A friend of mine mentioned something the other day. I didn't think about it much at the time but some of the names and situations he mentioned have been popping up all over the web. I thought I'd take a look.
Charles Johnson is a guy who runs a site called Little Green Footballs. He's both a neocon and social conservative. When I started blogging, a few years ago, his site was one of the biggest. I think I might even have been banned off it once or twice.
I don't think he's changed any of his beliefs. What he's done though, is start to point out ethnocentric hatred within both the Left and Right. Two of the institutions he has been hardest on are Fox News and The Washington Times. He has been active in pointing out many who work for these institutions who have ties to racist and supremacist organizations and are themselves racists and crypto Nazis. It's not that unusual, there are still many within the Right Wing who are not racist, religious or cultural bigots, say so and point out hate on both sides of the political spectrum. What's unusual is that the followers of the wing nut creed have united to excoriate, attack and ostracize him for his views, with the result that few of the true believers continue to visit the site.
It's clear that being a social conservative, no matter how strongly held your beliefs, is no longer enough. You have to drink the Kool Aid.
There is a flaw in their promotional strategy here. I can't quite put my finger on it. I thought the idea was to get as many people as you could into a movement. That's how the term, Big Tent, was popularized.
3 comments:
Wow. Can't believe I actually missed this good post of yours.
Therein lies the problem with neocons: voila, we have a Bush follower, and someone who loves people McCain and Palin, whereas people like me want to get in a kick-ass, take-names kinda guy, follow our Constitution without running big government, eliminate all foreign aid, stop intervening with other nations (unless they are threatening US directly), recall our troops from foreign soil, and start taking care of ourselves a little bit better.
What person in their right minds wouldn't want that?
BUT....NO health care provided by the government.
I'm not a big fan of entitlements whether it's welfare, health care or subsidies for agriculture, banking or other handouts for big corporations.
My main concern is the strong authoritarian subtext running through Right Wing rhetoric.
Mostly I want to be left alone. We should be looking for more laws we can strike off the books and spending we can eliminate, not looking for even more things we can make illegal and freedoms we can infringe upon. Let people live their own lives.
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