To say that Charles Johnson fights like a third-grade schoolgirl . . .

. . . would be an unwarranted insult to third-grade schoolgirls, some of whom have courage and integrity. Former third-grade schoolgirl Obi's Sister has a screencap showing Hot Air's move of Little Green Footballs to their "Left Channels" category, and comments:

The trend I saw was interesting…as a beginner blogger, I linked there quite a bit. His reports on Islamic cruelty to women were compelling. He had strong opinions on the American ostrich politics regarding the tsunami of Islamic danger heading America’s way. Over the months I linked less; either I felt more comfortable with my own voice or his had changed it’s tune. Then he started attacking other bloggers. You know the rest of the story.

One may attack other bloggers -- and I love a good Rule 4 flame-war perhaps a bit too much -- without behaving in a Johnsonesque manner that would disgrace a third-grade schoolgirl. If you don't know the rest of the story, you can just click here and keep scrolling. But it is the underlying cause of what "semi-literate bigot" Jim Hoft has called the "Little Green Meltdown," and not its detailed history, that must be addressed now.

The Hot Air blogroll reclassification of LGF is also blogged at Honesty in Motion and Underground Conservative, whom I will quote later, but first things first.

The main historical point is that this all began when Mad King Charles attacked Pamela Geller. His original attack was based on information supplied by his commenter "Dave of Sweden." Johnson asserted that Geller was abetting neo-fascism, an accusation directly at odds with Geller's known character. That "Dave of Sweden" has since disappeared, while his real identity and motives remain unknown, shows the fundamental error of Johnson's modus operandi.

Rather than continuing to do useful and original work on his blog, Charles at some point decided that LGF would be about the commenters, with him playing queen-bee to a hive of pseudonymous Lizards in more-or-less continuous Open Thread mode.

This is how Charles Johnson became proprietor of a libel factory, and this is why Little Green Footballs is now "Left Channels." Maybe Allahpundit should go ahead and add Media Matters and Crooks & Liars to that category, just to make clear what type of evil business Mad King Charles is transacting. His stock in trade nowadays is to attribute mala fides to conservatives.

Between Wrong and Evil
To say that Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.) shouldn't have shouted "You lie!" during President Obama's address to Congress is merely to say what Wilson himself has admitted -- it was rude and unnecessary, an error of judgment. A congressman ought not shout such things at the president, even when he's lying through his teeth in a televised primetime speech. (Bill Clinton was arguably the most shameless liar in American political history; he was, as Democratic Sen. Bob Kerrey of Nebraska said, an unusually good liar.)

Errors of judgment and lapses of decorum are one thing. To fart in a crowded elevator is wrong, but does not necessarily make the perpetrator evil.

However, to say that Wilson's outburst was motivated by racial animosity is to assert mala fides. To then cite as supporting evidence of Wilson's bad faith his membership in the Sons of Confederate Veterans is to say that every member of the SCV shares the same ill motives and to inaugurate a fruitlessly divisive discussion that can have no end this side of "Damn Yankee scoundrel! Pistols at dawn, suh!"

These sorts of affairs are all fine and good for the pseudonymous likes of "Dave of Sweden," you see, who can pop up, post some garbage about the Swedish anti-jihad movement being controlled by "racists" and then disappear into the online slime-pit from which he emerged.

Like Joe Wilson, however, Pamela Geller is a real human being and not a mere Internet alias. What Charles Johnson did, by promoting "Dave of Sweden" and repeating other people's attacks on Vlaams Belang as "ultra-nationalist," was to question Pamela's motives, disparage her character and defame her good name. Pamela was confronted with a choice:

• Denounce and repudiate the Brussels conference she had attended; or
• Stand up in defense of the decent people whose bona fides Johnson had impugned in the process of smearing her.

This was the same kind of choice I faced when Charles Johnson began attacking me a week ago:

Shall I deny being a vicious hater? Shall I denounce Richard Spencer and Peter Brimelow? How many others will Charles Johnson require me to denounce before he's satisified? And how well did the deny-denounce-and-apologize approach to such accusations work out for George Allen?

Having watched this liberal game being played for so long, I have learned one thing: When a white guy points the finger at another white guy and screams, "Raaaaacist!" don't just examine the accusation, examine the accuser.

