“It is time to reassert our principles and raise them to full view. And if there are those who cannot subscribe to these principles, then let them go their way.”
—Ronald Reagan
While this web site gets plenty of visitors and its longevity proves its worth, for whatever reason it hardly attracts any reader comments, so some folks will question why I even bother with this. Nonetheless I’ve made a decision to change things up to address something that has bothered me for some time.
My little decision is to change the commenting rules here. The quick version is that (roughly) from now on, comments can only be made by people using their real full names, location, and email addresses, as proven to me using photo ID (with a few exceptions like those who have been members here for years and I know their real names from their emails to me, etc). The exception will be all those benign comments like “yeah I agree,” and such. Even then, I will still moderate.
Send information to ptbc at proudtobecanadian.ca
Many current members known to me can simply change their “screen name” to their real name if they want to continue commenting (pace exceptions).
This is a result of my finally losing patience (I may be getting old!). And receiving several idiotic comment submissions over the years, some of which, as “moderator”, I’ve allowed to be posted and some I haven’t. The latest picayune and, once again, totally idiotic salvo was a jejune insult (by yet another public school teacher, of all people) who, as is nearly always the case, presumed to lecture us all. I mean “us” as conservatives generally (he called us “Republicans,” and then exclaimed “ick!”), but since his comment was regarding an article I posted about Christmas, he also went ahead and targeted Christians generally (a religion about which he says he rejected when he “finally saw the light in my 20s and dumped all the hocus-pocus bullshit…”).
Nice. Maybe he thought this was the CBC web site. But this, from a teacher at a public school, as he has no problem informing us in the same post — under a fake name of course. In this case, the fake name is “A guy’s guy in Vancouver,” ironically (if unwittingly so) implying someone with balls, and someone whom is looked upon favorably, even by other real men. You know, like me.
When in a subsequent comment I called him “a pig” in response, because he clearly is one, he presumed to carry on with his lecture to me, feigning indignant outrage, of course, and starting another comment with “WWJD?” They of course mean this as an insult. Their claim is “hypocrisy,” and they seek to make people feel badly on a personal level, if not for being a Christian, then for “failing” at it. Of course to those of us who aren’t stupid, they really just sound like 12-year-olds who were poorly educated — particularly on religious matters — by teachers exactly like this one, in the secular and politically progressive public schools where religion — Christianity anyway — is all but banned. (Note that I later thought better of using that name-calling term, and answering to him in that way, and so I deleted my own “pig” comment, as anyone else who comments here can ask me to do any time they want — although I reserve the right to decline the request.)
But he went on, claiming that “I wouldn’t want to teach your children since it would mean dealing with you,” but informing me that if he had to, my child (my own child!) would at least be “exposed to different ideas” (paraphrased slightly). Again with the arrogance of the teachers of today, who want to impose their own values and their own world view on our children rather than our world view and our values; the fallacious logic, the one-way tolerance, and the unwitting irony!
It never ends with these people. I’m convinced half their goal is to waste my time. In yet another comment submission, he claimed that I’d said in a comment (it’s still there) that this was “a Christian web site” (I didn’t say that — I said that it was a “conservative web site” — he doesn’t have good reading skills and isn’t applying himself!).
And he went on, on that fallacious basis.
…Now sure how Ann Coulter’s comments about people reflect anything Christ-like. You guys remember Christ don’t ya? The one who lived in community with 12 men, shared everything in common, nothing owned by anyone. The one who said sell all you have if you wish to follow me. Hmmm…sounds like a socialist to me.
May Jesus, the first socialist, bless you all!
That’s some real good grown-up crap right there. Intellectual. Science-y.
I’ve been doing this for years and have been the target of hundreds and hundreds of insults and put-downs and lies and generally disparaging remarks. You can’t go for as long as I have being a thin-skinned whiner who can’t take criticism, even when the criticism is asinine, which it almost always is. I mean I’d clearly have quit years ago if that were the case. (All of that notwithstanding, liberals will bash me for “whining” and being a “little baby” and being “thin-skinned” over this).
But that’s not it. I write using my own real name, and always have. I’m the one with balls. I’m the opposite of a coward. They are all abject cowards. They hide. They use fake names. And they claim I’m the thin-skinned one, or the hypocrite.
I suspect they lack the intellectual fortitude to debate using their own names, and don’t want to embarrass themselves, or their profession; but moreover, they yearn to be able to freely, if cowardly, lob these clearly intolerant, anti-Christian, or anti-conservative, or anti-capitalism, or anti-whatever we support here, insulting rants. So like an effete little girl, the teacher insults us under the fake name of… “A guy’s guy in Vancouver”. Hideous.
Questioning things as sacred as our very faith or as deeply held as our perfectly normal political principles — the very same ones under which this country and America was founded, takes an actual man or woman. Not a child with child-like sensibilities and education and intellect. Politely or at least respectfully questioning or debating those values, in an intellectually honest way, is of course perfectly lovely, in its place. But they don’t do that. They lob crass lies and insults with reckless (and because they’re anonymous) un-reproachable abandon, and make foolish remarks based on, at best, a lack of knowledge, and at worst, abject hatred, and intolerance, and fear and loathing. Because they can, as the un-named cowards that they are.
Or they used to. It will stop here. They can stand in the corner and take the world’s biggest “time out” for all I care. Give themselves a grade like “great effort — your [sic] special and equal to all the other’s [sic]!” That will help them move on and grow up, no doubt.
If I can write using my full name and identification, so can they. Or they won’t.
So. From now on: People who post comments to this web site have to do so using their real full name, location, and email address. Those folks with common names like John Smith will also have to provide other details besides their names and locations, like their job description, to avoid ruining the reputations of all the John Smiths out there. I won’t simply take most people’s word for it. Many of these people like “A guy’s guy in Vancouver” have already proven to be dishonest. So I will require photo ID to be provided to me before anybody can post anything here outside of the benign speedy-note like “LOL that was funny,” (which, believe me, I welcome!).
Although nearly nobody I can think of ever posts comments using their own real names here anymore, I already know the names of many PTBC “members”, many of whom send me emails under what I accept is their real full name. I won’t require photo ID from them. But I will require from them that they change their “membership” registered name and location. This will automatically cause all their previous posts to be changed as well, reflecting their actual names and locations. I can’t help that even if I wanted to —it’s a collateral effect of the technology I’m using here. I won’t change anyone’s name for them, for that reason.
I don’t doubt this will all but seal the fate of this site at least insofar as the commenting, once and for all. It has not been stable here. We’ve gone from lots of comments to none, to no comments allowed, to discussion forums, to let’s try again, and up and down and around again, over the years. I do recognize that this could possibly cause me to euthanize the site — “allow” the “dignified” death of this place, but this site is a senior citizen in the internet world, and just think how the liberals, at least, would embrace this! I’m sure they would, but I wonder if they’d say the important things under their real names. I say they won’t. They’re cowards.
Send information to ptbc at proudtobecanadian.ca
Many current members known to me can simply change their “screen name” to their real name if they want to continue commenting (pace exceptions).
PTBC was founded by Mr. Johannesen in 2000.
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