The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

The Con Science Of A Liberal

Posted on | April 8, 2012 | 32 Comments

by Smitty

Easter Sunday is probably inappropriate to use Paul Krugman as a punching bag. But it’s not a sin if Krugman does it himself, and this blog merely provides a communications path, is it?

Here, Krugman attempts to go after Paul Ryan:

In my next life I want to be a conservative policy scammer. Think of how much nicer it would be. Instead of constantly being accused of having evil motives, I’d be presumed to have noble intentions no matter how much the actual content of my policy proposals was at odds with such claims. Instead of being accused of saying bad things I never said, I’d be given credit for supporting good things I’ve never supported. Life would be great!
OK, I’m whining. But the continuing defense of Paul Ryan is a remarkable phenomenon. He’s still being treated by many pundits as a man deeply concerned about deficits, when the fact is that his policy proposals are all about redistributing income upward, and make no serious effort to curb debt. He’s even given credit for advocating higher taxes on the rich when he has more or less specifically rejected the things for which he’s given credit.

Krugman, if it’s respect you crave, give up being an e-clown-omist and offer some reality-based advice! Anything you say which does not begin with the confession that the United States is broke, and has to go cold turkey on the social welfare state idiocy of the last century just isn’t serious.

via Memeorandum

Category: Economics

Profiles in Narcissism: Charles Johnson Blinded by His Own Self-Righteousness

Posted on | April 7, 2012 | 84 Comments

Among the books I most often recommend are The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy (Thomas Sowell, 1995) and The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations (Christopher Lasch, 1979). Thoughtful readers familiar with both books will understand how the phenomenon described by Sowell — liberals enacting disastrous social policies that serve mainly to make liberals feel good about themselves — is related to the narcissistic impulses described by Lasch.

In a society where traditional institutions of moral authority are decadent or discredited, individuals engage in self-righteous political gestures to demonstrate (to themselves, if to no one else) their own superior virtue. Liberal policies appeal to such impulses, e.g., Dick Durbin: “I may be a corrupt swine, but I drive a hybrid!” or Alec Baldwin: “I may be a vicious bully, but I’m all about a woman’s right to choose!”

The politicization of morality is not a new phenomenon, but it has gained a new vehemence in recent decades as the traditional sources of moral authority — the church, the family, the local community, etc. — have declined in influence, and as bourgeois virtues (sobriety, chastity, industry, thrift, etc.) have been undermined by the counter-culture.

When people turn to politics seeking affirmation of their own virtue, the results are often disastrous for the people directly affected by the policies enacted. To cite just one example, the AIDS crisis of the 1980s spiraled out of control in part because liberals were unwilling to shut down the gay bathouses that profited by facilitating the anonymous promiscuity which spread the pandemic. (David Horowitz and Peter Collier include an amazing chapter on this in their 1989 book, Destructive Generation: Second Thoughts About the Sixties.) The AIDS issue became a moral crusade for liberals, who saw themselves defending the “rights” of an unpopular minority in a battle against oppression, as if the “right” to commercialized sodomy trumped legitimate public health concerns.

Controversies that involve race, even indirectly, have often been hijacked by this sort of liberal crusader mentality, as in the infamous Duke University lacrosse team “rape” scandal, where certainty of the guilt of the accused was a kind of moral litmus test. People who had nothing to do with Duke University, people who had never been within a hundred miles of Raleigh, N.C., nevertheless presumed to know that the lacrosse players were guilty and excoriated anyone who did not join them in denouncing the perpetrators of this alleged atrocity.

What you learn, if you observe this tendency long enough, is that the people who delight in pointing the accusatory finger — racist! sexist! homophobe! — are generally engaged in an exhibition of moral narcissism, trying to fill the “hole in their soul” with self-righteousness by gestures intended to prove their own superior virtue. Not only are they not racist (or not sexist, etc.), but they are anti-racist (or anti-whatever) and are courageously donning their shining armor and mounting their horses to lead a crusade against the Evil Menace.

