Little Green Footballs. What was once an indispensible weapon in the war against Jihad, is now more about bashing people who believe in creation and social conservatives. Yeah, the Democrats have told us to dump social conservatives for years, and we all know they have the best interests of Republicans at heart. Just look at what dumping family values has done for Hollywood and the culture for all these years …
Everybody on the right owes Charles Johnson at LGF a vote of thanks because of his highlighting of the Rather/Mapes fraud. He may not have been the first, but he was one of the most readable and persistent.
After that, he rapidly degenerated into a one note Islamophobe – which earned him a reputation in the left netroots as a “racist”.
Now that the war is over and the threat seems abated, there’s going to be a welcome re-organization of the neo-cons, the social cons and the lib cons. Johnson was a liberal who morphed to neo after 9/11 and now is looking to rehabilate himself through attacks on the Euro-trash right and by adding Christophobia to his fear of Islamics. Get used to it, he won’t be the last.
Any supposed “conservative” who is against gun ownership is at best a fair weather friend.
Not surprising, then, that he should start trying to toss the core of conservatism into the water.
Which makes more sense? That one is conservative on social issues and you extend that conservatism to the fiscal side or that one is fiscally conservative but socially liberal when social liberalism always includes increased liberal entitlement spending?
Hyunchback,
I consider myself a conservative on fiscal issues and liberal on social issues, and I think most conservatives are like me. Through free choice I live my life rather “conservatively,” but I want a society were folks are also free to screw up their lives, if they choose to.
I’ve been paying less and less attention to LGF’s occurrences in my RSS feed, for this very reason. I have no problem with his opinion differing from mine, but when he seems unable to deviate from the “religious people are idiots” drumbeat, well, time to change the channel.
And that’s some trenchant commentary, K. Excellent work.
Having been raised on the Old Testament, but in a rather oddly religious, yet nonreligious household, I find it a bit hard to “go after” any one particular group of people and single them out.
Yes, a bit like Rufus where you should be able to screw up your own life. And me ranting and raving about it every day isn’t going to change it or them.
K:
“After that, he rapidly degenerated into a one note Islamophobe – which earned him a reputation in the left netroots as a “racist”.”
Have you ever actually read him?
If anything, Charles has largely been keeping away from being an Islamophobe- as can be seen by his firm repudations of racist groups such as Vlaams Belang-which not even the great Robert Spencer did.
Do the nutroots call him racist? Yes. Who cares?
As for Intelligent Design, I do get the impression that it is primarily against teaching it in school, and- while he seemed to have some lingering doubts over Creationists as a whole- he was one of the firmer supporters of Sarah Palin, which shows that, for now, he hasn’t degenerated terribly far.
Are his criticisms of Social Cons troubling? A bit, and he should catch flack for it. However, just because of that doesn’t mean he has degenerated into some racist or Leftist.
Republicans should dump social conservatives, as soon as the Dems dump the socialists.
Oh wait – we just elected one…
I like to read comments as much as the thread posts. At LGF, the comments are for the most part useless one-worders. I grew tired of scrolling…
There’s things with the social conservative agenda I agree and disagree with. The fact is, they make up 27-percent of all voters. The GOP should try winning an election if that 27-percent never shows up. Funny, this wasn’t mentioned four years ago when “values” became the hot-button topic in the exit polls. These same folks crawl out of the woodwork whenever there is power to be had.
We just nominated “the guy” the Whitmans and the Johnsons and the Buckleys said they wanted, and half of that group jumped to Obama a week before the election. What makes any conservative think they’ll stay put even if they get their guy? We nominated the “moderate” vs. their “leftist” and we saw what the results were nationally, so obviously that meme has little traction.
And I find it so ironic that the people preaching “big tent” are so the first to start booting people out of it …
Amen JFN! (Insert applause here).
If anything, Charles has largely been keeping away from being an Islamophobe- as can be seen by his firm repudations of racist groups such as Vlaams Belang-which not even the great Robert Spencer did.
Yes, I’ve read him for years, and pretty much stopped in the last year or so. And what does objecting to Euro-racism have to do with not being an Islamophobe?
The mindsets are not mutually exclusive.
The majority of his blog posts have been were associated with some criminal activity or other associated with Islamics. Sometimes this was Al Quida/Hamas stuff which is fair game. Way too often it’s some random criminality/small time terror scheme that happened to be performed by Islamics, all in the name of refuting the “Islam is a religion of peace” over and over and over again. I’ve seen the same technique used against Christians. You scan the world news and find the .001 percent of that religion’s jerks and present it on a daily basis as the norm.
He was big on “Britain’s problem” associated with Muslim immigrants until the last 6 months or so when he was shocked, shocked to discover that the groups objecting the most, and subsequently his fellow travelers so to speak had really truly racists in their midst. Well one way to refute a charge of racism is to go after some Nazis and he seems to be working that angle with some urgency.