Dec 01 2009
‘True’ Conservatives Turning Reagan’s Big Tent Into A Pup Tent
It is not a good day for conservatives when folks like Charles Johnson leave the movement in such obvious disgust
I was asked what went wrong by one of my more ‘pure’ conservative readers (he loves to dig at this independent conservative centrist). What went wrong is the ‘true conservatives’ and their vitriol. Charles Johnson is very sharp and was an asset to ‘the right’. He is I think, on balance, a good person. What people should be asking themselves is how did a good person become so filled with anger.
Johnson clearly has lost his tolerance – which happens when you are around a bunch of intolerant people too long. As he disagreed on some subjects, the vitriol he received just poisoned his view of conservatives. His angry departure is a reflection of what he’s been experiencing. The intolerant folks burned out his tolerance. I have experienced it myself, I just have an easier time dismissing the jabs.
What Johnson forgot is there are a more centrist conservatives than ‘true’ conservatives. When he departed ‘the right’ he sadly turned his back on a lot of good people (Inhofe comes to mind). That is his problem and his mistake. It just makes this situation all the worse.
I agree with Johnson on many subjects. The big exceptions are Palin and AGW I guess. But I don’t throw people under the bus because I disagree with them. And I don’t try to tear them down personally (that’s intolerance in spades). The right is now justifying the snub by throwing more jabs at Johnson. Folks need to learn when to stop digging.
I also don’t group people and spread the sins and failures of a few across them all. It is why I remain a conservative and challenge the drama queens who call themselves ‘true conservatives’. I have not given up on Reagan’s big tent yet.
The fact CJ is both bitter and a lost cause is a reflection on the toxic characters in the far right. It is a sad day for ‘the right’ when you chase someone like Johnson out of the big tent. If this continues all the right will be is a bunch of purists in pup tent.
I stopped reading his stuff over a year ago.
You know his stupid blog? He considered it such a privilege to register
that he only opened the gate for a few minutes at a time
assuming all his acolytes would hang about panting.
What an ego!
But over at atlasshrugs Pamela Geller has a whole bunch of
great photos of Sarah Palin supporters at a book signing.
I’m voting for Palin – Petreaus in 12, (hope so)
Sorry, AJ, Charles Johnson went off the deep end about a year ago.
He used to have a good site…but over the last 12 months, he’s degenerated into attacking anyone who does not agree with him 100%.
Which is neither realistic nor the basis of rational discussion. Merely sad.
Charles Johnson was never in “the movement”. He called himself a “9/11 conservative”.
He is a nut and I say good riddance. It is a GOOD day when Johnson leaves the movement. I have little use for people who ban others for simply disagreeing with them. I have disagreed with some positions on this blog over the years but that is healthy. It is good for people to see multiple perspectives and for people to be able to use persuasion to explain their side of the issue. And I have agreed with CJ over the years on some issues (creationism in the schools, is one example). But AJ, you have never gone back to past posts and change them to make them say different things now than you had at the time. Johnson does that. I have no respect for someone without integrity and I don’t believe Johnson has any.
Frankly, after trying to get an account on LGF for years, I really didn’t want to be associated with all the “anti-Creationism” stuff that seemed to fill about a 1/3 of his posts (I’m neutral on that stuff because neither side can make a coherent argument and probably never will .. it all turns into a philosophical argument that is a total waste of my time).
Yep — Charles Johnson never was conservative or “right wing”.
Here’s proof in his own words:
http://tinyurl.com/yzh4wyj
CJ strikes me not as someone who has any respect for the big tent prospect in the first place, but as someone who delights in throwing wrenches into it. Or … releasing a jarful of mosquitos into it.
His constant berating of anyone who might profess belief that we were created by God is not only rude, it’s unnecessarily divisive. He may as well make the leap and say anyone who believes in God is also chasing myths and fairy tales. The two positions pretty much fit hand and glove.
What he doesn’t seem to realize or respect is that he is insulting people’s religious beliefs that have been instilled from childhood, or come about as a result of tragic loss, failure, or deep introspection. Frankly, if I were a Democrat, I wouldn’t want him in my party either.
And then of course his eagerness to label people as racist on the basis of any possible tenuous tie or relationship. He even tried to explicitly label Rush Limbaugh as racist, someone I know from 20 years listening is anything but.
I guess the latest device he’s going to use to supposedly discredit those on the right is AGW. Anyone who believes in what he calls a “nontroversy”, that AGW is largely a politically motivated hoax, is a flat-Earth theory believing anti-science mouth-breather.
But it’s not so much his positions that bother me, it’s the vindictive way HE treats those who might disagree with him. He’s in a category separate from Democrat or Republican, liberal or conservative. His category is quite simply …… Jerk.
My problem with categorizing far right wing is that I don’t see much vitriolic comments from the. What I see is that they end up being correct after all.
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Johnson lost me over the HATE and virtiol spewed by him against Ron Paul.
You may not like all of Ron Paul’s positions, but he is still one of(if not the) best conservatives in the house.
Johnson was spewing out right hate against the guy…just like he did palin and beck and others.
That guy is a whackjob and anyone should be ashamed at going to that site ever again.
