May I ask? Are you the product of a single human mind? What prompts your resurfaces here? Is it merely personal urges? Is it the shifting content of the board?

My periodic resurfaces are due to the fact that I miss this place and all of you after long absences. It's the equivalent of having valued friends for a long time that you can no longer see regularly due to moving out of state for a new job, but you want to visit them from time to time because you still consider them friends, you miss the times you had with them, and you still have important roots in that place.

May I be honest? I know I was absent here for a few years, but knowing how many fellow posters loved and supported you throughout your time posting here, I am going to call bullshit on your claimed reason for leaving due to two libertarians.

As I have noted several times both before and during my current visit, my leaving before was not entirely due to two Libertarians. It is also due to the fact that my personal and professional circumstances, including my available time, is very different from what it once was. A lot has happened in my life, with responsibilities and distractions I never had before. As a result, I've had to pick and choose where I put my time and energy in regards to this community more so than before. But I have not left it, as I kept active as often as I could on Tom's blog. But I had to take periodic leaves from there as well when my various other responsibilities started to demand a disproportionate amount of my attention.

Gimme a break. We both know that even without that immense support you always had here, you were also the rockstar at defending yourself and your views. And I was definitely not one of your political foes at the time either. My political views as well as my views on many things, have evolved over the years. I still would never expect you to view our potential differences as a reason to bolt.

You're right, and it was not about a mere difference of opinion. I always did my best in the past to overlook the many Libertarians on this board that I did not agree on economic issues with. I became friends with many of them, which was workable when we usually managed to focus on the areas we could agree on in the areas of civil liberties, youth liberation, etc. It was when it seemed that two people here I long considered friends and allies seemed to cease tolerating our differences of opinion on off-topic matters and constantly attacking me over them made that it gave me greater encouragement, on top of all the other things going on in my life, to provide support and insight to MAP boards/blogs other than this one.

There was also the matter several years ago of the time when GC became much more difficult to access for a while from a purely technical aspect, and a distinct moderation team seemed to have been gone, with reliance on just two to handle everything. I started seeing things on this I did not like that made it seem like it was changing for the worst, including the new tendency for certain posters to begin referring to words like "abuse" and "molesting" as if they were value-neutral, thinking that is somehow serving the cause of irony or something like that when in actuality they were providing our detractors with all sorts of ammunition against us which seemed to bolster their negative narrative of us. This place didn't seem like home any more with all of that going on.

TBH, I think many saw you getting in with groups unnamed and individuals unnamed and being led astray from those you left behind. I joke somewhat in my Godspell reply, but as mostly happens, I try to place a nugget of truth behind the funny, or at least reflect what I suspect some others may feel.

My main stances that you recall remain the same. Due to the technical issues GC was having at the time where it become difficult to log in and post, a skeleton crew of an administration who told me repeatedly that they did not plan on sticking around for very long, and then a few friends who went out of their way to make my visits here a constant series of fights over economic differences and acting as if they do not accept our differences anymore like they used to made this place a lot less inviting to return to for me. If they would rather fight with me over our differences in economics and let that irk the hell out of them instead of backing me up against anti-choicers and debating alongside despite me rather than over differences that are irreconcilable.