Heroism on the cheap, as it were.

When the Trayvon Martin case became a national controversy, it was certain to attract swarms of such moralistic finger-pointers, demanding that everyone join them in Standing Up to Hatred, etc. I’ve had little to say about the case, but one thing I did say was this:

The first time I talked to anyone about the Trayvon Martin case, I cautioned against the urge to jump to conclusions based on media accounts.

The federal Justice Department was involved and a special investigation was underway, and there was no need to engage in furious debates over every detail of a case about which we had no direct knowledge, and in which we were not directly involved. Insofar as I have since commented on it at all, I’ve mainly called attention to the way people were making fools of themselves over the case. (Damn, how I wish Keith Olbermann were still on TV!) So in the wee hours this morning, when I noticed people on Twitter giving Dave Weigel grief over something written by John Derbyshire, my reaction was, “What the hell is this about?”

After investigating, I wrote a post:

While it is impossible to imagine any scenario in which Lowry won’t be forced to fire Derbyshire now, I’m actually more fascinated by the Left’s attempt to bully Weigel for failing to denounce Derbyshire in strong enough terms.

This is a familiar ritual, The Denunciation Derby, in which liberals demand that everyone compete for the Sweepstakes Prize offered for whoever can express the most indignant outrage against the target. It seemed obvious that Derbyshire was doomed, and there was no point even trying to defend him, but Weigel — who has never been accused of being a racist — was under attack for having blogged about Derbyshire with insufficient outrage.

National Review editor Rich Lowry tried to distance himself from Derbyshire — “needless to say”! — and I reacted to that this afternoon:

“Needless to say,” however, they don’t pay you the big bucks to waffle in times of crisis, Rich. Your executive authority must be exercised and, with this howling Internet lynch mob demanding Derbyshire’s scalp, you must either satisfy the mob or deal with the consequences.

While I was aggregating further reaction in updates, I was being stalked by a creepy Twitter troll. Pay careful attention to the sequence:

CHARLES JOHNSON 2:24 p.m. ET:

CHARLES JOHNSON 3:27 p.m. ET:

CHARLES JOHNSON 4:23 p.m. ET:

Charles Johnson is doing his “Race Detective” bit: He accuses me and Dan Riehl of being “the first to defend Derbyshire,” then he writes a blog post using Riehl’s name to connect the “racist” meme to Breitbart.com. And then — exhibiting a stunning lack of self-awareness — Johnson complains to Pam Spaulding that right-wingers “spend so much time & energy trying to smear & discredit me.”

Got it? Charles (a) writes a blog post to “smear and discredit” Dan Riehl and Dan’s employers, then (b) engages in psychological projection to claim that his enemies are doing to him what he is doing to them.

This kind of blame-shifting rationalization is typical of narcissistic personalities: Nothing is ever their fault. Whenever anything goes wrong, some scapegoat must be blamed for the failure.

You see why paranoia is so closely related to narcissism, in that the damaged ego, being unable to accept responsibility for failure, eventually exaggerates the evils of scapegoated enemies to the point where contact with reality is lost amid persecution fantasies of an all-powerful “them” conspiring against the grandiose self.

Grandiosity — the unrealistic inflation of personal significance — is necessary to the delusion: Why would all these powerful forces of evil be conspiring against an obscure nobody? The damaged ego must inflate the imagined power of scapegoated enemies in order to explain how the grandiose self has been thwarted.

During a three-year purge that began in 2008, Charles Johnson banned more than 15,000 commenters from Little Green Footballs, destroying his own traffic, alienating his friends and making himself the laughingstock of the blogosphere. The only person responsible for this was Charles Johnson, yet he continues to seek out “racists” and other scapegoats to blame for his self-destruction.

Good luck turning your paranoid delusions into a career, Charles.

Meanwhile, Lowry has fired Derbyshire, describing the offending column as “so outlandish it constitutes a kind of letter of resignation.”

