RSS Feed MenuCharles Johnson, editor of the Little Green Footballs site, has written a post declaring his personal breach with the American right.
He offers 10 reasons, but they all boil down to the same one: His outrage at the bad characters found in right-wing media and blogosphere.
And yes, there’s no shortage of bad characters. No shortage on the left-hand side either. Or the middle, for that matter. But why surrender to them? Why let them get away with their claim to define your movement? Why not stand up to them? That was Rudyard Kipling’s advice to those who felt as Johnson now feels:
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ‘em up with worn-out tools;
These are days for stooping and building.
So here’s my own hastily jotted counter-list of the reasons to keep right.
It’s the American right that will sustain the war in Afghanistan, the right that will fight the administration’s overspending, the right that will resist paying for the spending in ways that cramp the future growth of the American economy.
It’s the right that champions competition in education, and it is the right that will prevent the undoing of welfare reform. It’s the right that pushes for color-blind laws, and against the abuse of the legal system for attorney gain.
It’s the right that resists, sometimes blindly but still rightly, overbearing attempts by government to direct the economy. It’s the right that sounds the alarm when government neglects public security.
It’s the right that anchors American society against fads and social experiments, the right that favors immigration policies in the national interest, the right that better respects the freedom of ordinary people to live their own lives and make their own choices.
Yes, the right is the home of a lot of junk thought and huckstering exploitation. It’s also the home of Milton Friedman and James Q. Wilson, Charles Murray and George Borjas, Richard Pipes and Robert Conquest, Tom Wolfe and Philip Larkin, Friedrich Hayek and George Stigler, Leszek Kolakowski and John Lukacs, Bernard Lewis and Fouad Ajami. I’ll offset Sarah Palin with Margaret Thatcher, Glenn Beck with Melvin Lasky, Pat Robertson with Richard John Neuhaus.
Is Charles Johnson too proud for that company? Come on back LGF – it’s when your team is doing worst that you are needed most.
ottovbvs // Dec 2, 2009 at 6:30 pm
sinz54 // Dec 2, 2009 at 6:21 pm
…..Sinz I re read the book when I was on holiday in Italy this summer…..his conclusion was that anti intellectualism was endemic in the GOP base……clearly he didn’t mean Nelson Rockefeller but we’re not talking about Lindsey Graham
SpartacusIsNotDead // Dec 2, 2009 at 9:09 pm
Sinz,
You did not address my central point, which is that when conservative presidents translated their conservative ideology into actual governmental policy, it failed miserably.
The issue is not whether some liberal college professors somewhere are highly critical of America’s shortcomings. Nor is the issue whether Reagan has received sufficient credit for his part in the Cold War.
Marxeocon Correct’s Frum’s Propaganda But Goofs on Kipling | Conservative Heritage Times // Dec 2, 2009 at 11:42 pm
[...] caught Frum goofing on propaganda 101: Frum quotes a real conservative! Kipling, along with the rest of the right, is supposed to fall down the memory [...]
Boogliodemus_2009 // Dec 3, 2009 at 2:00 am
Too poor Charles:
WAAAAAHHHH. Quit being a jackoff and start being a man. We cut you a little slack for the feminizing affect of your prostate treatments, but dude, RELAX, you have a big site, don’t blow it with your vanity. Stop trying to be a photographer, get back to your roots. Quit acting like a foreigner. Ya had a good start, “go back to where you once belonged”. You’ll be OK and happy again. I promise ya!
BUT FIRST: YOU NEED TO MAKE THE APOLOGIA. Don’t worry, we all know it’s coming, just make it snappy, would ya?
grimbleGrumble // Dec 3, 2009 at 10:40 am
Charles Johnson has a lot of haters and detractors, as evidenced here. But his fanaticism in 2001-2004 brought on loonies and now he is trying to shed them. His immoderate speech regarding Islam cannot be whitewashed by his high-minded puritanical approach to blogging today. Charles, admit you trucked in hate speech almost as bad as Robert Stacy McCain or any of the others, and we will take you more seriously.
WillyP // Dec 3, 2009 at 12:14 pm
It is worth noting that “intellectuals” are often the most wrong, for they are clever enough to justify their bad/immoral assumptions. That being said, I do appreciate people who are able to explain their political beliefs back to the axiomatic assumptions. I do not find the left’s assumptions correct, although I could not deny the ability of clever people to form an intelligent (albeit, ultimately wrong) argument.
If it is true that there are more left intellectuals than right intellectuals, I believe it can be said to be equally true that the right intellectuals are far more respectful of traditional morality.
VDH is surely one of the best out there.
Syrah // Dec 4, 2009 at 2:25 am
Let Charles go.
Let him find his own path.
We do not have to travel on it with him.