He has a legitimate point. Face it, the rants section of this forum is probably the largest or one of the largest, at least in terms of the sheer number of posts. It kind of reminds me to an extent of CF.net in a way.
For those not familiar, counter-factual.net was an alternate history and ASB type forum that was an offshoot of of alternatehistory.com trying to be less strict, especially in terms of discussion of politics and current events. One of the subforums for that was titled the cesspit, the other subforum was the outhouse. In an attempt to not be as heavy handed with the ban hammer as Ian and the staff of AH.com, the owner and staff of CF.net didn't let everything go, but a lot of stuff that would have gotten people at least a temp ban elsewhere really wasn't policed for the first few years CF.net was up and running.
Unfortunately, by the time things on CF.net got to the point where they did decide to step in, it essentially crippled the current events and politics subforums, and while few people actually got shown the door, it did cause a number of people to voluntarily jump ship. CF.net staff also made it so that to be allowed to post in those subforums, a member had to get permission first. This, as one could imagine, also saw a lot of potential members that had been banned from AH.com look elsewhere.
Basically, while I don't see Horton or his staff going ban hammer crazy, I would say be careful what you wish for or how you go about dealing with trouble here, or what you want and what circumstances force you to do could turn out vastly different at some point.