument to stop since it wasn't getting anywhere. The one objector demanded he be able to post pro-bombing articles under the guise of free-speech. The moderators response was fairly interesting :
"I get up in the morning and I read my newspaper over breakfast about why we should bomb Serbia. I go to work and listen to the radio where they tell me why we should bomb Serbia. I get to work and read CNN.com, the BBC, etc about why we should bomb Serbia. I then get home and watch some TV news where they tell us why we should bomb Serbia. I then turn on my PC and go to read this list and you're saying I have to read about why we should bomb Serbia? That's not freedom of speech, that's totalitarianism."
Now, while patriotic arguments are hardly hard to find in the same way, I think the same point still stands - if wu_trax wants to argue about why Bush sucks (or whatever) then there are plenty of places he can do so.