This was exactly what I’d predicted in the wee hours when I commented on the “get Weigel” sideshow. How that amounted to me joining Dan Riehl as “first to defend Derbyshire” is perhaps something that Charles Johnson can try to explain when the nice men in white coats show up to take him to the Funny Farm.

Remember: Charles Johnson tried to destroy Pamela Geller by smearing her as a crypto-fascist. After I defended Geller, CJ tried to destroy me as a “white supremacist.” By now, CJ’s list of right-wing enemies is so long as to include just about everyone who ever voted Republican. But CJ’s crazy crusade was never really about the evil of his enemies — Geller, Robert Spencer, Diana West, Melanie Phillips, Geert Wilders, Michelle Malkin, Jim Hoft, Ace of Spades, Dan Riehl, et al., ad finitum — it was always all about Charles Johnson.

And it still is.

Happy Easter, everybody. Go hit Da Tech Guy’s tip jar.

 

 

UPDATE: Does anyone remember “Liberal Avenger,” a/k/a Sirkowski, a/k/a Sébastien Fréchette? If we can believe his own online bio — alas, he is a notorious and habitual liar — Fréchette is a 35-year-old illustrator specializing in (NSFW) “Loli” cartoons. NTTAWWT.

During his most notorious years weeks, Sirkowski/Fréchette/”Liberal Avenger” was best known for slinging hateful slurs at Republican women, including Condi Rice and Mary Cheney, as well as altering comments and other such stunts as sociopathic trolls do with their own blogs. (See, “Sirowski Watch.”)

Patterico had a go-round with “Liberal Avenger” back in the day. Sébastien still seems to have a problem with Republican women:

Some people’s political reactions are like a Rorshach inkblot test, inexorably exposing their inner freak. Sirkowski/Fréchette spent Saturday re-Tweeting Charles Johnson and then showed up in the comments on this post screeching about racists and fascists.

Sébastien: Go back to doing dirty drawings of girls, OK?

LGF is scraping the bottom of the barrel these days . . .

PREVIOUSLY:

Category: Charles Johnson, Culture, Dan Riehl, Racism

‘Win Just One For The Zimmer’

Posted on | April 7, 2012 | 1 Comment

by Smitty

I can’t embed the latest Day by Day effectively, but Muir does a great job of alluding to Airplane! Well worth your time.

Here is the reference:

Category: Day By Day

FMJRA 2.0: Some Other Time

Posted on | April 7, 2012 | 6 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Shocking Republican Sex Scandals!

WISCONSIN, MARYLAND REPUBLICAN PRIMARY RESULTS HQ

I Write for Money

LIVE AT FIVE (CDT) – 03.30.12

John Hinderaker, Optimist

In Response To The Recent Unpleasantness

Bizarre NFL Sex Scandal

Trayvon Martin Rashomon

Mandatory Whittle

‘Hot Mic’ Admittedly Not As Hot As Conservative Women, Yet Still Toasty

The Worlds Youngest Blogger: ‘Relax’

Olbermann’s Career: The First Time as Tragedy, the Second Time as Farce

Are Nancy Pelosi And Harry Reid Racists, Or Something?

‘Due to Her Excellent Reputation Among California Democrats …’

The Riot Ideology

Piers Morgan: ‘What a Load of Fatuous Nonsense You Speak, Touré, Don’t You?’

It Is Not Often One Locates An Oversight In Professor Jacobson’s Reasoning

Call Me a Cynic

Flaming, Multitudinous Jeremiads Retard Advances (FMJRA)

Rick Santorum And The Traditional Justice System

No Bowlder Man Than Dennis Walcott Ever Lived

A Comment On Comments, Served Up As A Post

‘A Portrait of a Dysfunctional Alliance That Was Doomed From the Start’

Ron Paul Supporter Challenges Romney Over Mormon Doctrine in Wisconsin

BRILLIANT IDEA! Have The RNC Hire George Obama And Put Him On Tour!

