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[Chan790]

43. Because by its ToS and founding positions, it's explicitly supposed to be.

The real $64,000 question is:

"Since it's supposed to be, why are Skinner, EarlG and elad so utterly fucking delinquent in PPRing those people who work against it by promoting radical centrism and right-wing values which make being a Democrat (and by extension, all of the left-blogosphere including DU) suck by being no longer Democratic, progressive or liberal?"

Just because one chooses to not want to be a thought-leader does not mean one who is by position, acclaim or prestige has any say in the matter. (To put that another way, much like Rush Limbaugh is an arbiter of RW orthodoxy (and chooses to be), Skinner is such a liberal arbiter by virtue of position whether he wants to be or not.) With all apologies, it's necessary in explaining this concept to borrow from former US ambassador to the Vatican and RW legal theorist, Mary Ann Glendon: "refusing to take a moral position is a moral stand in itself." Not tombstoning people whose opinions are anti-liberal, anti-progressive and/or pro-third-way is to acquiesce to the rightward drift of the Democratic Party because DU is a place where people who are not DUers look to, to tell them what liberalism and the Democratic Party stands for...and Skinner cannot escape that by merely saying he wants to promote a diversity of opinions...it does factually whether he wants it to or not, require a modicum of curation to expel those POVs which he finds not merely abhorrent but anti-Democratic and illiberal.

Not everybody who needs to be banned is a troll, some are just vocally not really Democrats (regardless of whether they think they are) or in-large hold opinions that make them unfit to speak for Democratic values. Being a Democrat requires more than checking the right box on your voter registration. Mark me as pro-litmus-test but make no mistake that I demand to be marked as believing in the existence of core inviolate Democratic values. Those that promote anathema to those values should be muted here.