CJ the Third-Grade Queen Bee
Of course, it may be simultaneously true that (a) Charles Johnson is a gutless sissy, and (b) I am the spiritual heir of Theodore Bilbo. However, if the gutless sissy's accusation seems fishy, if my general political orientation is self-evidently not Bilboesque, then the more important subject of inquiry is not my allegedly evil agenda, but rather the agenda of my accuser.

What's in it for him? Why would Charles Johnson suddenly decide, on Sept. 12, 2009, to accuse Stephen Green (!) of fomenting racial hatred merely by taking my phoned-in reports from the 9/12 March On D.C.?

And it all goes back to "Dave of Sweden" and Pamela Geller. When Pamela defended the Brussels conference and took umbrage at Charles Johnson's libels, she unwittingly provoked a streak of paranoia and sadism inside CJ's soul that had hitherto escaped general notice. One by one, Johnson began throwing conservatives under his Little Green Bus.

Charles Johnson could not accept the possibility that he was wrong and Geller was right. To side with Geller against "Dave of Sweden" would be to confess that he, Charles Johnson, was ignorant of something about which Geller was knowledgeable. Johnson's intellectual bullying resembles malignant narcissism, the characteristic trait of the totalitarian.

CJ's attitude toward Geller manifested an unscrupulous desire to be recognized as some sort of Official Arbiter, rather than being content merely to participate as an equal in the public discourse. It is this narrow, selfish ambition -- the "Mean Girls" quest to be acknowledged as the Queen Bee of the third-grade playground, deciding who is worthy of membership in the Pretty And Popular clique -- that has led Charles Johnson down the road to self-destruction. It's not about politics or ideology or racism, it's about Charles.

Now, let us examine a few observations about the LGF meltdown from other bloggers, beginning with The Underground Conservative:

Little Green Footballs, along with its blog owner, Charles Johnson, has jumped the shark and has transformed itself into a lower-grade version of the Kos Kiddie Day Care Center, the PuffHo or the DUmmyland. Attacks on conservative talk show hosts and bloggers, smears against Christians and inexplicable defense of the likes of Van Jones, the 9/11 Troofer moonbat green jobs czar.

The Nose On Your Face:

When Little Green Footballs, a blog founded by Charles Johnson, started to go off the conservative rails over the past year, many dismissed Johnson’s erratic, obsessive rantings as classic signs of blogger burnout, or a perilously tight ponytail. Indeed, as Johnson lashed out at other conservative websites . . . bloggers across the political spectrum cringed at the precipitous descent of a once-proud stronghold of conservatism.

Brian C. Ledbetter at Snapped Shot:

After complaining constantly about leftist infiltrators coming to LGF to "slur" the site with derogatory comments, what do you suppose Charles Johnson's reaction to one of his own commenters (who happens to be an LGF administrator) doing the exact same thing to another blog?

Honesty in Motion:

Lessons? CJ has lost it, destroying a perfectly good blog that I used to enjoy reading. Also, stay on that Other McCain's good side, or you could wind up like Mr. Johnson.

Grateful as I am for the intended compliment, this is not about enhancing a reputation for stomping arrogant bullies into blogospheric smithereens. (See Why It's Not a "Blog War.") Polemical skill aside, there is indeed an educational purpose, and the real lesson is about what actually caused the Madness of King Charles.

Charles Johnson, Humanitarian?
Perhaps the only book I have recommended more the The Best. Book. Evah! is Thomas Sowell's The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy, arguably the clearest examination of modern liberal ideology ever written.

What Sowell explains (here I distill a complex argument to its essence, in my own words) is that liberals are latter-day Pharisees, their worldview deformed by a desire to think of themselves are morally and intellectual superior, and to be recognized as such by others. This is the flattering temptation to which Charles Johnson has so spectacularly succumbed.

Whereas I have gone out of my way to maintain a bad reputation -- "The bottom layer of the right-wing noise machine," to quote Glenn Greenwald -- by vehemently defending such enemies of the Left as Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter and Mark Levin, while boasting of being a greedy capitalist ("I Write For Money"), Charles Johnson has decided to seek the comforting self-delusions of the bien-pensant. In November 2008, Pamela Geller quoted a couple of CJ's typically hyterical outbursts:

I've learned recently that neo-fascists are much more prominent in conservative circles than I had previously realized. There are other well-known pundits who are sympathetic to the fascists, too -- I've drastically revised my opinion of more than a few people, e.g. Diane West, Richard Miniter, and several others. . . .
I'm now getting hate mail from Andrew Bostom, who believes we should all be joining forces with European white nationalists, calling me all kinds of names and insults.
It's an eye-opener about Bostom.

