Charles Johnson makes his big announcement

Edward D. writes:

Charles Johnson at Little Green Footballs has finally declared, officially, his separation from the Right (as if he was ever really a part of it).

LA replies:

I’ve just read it and I’m laughing. Again, it’s the old script, enacted time and again by phony “conservative” callers to the Rush Limbaugh show and many others. I’m sure we’ve all experienced it.

Here it is in its paradigmatic form:

“Rush, I’m a staunch conservative. I’ve been a rock-ribbed Republican all my life. But when I saw the the conservatives opposing the government takeover of health care and homosexual marriage, well, that just went too far for me, Rush. You conservatives are going over the cliff, and I’m not going with you.”

Johnson’s catalogue of what makes conservatives irrational, crazy, fascist, and evil is simply the standard liberal take on things. If you don’t believe that manmade global warming is a settled fact, you’re a crazy hater. If you oppose Obamacare, you’re crazy and evil. If you want do anything more about Islam than “criticize radical Islam” then you’re a fascist who wants to commit genocide. If you’re Robert Spencer, you want to commit genocide. And so on. Johnson is simply a standard left-liberal blogger. And he has hundreds of commenters who agree with him.

However, Johnson’s reversion to standard left-liberalism is no loss for me, because, unlike many conservatives who were devoted fans of his, I never liked his site, never felt he was a conservative, and always felt there was something off about him.

Edward D. replies:

I’m familiar with that song and dance.

I am glad that it looks as though even the right-liberals are wise enough to realize he was no longer one of them, even before this declaration.

* * *

Here is the Johnson declaration:

Why I Parted Ways With The Right

Opinion | Mon, Nov 30, 2009 at 6:49:45 pm PST

1. Support for fascists, both in America (see: Pat Buchanan, Robert Stacy McCain, etc.) and in Europe (see: Vlaams Belang, BNP, SIOE, Pat Buchanan, etc.)

2. Support for bigotry, hatred, and white supremacism (see: Pat Buchanan, Ann Coulter, Robert Stacy McCain, Lew Rockwell, etc.)

3. Support for throwing women back into the Dark Ages, and general religious fanaticism (see: Operation Rescue, anti-abortion groups, James Dobson, Pat Robertson, Tony Perkins, the entire religious right, etc.)

4. Support for anti-science bad craziness (see: creationism, climate change denialism, Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, James Inhofe, etc.)

5. Support for homophobic bigotry (see: Sarah Palin, Dobson, the entire religious right, etc.)

6. Support for anti-government lunacy (see: tea parties, militias, Fox News, Glenn Beck, etc.)

7. Support for conspiracy theories and hate speech (see: Alex Jones, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Birthers, creationists, climate deniers, etc.)

8. A right-wing blogosphere that is almost universally dominated by raging hate speech (see: Hot Air, Free Republic, Ace of Spades, etc.)

9. Anti-Islamic bigotry that goes far beyond simply criticizing radical Islam, into support for fascism, violence, and genocide (see: Pamela Geller, Robert Spencer, etc.)

10. Hatred for President Obama that goes far beyond simply criticizing his policies, into racism, hate speech, and bizarre conspiracy theories (see: witch doctor pictures, tea parties, Birthers, Michelle Malkin, Fox News, World Net Daily, Newsmax, and every other right wing source)

And much, much more. The American right wing has gone off the rails, into the bushes, and off the cliff.

I won’t be going over the cliff with them.

[end of Johnson statement]

December 2

Terry Morris writes:

Ha! Since Johnson neglected to add a preface or introduction to his declaration, I thought it my Christian duty to try to help him out:

When in the course of pathological events it becomes necessary for Charles Johnson to dissolve the weak bands which have vaguely connected him with conservatives, and to assume, in the spectrum of American politics, the station of undisguised left-liberal to which he is entitled, a complete disregard for the opinions of non-liberals requires that he impugn the character and motives of all who are currently called conservatives.

He holds these lies to be self-aggrandizing, and therefore self-evident: that all right-wingers are programmed equally, and endowed by their programming with certain unalterable characteristics; that among these are hatred, racism, and the pursuit of neo-fascism; that to grind to dust these flaws and characteristics, liberalism was instituted among wo/men, deriving its unchallenged dominion from the blind obedience of its worshipful followers; that whenever any form of liberalism proves no longer useful to Charles’s destructive ends, it is his right, it is his duty, to alter or abolish it, and to take on a new strain of liberalism more suitable to his purposes. Prudence indeed will dictate that forms of liberalism long followed should not be altered or cast aside prematurely. And accordingly, all experience hath shown, that Charles Johnson has been more disposed to suffer right-liberalism while right-liberalism was useful to his purposes, than to left himself by casting off the forms to which he has become accustomed. But when a long train of smears and insults towards conservatives, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces his design to destroy them, it is his right, it is his interest, publicly to declare a more aggressive form of leftism.

Such has been the patient sufferance of Charles Johnson; and such is now the necessity which constrains him to adjust and purify his former system of liberalism. The history of the previous right-liberalism of the owner of Little Green Footballs has been a history of repeated unprincipled exceptions, all having in direct object the establishment of a vehicle no longer useful to his agenda. To prove this, let outrageous lies be submitted to his mindless followers.

LA replies:

This is brilliant. In particular:

But when a long train of smears and insults towards conservatives, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces his design to destroy them, it is his right, it is his interest, publicly to declare a more aggressive form of leftism.

At first the sentence seems a reversal of normal logic, since it’s saying that it’s not others’ abuses of him that drive him to the declaration, but his abuses of them, which would seem to make no sense. But that in fact is what happened. And your entire take-off plays off that reverse but true logic.

For those who want to compare Mr. Morris’s parody with the original, here is the Declaration of Independence.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at December 01, 2009 03:28 PM | Send