Why Do Charles Johnson’s Beliefs Keep Turning Out to Be Delusional?
Posted on | March 7, 2010 | 38 Comments
Professor Glenn Reynolds has linked my essay about narcissism, scapegoating and paranoia. Speaking of paranoid narcissists, remember when Charles Johnson called the Pentagon shooter an “anti-government right wing extremist of the Ron Paulian persuasion”?
Wrong again, Chuckles. John Patrick Bedell was a dopehead peacenik loser of the “No Blood for Oil” persuasion who slowly descended into paranoid psychosis:
Bedell . . . had vigorously objected to the government’s role in the 1991 Persian Gulf War since high school, telling relatives that the United States was trying to enrich itself and oil companies, said his brother, 33-year-old Jeffrey Bedell.
But, in about 2002, after the breakup of a long-term relationship with a girlfriend, his skepticism began to turn to deep-rooted suspicion. And soon it became paranoia, his brother said.
Patrick would point skyward, convinced that “they” were watching him. He believed songs he heard on the radio were meant as warnings. . . .
“There were symptoms of a mental disorder, approaching paranoid schizophrenia,” said Jeffrey Bedell, a former California deputy attorney general who is a financial adviser. . . .
Patrick was perpetually in and out of school, enrolling in undergraduate or graduate programs and sometimes auditing courses. Jeffrey could not recall whether he had worked anywhere. . . .
The Bedells pleaded with him to seek medical help, but he refused. “I would have conversations with him, trying to convince him to stop smoking marijuana, that it was making his thinking more disordered, but he was not receptive to that,” Jeffrey said.
The Pentagon shooter was not a “Paulian.” He was also not a Hayekian, an Objectivist, a Rothbardian or any other sort of libertarian. Nor was he a creationist, a Belgian neo-fascist or a “climate-change denier.”
Patrick Bedell was suffering from a mental illness that cannot be blamed on Charles Johnson’s ideological Scapegoat of the Week.
The sycophants at Little Green Footballs are enabling Johnson’s delusions of adequacy. He’s so out of touch with reality, he wouldn’t know the difference between a libertarian and a lamb chop.

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