Newt Neutered: Gingrich’s Pathetic Shadow Campaign Stumbles Onward

Tom Maguire’s Excellent Idea: Let’s Pretend We Take Rod Dreher Seriously

Why Is the U.S. Justice Department Monitoring the Wisconsin Primary?

Dear 5th Circuit …

Police Charge Career Criminal in Wisconsin Planned Parenthood Bombing

How Wrong Was Michelle Goldberg About Wisconsin Planned Parenthood Bombing? UPDATE: ‘I Lit Up the Clinic,’ Suspect Told Police; Offers Guilty Plea at Hearing

Jesus Knew Fear?

Mean RNC Pokes Fun At BHO’s Sincere Efforts To Save Gaia

NEWS: Michelle Malkin Joins Board of Directors for National Bloggers Club

Mark Levin and the Omens of Doom

Ain’t I Done Told Ya So? (Part II)

Check Your Water Wings

Framing the Narrative: Using Evangelicals as Hook for MSM ‘Mormon Mitt’ Meme

They Know Which Side They’re On

The Last Nail in Newt’s Coffin
UPDATE: Conservative Leaders Huddle With Santorum, Seek Deal With Newt

Rule 5 Thursday

MA-4 Blogger Call With Sean Bielat

Top linkers this week:

  1. Lonely Conservative (11)
  2. (tied) The Conservatory, Daily Pundit, and The Camp Of The Saints (9)

Thanks to everyone for their linkagery! Deadline to submit links for next week’s FMJRA is Friday, April 13.

 

Category: FMJRA Award

Chicken Isn’t Sufficiently Plucked Already (CISPA)

Posted on | April 7, 2012 | 12 Comments

by Smitty

Slashdot links RT, saying that after all the SOPA/PIPA kerfuffle, the Really Smart Folks in Congress have another variation on the theme:

H.R. 3523, a piece of legislation dubbed the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (or CISPA for short), has been created under the guise of being a necessary implement in America’s war against cyberattacks. But the vague verbiage contained within the pages of the paper could allow Congress to circumvent existing exemptions to online privacy laws and essentially monitor, censor and stop any online communication that it considers disruptive to the government or private parties. Critics have already come after CISPA for the capabilities that it will give to seemingly any federal entity that claims it is threatened by online interactions, but unlike the Stop Online Privacy Act and the Protect IP Acts that were discarded on the Capitol Building floor after incredibly successful online campaigns to crush them, widespread recognition of what the latest would-be law will do has yet to surface to the same degree.

According to Open Congress, this bill is sponsored by Michael Rogers, R-MI, and has 106 co-sponsors.

For a quick glance at the bill’s summary, it doesn’t seem especially evil.

And yet, informed geeks like the Electronic Frontier Foundation are less than excited (emphasis original):

would let companies spy on users and share private information with the federal government and other companies with near-total immunity from civil and criminal liability. It effectively creates a “cybersecurity” exemption to all existing laws.
There are almost no restrictions on what can be collected and how it can be used, provided a company can claim it was motivated by “cybersecurity purposes.” That means a company like Google, Facebook, Twitter, or AT&T could intercept your emails and text messages, send copies to one another and to the government, and modify those communications or prevent them from reaching their destination if it fits into their plan to stop cybersecurity threats.
Worst of all, the stated definition of “cybersecurity” is so broad, it leaves the door open to censor any speech that a company believes would “degrade the network.” The bill specifically mentions that cybersecurity can include protecting against the “theft or misappropriation of private or government information” including “intellectual property.” Such sweeping language would give companies and the government new powers to monitor and censor communications for copyright infringement. It could also be a powerful weapon to use against whistleblower websites like WikiLeaks.

Fortunately, there is no way this legislation could ever go pear-shaped, and lead to some Orwellian hell online. I mean, look at the fantastic job those guys are doing balancing the budget and making sure we don’t drown in debt? What could possibly go wrong?

Category: How This Here Internet Thingy Works

Rich Lowry’s Editorial Impotence?

