I spent some time thinking about this last night, rather than respond right away.
My initial post was prompted by your post here and some of the related posts I have seen on two other semi-related boards.
(I should note at this point that Mary Anne piped up first and said just about everything that I was going to....:-))

I think this thread could be cathartic IF it tries to avoid finger pointing (think 9/11 commission aims - if not specifics) and gets to the root cause.
Can we keep HZ habitable? Do we want to?

Is the fundamental goal of HZ to foster and encourage intelligent debate, or is it to provide a nice safe haven for people who agree with each other? I would hope the former.

To your post:

We'll do it here cause there is really no more community imo. When a long term member was made to feel unwelcome it was the straw that broke the community's back. Tech 1 is gone, Dan seems to be gone, Marsha is gone, Betsy is gone, Ed is all but gone, Phil is infrequent as is Larry. If Tom ever gets fed up the libs will have it all to themselves and the sloshing with warm wet towels can begin in earnest.

I somewhat regret Derek's leaving, but his posts of late were hardly intended to foster a welcoming attitude.
For me, his attacking on gay marriage was the straw that broke his credibility's back and I responded in kind.
As for the others, I am unsure what is driving em away. Phil posts fairly regularly on Space, but has pretty much given up elsewhere. Larry too. If Tom leaves you might as well put up the foreclosure signs on CE.
I agree with what Mary Anne said below. If we liberals left it was said we were too sensitive and shouldn't take it so seriously. Now the shoe is (perceived to be) on the other foot.

Slight aside - I think it a little ironic that one of the posters who most consistently advocates the idea of an HZ community is Lindy. Yet most of her posts are still dismissed as UFOology/crop circle believer anomalies.
OTOH, the post below was not where I intended to go.......

You have to wonder how long Justin will put up with that.
What's up with HZ? It seems to be going to hell in a hand basket. I seriously doubt that it will exist as we know it a year from now. From my perspective the liberals are taking themselves too serious and the rhetoric is far too shrill and political. They think they smell blood but the score is still 0-0 and they are still the underdogs. HZ has become a liberal pep rally.

There are currently 6-7 liberals on this board that are a detriment to civil dialogue. There have been from time to time 2 or 3 conservatives that were more or less the same but never 6-7. Some of that 6-7 have evolved, some have always been that way and some are newbies.

We (all of us) can always put up with 2-3 jerks but 6-7 is too many. Hell, I like Bowser but give me a break, who can stand a chorus of Bowsers. Insults veiled and unveiled, true believers, morons, intolerance of other opinion and inability to accept the possibility of being wrong. That last one is true for both sides and ironically it is what is being said about Bush.

6-7 belligerent libs? I think I only see 2 or 3. Maybe this is a matter of perception.
But I would say that insults, morons and intolerance are just as prevalent on both sides. You probably know who I think has single handedly done the most to reduce the level of debate on CE (hint, it ain't Bowser).
The rhetoric on both sides is on the whole becoming more heated - but if you desire, there is no need to repond likewise.

The idiocy of it all is that nothing we are arguing about is going to change much. It would just be a guy the liberals like better doing basically the same thing. Regardless of who is elected we are not going to become Europeans or even like them as a group. Regardless of who is elected, Islamic radicals will continue to hate us and kill us every chance they get.

The longer we keep doing things the same way the longer that will last. I hate to think that we will have to give up another x number of casualties on our ground to learn that there is no peaceful solution for what wrong with the world.

I agree completely (cept the bit about Europeans ;-)). But we can and do talk about it. And if we try we can be civil about it too. (trying desperatley not to make this sound like "cant we all just get along")

Of course this is just my opinion. I only stand and watch and I could be wrong.
Frank admits he could be wrong!!!!!!!!
Nah nah nah-nah nah!!!!!!!!
Only kidding.

So, what do we do?
Do the principals stick by principles of civility?
Have the long-time posters gotten bored - either by the standard posts and responses, with each other, or just with posting to discussion boards in general?
Do we just ignore the trolls and keep fingers crossed they will go away?
Do we ignore posts designed to tar the greatest number of people with the biggest brush?
Do we pounce on posters who post only to attack, or just ignore them?
(At one point in my ever-so-sensitive past, I was reduced to only responding to Tom. The rest were causing too much heartburn to be bothered with)
Do we bother to keep on trucking or have we run the course?