Monday, February 23, 2009

On Charles Johnson at Little Green Footballs

You know, I've been thinking about Charles Johnson at Little Green Footballs.

When I go over there nowadays I get confused. Last year LGF was doing some of the best pushback-blogging against
leftist crazies like Markos Moulitsas. But now it seems Johnson's done an about face against conservatives, especially people of faith. I'm not a "creationist," but I've noted that Stephen Jay Gould's "doctrine of nonoverlapping magisteria" suggests a compatibility between Christian beliefs and scientific evolutionary theory.

Well, it turns out that yesterday
Johnson basically joined the likes of Glenn Greenwald in attacking Glenn Beck for SIMPLY HYPOTHESIZING the possibility of an American anarchy:

There's not going to be any mass anarchy, and there's not going to be any sedition. Glenn Beck isn't going to bring about the End Times, or a financial crash.

But what he IS doing is encouraging and inciting the real nutjobs out there to do violence. One on one violence, stoked by paranoid fantasies.

It's crazy, and it's wrong, and it's irresponsible.
It's crazy? I'm sure many said the same thing about New Orleans and Hurricane Katrina, despite the warnings of the National Weather Service and the National Hurricane Center.

I have no personal quarrel with Johnson, although I'd just note here his tremendous inconsistency. On the one hand he
attacks radical Islamists for practices such as child killing, and then on the other he attacks people like Geert Wilders for attacking, well, the exact same thing.

For some related matters, see Dr. Pat Santy's comments on the controversies Johnson's had with folks on questions of Islam and terror (see, "
My Response to Blackmail Threats").

But also check out
Stogie's post at Saberpoint for more on what folks are noticing about LGF:

I rarely read the blog "Little Green Footballs" any more. I have discovered that, as time goes by, I have less and less in common with its owner, Charles Johnson. Frankly, he acts like someone who is developing a brain chemistry imbalance. If so, he should consider a psychotropic medication like Prozac or Paxil. Personally I prefer Zoloft. Since I started taking it, I notice the ax murders are fewer and further between. Yes, we don't see that much of Mr. Hyde anymore.

Charley's latest gambit is to trash Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch and to oppose Geert Wilders. Seems Charley is very adamant about the right of individuals to freedom of religion, apparently any religion, regardless of their practices, e.g. honor killings, genital mutilation, wife beating, polygamy, jihad, insistence on Sharia rather than democracy. No doubt Aztecs performing human sacrifices of virgins would be just fine with him. You can't oppose "freedom of religion" after all. Charley is so open-minded and tolerant that he would probably accept an invitation to dinner by a tribe of cannibals, and never notice when they shove an apple in his mouth and push him into a big pot of boiling water.

Another of Charley's annoying habits is that he has become a fanatical supporter of Charles Darwin and the theory of evolution. That's fine if that's your bag, but every other post is an ideological screed in support of this pseudo-science. Who cares?

Evolution, says Charley is absolutely true and beyond criticism. Today he was running an article entitled "Transitional Fossils Do Exist."

Charley should know. He's one of them.
My main interest here is as it relates to the broader internal debates I've been discussing on the freaky left-libertarian alliance of "liberaltarianism," as well as the continued and self-evident power of neoconservative clarity in combating the creeping totalitarianism of Islamic radicalization.

At lot of folks are focusing on
electoral schisms within the GOP, but some of the more overarching issues of foreign affairs and moral authority are going to be increasingly important to the emergence of the next right-wing governing coalition.

More later ...


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UPDATE: Critical Thinker add this, from the comments:
Methinks ole Charlie might need to go back to playin' Jazz and leave the world of bloggin'. Seems he is turning into a control freak and might be the one going off of the deep end.

14 comments:

shoprat said...

I rarely go to LGF anymore. Like Andrew Sullivan he was once thoughtful but has since snapped his cap.

Unknown said...

Hey Donald,

I am glad you are covering this. I actually wrote about the same topic on PCT.

I saw Beck's presentation and while I was not thoroughly convinced of all of the scenarios he presented. I found his core message of considering the unexpected to be intriguing. He also called on intelligence analysts, former military, and some other fairly decent sources to make the point.

On Little Green Footballs, I have never really favored LGF too much and quite frankly Johnsosn's reaction isn't surprising. Recently he attacked Anne Coulter as some sort of White Supremacist supporter. I don't really read Coulter either, but come on.