Respectfully, I’ll have to disagree with you about Charles Johnson, AJ. From what I’ve seen over the last year or so, Charles Johnson was always the archetypical tactless-geek jerk.
And I don’t think it’s just his wild disgust with the worst people on our side of the aisle, either. He apparently went out of his way to find the most appalling signs in the 9/11 DC Tea Party (many of which weren’t really all that horrid) and present them as a smear on all the hundreds of thousands of ordinary people who showed up. Now maybe Johnson saw the Tea Parties as just a rightwing thing, but I always thought the Tea Parties were about people from BOTH sides of the political aisle appalled and frightened and angered by the federal government’s mad rush to seize control of our lives in the months since Obama was inaugurated. The whole point of the Tea Parties was that it was a reaction by ordinary people, people who made their own protest signs out of artboard and magic markers and then paid their own way to come to DC from all over the country, and not just some fascist or nativist or Dominionist cabal that saw a chance to make trouble.
My own less-than-expert opinion on Charles Johnson is that his own thin-skinnedness probably has as much or more to do with his reversion-to-type than his witnessing of the worst of the Right. He seems to have a tendency to ban people with little or no warning, not over being rude or attacking another poster or posting something offensive, but merely for disagreeing with Charles. You can get some lively reading just by googling for “people banned from little green footballs.”
Just my two cents.
“true Conservative†…â€Pure†… “independent conservative centrists’ … “intolerant people†… “centrist conservatives†… “far right†…
—————–
I am still lobbying for better terms… Considering myself a
.
“Responsible Conservative.”
.
I suspect most of us could embrace that description instead of the creative [and other/many times ugly, insulting] adjectives that are thrown around…
Folks, the fact Johnson has been pissed for over a year does only indicates those pushing him did not have the common sense to just let him disagree – like all good Americans can.
He was not a conservative, he was an ally from center left. To govern you need these people on your side, not your opponents side. This ain’t rocket science, you really only need high school civics to figure this one out.
Do I care if the far right pisses of all of the center from center left to center right???
LOL! Of course not. I would be the best thing to happen to America if the center rose up and dumped fringes. And that will be clear in 2010 and 2012.
Just for the record, I’m no “true conservative” and never have been. I used to support you all the way, until you attacked me and demonized me for pointing out that Charles Johnson was an anti-scientific nutcase. Go look up that post – you made a big public proclamation of your undying support for Charles Johnson, and I simply said I had to leave (after having been a long time poster here) if that was the case. Even at that time, it was clear that LGF had turned into nothing but another DU. How could you not have seen that? But your response was to attack me, slander me, and tell me that I should stay off your blog, so I did.
Go back and look, I said *nothing* negative about you in that post or any other. Nevertheless, you lashed out and attacked me quite viciously for my opinion, something I thought was quite uncalled for. (Go back, look it up, compare what I wrote to what you wrote) That’s why I’ve stayed away.
The only reason for posting now is simply to point out that yes, I was *absolutely* right about CJ – he is an anti-scientific bigot – and YOU were completely wrong about him. He had changed, and while you have good judgment about ideas, you apparently have poor judgment about people. You judged him wrong, and you’ve judged me wrong and slandered me even though I never did anything like that to you.
And that’s what this all boils down to – you are still furious at me because I was right, and you were wrong. Check out the lucianne comments about CJ today – your name came up, and NOT because of me. It’s your reputation that has been hurt by this, not anyone else’s, and that’s what I was trying to warn you about when this first came up. Your posts are some of the best on the web, but why do you think you aren’t linked to nearly as much as you otherwise would be?
You’ve got to be careful about the company you keep.
Look what the far right, allegedly “Christians” are doing to Huck today. He’s now too “Christian” to be POTUS?
SJR
The Pink Flamingo
Sorry you felt attacked, not my intention.
But now you know how Charles feels. Not pleasant. And I sincerely do mean my apology.
BTW – I am an adult and I will keep the company I want to keep.
Actuall, Johnson’s reason for doing this is posted right now on the first line of his wep page. Hits on his page are “soaring”. It is all about traffic.
[…] also AJ Strata for another take on Charles Johnson’s Why I Parted Ways With The Right. Posted by […]
I really dislike this conversation about who is more or less conservative then the next person, who is ruining the party and who is good for the party, who is making the tent bigger and who is making it smaller. How bad or good is Beck, Palin, Milken et al. I read the blogs to find different points of view, each party has their share of what I would call nuts or at times nutty. However I find it interesting, their thinking process, or lack of it, what information they use to inform their conclusions. This information helps me to sort through my thinking. Rants I don’t find very useful and out right lies are hard to sort through. I’m trying to think why vilifying someone for their thoughts is a good idea? It is obvious to me that each party has their share of far rights and far lefts, that seems to be a fact of ordinary life, not a big, impossible problem.
AJ:
Charles is a nutcase. Plain and simple. I stopped looking at his site long ago because he had some of the most vicious antiMuslim crap going on in the comments you can imagine, and now he has gone off the deep end about other people? I mean come on, he went from one extreme to the other.
Terrye,
Do you honestly think calling a fellow American a nutcase is impressing me????