News From Protein Wisdom

I checked Protein Wisdom's page this morning and the screen was blank, except for the Pajamas Media ad and a "gone fishing" notice. I thought that was it, Jeff Goldstein was hanging up his keyboard after Roger Simon put the kibosh to Pajamas' blog ad network.

But that wasn't it after all. Jeff's got a somewhat ominous post up now, "In response to a public lynching: Patrick Frey has no honor. In my opinion. Which qualifier, like, saves me from a libel suit I think...":

Now that I’ve stepped back and cleared my head a bit…

From a comment I left over at Stacy McCain’s:

Patterico writes:

Oh, and Serr8d: I reject your implication that I am unprincipled. To put it kindly: bugger off. I *think* Robert recognizes that I am not unprincipled, and I think that fair-minded people who actually take the time to read my words (and not how they are characterized elsewhere) will agree.

Okay, let’s put an end to this convenient and self-serving fiction once and for all.

Patterico used a trumped up charge of a non-existent “death threat” to ban me from his site.

Once he’d established the pretext for disallowing me to defend myself — and giving his commenters the freedom to attack me without my having recourse to respond directly to them (something I’ve never disallowed him to do on my site) — he then encouraged people to support his “honor” at the expense of mine. He set up a lynch mob and then pretended to wash his hands of the whole thing.

One of his commenters, after having already declared that I was guilty of acting in bad faith with respect to debating Patterico on the issues of language (another ridiculous charge, inasmuch as I’ve consistently and patiently answered his questions, even going so far as to write a primer for him on semiotics, sent via email; and as anyone who’s been following my posts on the topic, or who read my Hot Air essay knows, I am committed to the argument, and have always welcomed those who wish to debate it), decided he’d “look at the evidence” and decide who was at fault for the way this has all turned.

There's (lots) more at the link.

As for "the argument," I haven't followed the debate between Jeff and Paterico's all that closely. I certainly didn't know it was getting this intense. I read Paterico's post on the post-CPAC conservative crack-up, "David Frum Does Not Speak for Me Any More Than Rush Limbaugh Does." He hammered Frum and Limbaugh, although he gave little indication of a preferred path forward for conservatives (other than "don't be too hard on those poor liberals"). Patterico's subsequently got in a "last word" at his blog, "Purity, Common Sense, and The Case of the Missing Comment

Jeff's earlier response at Hot Air, both more cerebral and pointed, is found in "How I learned to stop worrying and love the f-bomb."

Obviously, from a look at Jeff's links, the debate's continued to escalate.

So, folks will have to sort through some of these threads themselves, if they're interested.

I like Jeff. He's posted some of my stuff to Protein Wisdom, so I'm not impartial. But on the merits of argumentation (and in context to my past readings of Patterico, who favors gay marriage), I think Jeff's makes the more rigorous case for a possible conservative vision. What's particularly good about Jeff is that he's willing to fight! I see so much pansied compromise, from the David Brookses and David Frums, who are saying we just can't have a socially conservative party, blah, blah, blah. As I've noted here a few times already, conservatism's going to come back strong through an alliance of "hard" classical liberalism (like Jeff's) and core-values conservatism (which I've been promoting). We can come up with some different labels, but if conservatives are to remain at the core of the GOP coalition, these two contingents are going to be essential to a party comeback. If Patterico's going with the "progressive Repubicans," despite his protests to Frum, count me out. There are some principles involved here, and capitulating to the right's Obama-enablers violates most of those conservatives should hold sacred.