Methinks ole Charlie might need to go back to playin' Jazz and leave the world of bloggin'. Seems he is turning into a control freak and might be the one going off of the deep end.

AmPowerBlog said...

"Like Andrew Sullivan he was once thoughtful but has since snapped his cap."

Perfectly said, Shoprat!

Anonymous said...

Some time ago, I "resigned" from LGF due to the elitist tomfoolery. I have issues with people that get so big they think their crap carries no odor. It's the "popularity mentality".

LGF and some others classified me as a BHR - Black Helicopter Republican - and I ain't even a Republican.

I am a Conservative Patriot that spent 20+ years serving this Nation gathering field intel and I can smell a "revolution" from 50+ clicks.

Tom the Redhunter said...

So I'm not the only one.

I too used to spend a lot of time at LGF, but haven't been in months. It was his anti-creationism that eventually turned me off. A few posts I don't mind, but it got to be an obsession with him.

Ditto what shoprat said about Andrew Sullivan.

Sarah Yiskah said...

That LGF blogger also cannot stand any attempts at verifying Obama's birth certificate credentials. He stopped me from posting replies because I explained why the verification was important.

He's also hell-bent against Creationists, labelling us religious fellows with derogatory labels.

Maybe the boy's now on the take, because his blog has lost the sense it once projected over a year ago.
The Democrats, you know, are swimming in money. Or maybe he's just a Commie coming out of the closet.

mister said...

Score another for Charles. I admit I got a bit obnoxious in my posts, but I'm so tired of these conservative posers. I opposed the view that true conservatives are hurting the cause by sounding too militant. Of course, to the LGF minions, militant is defined as disagreeing with his honor. I used to love reading his blog. He always appeared to be rather conservative, but now I'd classify him as a typical apologist Republican - the real reason we've lost the past two elections. Well, I'm now looking for a blog/website that truly understands the impending danger of this thing Obama.

Anonymous said...

Charles Johnson's LGF has collapsed into incoherency. His juvenile guilt by association tricks, distortions and supression of debate are more typical of left-wing blogs.

Now apparently Johnson is attacking John Bolton regarding his views on creeping globalism (world government). Is this guy for real? The evidence that our elites are steering this country in that direction is massive.

Finally, this whole issue of Obama's birth certificate puzzles me. If this thing is simply the product of fevered conspiracist's minds, why not just release the damn original and embarrass the so-called nuts?

At the DNC convention in Denver, there was this VIP Donor's party that ABC News (to its credit) tried to cover. The producer was arrested on a city sidewalk trying to do his job. Who the hell were those donors? Citi, Goldman, Countrywide, GE, AIG?

Nice sight btw. Good luck

Anonymous said...

LGF has become increasingly disinteresting to me. I get that CJ has a thing for the whole evolution deal, but it honestly doesn't interest me and he seems overly focused on it. He seems to me to be more and more self involved over the past year, dwelling more often than not on what people think of him and his site/comments rather than the material. To me he's the Mike Savage of blogs. I don't read over there nearly as much as I used to. I might pop in but i just peruse the headlines and leave. I don't dislike CJ or LGF. I just find it uninteresting.

Anonymous said...

Hey, me too! I got myself banned from LGF for spending literally hours patiently and politely explaining the open questions in the birth certificate situation, all the while being witlessly attacked by Charles' pet troglodytes. When I finally said something snappish to one of them, I was --POOF-- vaporized. And actually my life is much better for it. It does puzzle me, though, why someone with an apparently open mind has such large blind spots. Oh well.

Anonymous said...

Charles thinks he is more important than he really is. I too got banned for telling him I was sick of his creationist screeds and I told him he was just like Sullivan except Sullivan sickened me with his Christianist crap. Those two deserve each other. He will soon be big buddies with Markos and the rest of the lefty loons. Problem is he thinks that people are croticizing him because he is popular. And when you agree with James Wolcott, you've really hit the gutter.

Anonymous said...

Charles Johnson did a lot of good early work in exposing Islam. However, Charles is now in an awkward place ideologically due to his own homosexuality and the contradictions of this position vs the outlook of the rest of Western Conservatism/Rightwing thought.

Anonymous said...

Nice to know I'm not the only one that feels this way about Charles Johnson. I decided I had enough of LGF when he trashed Palin for supporting Beck. But it's been a long time coming.

Unknown said...

If Charles Johnson could only come to terms with his own homosexuality as I have, I believe he would find it is possible to also be a conservative.

Mitch Haase