Posted on | April 7, 2012 | 107 Comments

A communiqué from the regime:

“Needless to say, no one at National Review shares Derb’s appalling view of what parents supposedly should tell their kids about blacks in this instantly notorious piece here.”

Yes, but have you fired him for it, Rich? What the hell kind of “needless to say” bulls–t are you trying to play on us here?

Mind you, I’m not saying you should fire Derbyshire: A commenter on a previous post raised the possibility that Derb was cleverly parodying a black racialist writer’s version of “The Talk.” So I suppose that some plausible explanation or defense can’t be ruled out.

“Needless to say,” however, they don’t pay you the big bucks to waffle in times of crisis, Rich. Your executive authority must be exercised and, with this howling Internet lynch mob demanding Derbyshire’s scalp, you must either satisfy the mob or deal with the consequences.

Obviously, Rich, it would do neither of us — nor Derbyshire, for that matter — any good for me to offer you unsolicited advice. You’ve never taken my advice before, and I don’t expect you to start now.

UPDATE: Vox Day calls Derb’s piece “a calm and perfectly reasonable collection of observable realities of race in America.” Lisa Graas offers, “Things I Don’t Say to My Kids About Black People.”

BTW, have you hit Lisa’s tip jar yet? I did.

UPDATE II: In case you haven’t been reading this blog regularly for three years, I’ve been arguing Lowry should be fired since 2009: “a lot of snotty nancy-boy whining about the uncouth Republican rabble.”

UPDATE III: Dan Collins thought this might be relevant:

Caught on camera — a tourist being beaten in downtown Baltimore and instead of helping him, a crowd laughs and steals his belongings.

Watch the video of the Bad Samaritans:

Has Rich Lowry been to downtown Baltimore lately? Not saying he should get punched in the face, although it might do him a world of good.

UPDATE IV: Leon Wolf accuses Lowry of displaying “an absolute lack of leadership and conviction.” But what else can we expect from “conservatives” who are in the tank for Romney?

BTW, has Mitt denounced Derbyshire yet?

UPDATE V: One of the things that has bothered me for years is the way some people want to treat political journalists as if they were actually politicians, so that anyone who writes about politics must be “vetted,” as if they were themselves candidates for elected office.

My own understanding of my job is write something people want to read, and get paid for it.

Having the “correct” opinion on controversial issues? Nobody’s ever offered to pay me for that, and I don’t expect any such offers soon. My writing therefore must stand or fall on its own merits, without regard for my ability to win any kind of popularity contest or plebescite.

Meanwhile, Michelle Malkin writes about an actual politician:

[Marion] Barry told supporters in D.C.’s Ward 8: “We got to do something about these Asians coming in and opening up businesses and dirty shops. They ought to go.” Once pushed out, Barry, promised, he would replace the foreign invaders with “African-American business people.” Barry then took to social networking platform Twitter to expound on the perils of “dirty” Asian shops in his neighborhood.

The same people who support Marion Barry nevertheless want us to think the real problem in American race relations is John Derbyshire.

UPDATE VI (Smitty): via The Political Hat, it looks like NRO has parted ways with Derbyshire:

His latest provocation, in a webzine, lurches from the politically incorrect to the nasty and indefensible. We never would have published it, but the main reason that people noticed it is that it is by a National Review writer. Derb is effectively using our name to get more oxygen for views with which we’d never associate ourselves otherwise. So there has to be a parting of the ways. Derb has long danced around the line on these issues, but this column is so outlandish it constitutes a kind of letter of resignation.

Category: Journalism, Racism

Does The ‘NBC Editor’ Really Exist?

Posted on | April 7, 2012 | 16 Comments

by Smitty

Daily- and Instapudit are on about Breitbart’s post concerning the fired NBC editor. Back at Breitbart:

The questions are only just beginning on Editgate. The release of the news of the firing just before the holiday weekend smacks of a cover-up; more than that, we know that the edit itself was not restricted to the Today show. Brian Williams and the brass at NBC News must provide answers. They are responsible for editorial output, not an unnamed producer. And they must be held responsible for an irresponsible and dangerous edit apparently deliberately designed to twist the Trayvon Martin/George Zimmerman story along racial lines.

