No philosophical underpinning
Apostasy pieces are never about delivering your former comrades from the grip of dreadful error. They’re about showing off how much more enlightened you are, using your misspent youth as a prop for credibility. I’ve read apostate tell-alls that I thought were true, but I’ve never read one that made me think I’d like, or trust, the author if I met him.
Now here’s my take. I think Johnson was never really a part of “the right” to begin with. For one thing, you don’t abandon a belief or philosophy based merely on how other people on your “team” are acting. If you are philosophically a conservative, then you don’t “part ways with the right” simply because people on your side of the fence are a little nuts over the president. No, you may decide that you disagree with various policies, you may not participate in the ‘bad craziness’ and you may shudder at the depths to which those who share your beliefs have stooped, but you don’t ditch the philosophy altogether.
Unlike Helen, I’m not sure that this is as much about loyalty as it is about honesty. If you are honestly committed to conservative principles, you simply don’t abandon them because of the reasons Johnson lists. No, Johnson was never conservative to begin with, but found common cause with other hawks who incidentally were on the right at the time. Had Al Gore been in office, and had he pushed the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq (which I think would have been quite likely) Johnson would have found plenty of allies on the left. Indeed, he contributed in not insignificant ways to the very same bad craziness he now complains of, and ratcheted it up a notch or two. His return to the left means that liberals merely have one more hawkish voice to add to their collection. [Read more →]
December 4, 2009 65 Comments
Charles Johnson breaks from the right
December 1, 2009 13 Comments