NBC really loves them some voodoo editing.

Given their utter lack of forthrightness, both in pushing the initial lie about what Zimmerman said, and now the firing of this un-named editor, we really should ask: does this NBC jackwagon exist, or is NBC just stacking subterfuge upon misdirection?

And, even if this alleged jackwagon is produced, is he going to be fired fired, or just given the Full Imus? By that I mean, sent on what amounts to an extended vacation, and then brought back. In other words, how will the fundamental corruption of NBC be addressed?

The good news is that NBC’s perfidy has been exposed short of further tragedy. The bad news is that NBC is bad news.

Update: linked by The Lonely Conservative.

Category: Media Bias, NBC

Contrary To The 2008 Campaign? I Think Not

Posted on | April 7, 2012 | 15 Comments

by Smitty

Via Power Line, Jay Cost at The Weekly Standard perceives a tension, which I may help him resolve, emphasis mine:

This is why Obama does not care if his attacks are unfair, untrue, unoriginal, unseemly, or whatever. He has only one goal: The state of the union stinks right now, and I must keep that stench off me.
So were you outraged by Obama’s smarmy remarks about the Supreme Court? Too bad, he does not care. He is not after your vote. He is after the vote of the fellow in the middle of the electorate, who may never have even heard of Marbury v. Madison, but certainly knows about $4 gas. If Obama can get that guy to direct his anger at somebody else for the next seven months, then he wins reelection. This week the fall guy was the Supreme Court. Next week it will be John Boehner or Big Oil or whomever. Really, it does not matter so long as it is not the president.
This runs contrary to the very premise of the Obama candidacy from 2008. Remember, he had little experience in national affairs, but that was supposed to be a great thing because Washington, D.C. had not corrupted him with its brand of divide-and-conquer gamesmanship.

Contrary, sir? I think not. The apparent tension is resolved by what appears to be a timeless bit of Ruling Class wisdom: people are sheep.

The entire Progressive Project is rooted in this assertion. #OccupyResoluteDesk is just the culmination of a century-long bladder load down the back, while claiming precipitation:

The survey result that one in four Americans strongly approve of this golden shower of malarky underscores the point: large numbers of people exhibit sheepish behavior, at least for a time.

That the Ryan budget, which isn’t vigorous enough in reforming the problem, in my opinion, is a case in point: a rational entry into what is far too emotional a discussion.

The difference between the Left and Right is that the Left grasps the fundamentally emotional nature of the national discussion. It is irrelevant, for example, that a rational view of the Trayvon Martin tragedy would encourage caution and a thorough investigation before reaching a conclusion. Shag that. There is tremendous power to be gained from playing the raaaaace card early. Fret not that those pesky facts and meddling bloggers will overturn the narrative; the emotional hit is the important part.

Or so the Left thinks. The sheep aren’t capable of the intellectual reflection necessary to see through this demagoguery. And so you have the spectacle of BHO delivering a speech that could have rolled smoothly off of the lips of Chavez or Castro, if either of those thugs were in the habit of permitting the kind of political dialogue enjoyed in this country.

I don’t think Barack Obama, the flock-head of the Left, is capable of evolving his weltanshauung to encompass the idea that the American people are rational. And so he’s going to ride the sheeply theory into his political grave.

Update: Power Line brings Alexis:

A man’s admiration of absolute government is proportionate to the contempt he feels for those around him.

Update II: linked at BPI Campus, a Lefty blog, in what amounts to a cute format.

Category: Barack Obama
« go back — keep looking »

    About

    This is an area on your website where you can add text. This will serve as an informative location on your website, where you can talk about your site.

    Subscribe to our feed

    Search

    Admin