No, Charles, it was an "eye-opener" about you. To accept your fear-mongering would require us to believe that, inter alia, Orianna Falacci, Pim Fortuyn, Phyllis Chesler, Mark Steyn and Brigitte Bardot have been guilty of "joining forces with European white nationalists." As I've said before, when Vlaams Belang starts flying jetliners into skyscrapers, then I'll start worrying about the Flemish Menace.

At some point, Charles, your cut-and-paste Ransom Note Method attacks on conservatives and your Six Degrees Of Guilt-By-Association games have the cumulative impact of preventing effective cooperation for the defense of Western civilization against its two most powerful and active enemies, violent Islamist extremism and the Left. (The "Unholy Alliance," as David Horowitz has called it.)

And all because you, Charles Foster Johnson, couldn't admit that Pamela Geller knew more about the European anti-jihad movement than your commenter "Dave of Sweden." So you've backstabbed all your former friends. Now Rusty Shackleford and Ace of Spades are laughing their asses off at your expense, and you find yourself utterly and embarrassingly alone, the disgraced laughingstock of the blogosphere. Maybe you should ask "Dave of Sweden" for some help, Charles.

BTW, how's that "praying to Nothing" working out for you?

The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God.
-- Psalm 14:1 (KJV)

Because I do not covet a reputation as a selfless humanitarian philanthropist, here's the customary reminder that I am a greedy capitalist blogger: Please hit the tip jar!

Chlanna nan con thigibh a so’s gheibh sibh feoil!

UPDATE: Trying to avoid the Lizard King's obsessed-with-commenters attitude, I'll take up a couple of points raised below. Estragon comments:

His anti-Christian rhetoric had escalated well before any of these recent incidents, as had his tendency to choose enemies on the right and ban posters who failed to toe the company line 100%. This has been building for a couple of years, at least.

OK, a "couple of years" -- as I said, Charles went after Geller in October 2007, but if you mean a couple of years before that, I'd be interested in seeing examples of CJ's anti-Christian attitude circa 2005-06.

One thing I've discussed before, which I've noticed ever since becoming an ex-Democrat circa 1994-96, is the GOP elite's tendency to blame their conservative grassroots, most especially the Religious Right, for every defeat. This was true after Bob Dole (who was never a limited-government conservative or a darling of the Religious Right) lost the 1996 presidential election, a defeat that Christopher Caldwell perversely blamed on rednecks and which prompted David Brooks' idiotic "National Greatness."

And, though I swear I'm not succumbing to Chronic Degenerative Lizardmania, Estragon also uses "libertarian" to describe Johnson's ideology. This is an abuse of the term "libertarian" that I've usually heard from Republicans (surely the commenter "Estragon" cannot be the former TPM blogger?) who use it to mean "soft" on abortion, gay rights, etc.

However, I'm pro-life and oppose the cultural Marxists who call themselves the "gay rights movement," yet I have a strong libertarian tendency vis-a-vis free markets and limited government. I am an Austrian in economics -- i.e., a devotee of Mises and Hayek -- and a Madisonian (e.g., Federalist #10) in politics.

Describing LGF as "libertarian" would get you a furious argument from most Austrians, including the Rothbard/Rockwell types associated with the Mises Institute, who opposed the Bush war policy that Charles Johnson supported, as well as from many Madisonians who share Ron Paul's staunch opposition to Big Government. (Lots of Paulistas in the Tea Party movement.) And, hey, Don't Blame Me, I Voted For Bob Barr!

Meanwhile, over at Right Wing News, I share my own views of the strictly political content of LGF's descent into madness:

It is possible to analyze Johnson’s bizarre attacks from a political viewpoint. He was apparently a "9/11 liberal": Someone with no previous involvement in conservative politics who was alarmed by the radical Left's treacherous attempt to undermine America's military response to Islamist terrorism. Nothing wrong with such patriotic sentiment in time of war -- it would be nice if more liberals felt that way -- but it is not to be confused with conservatism.
After Republicans blundered away their congressional majority and the war in Iraq became increasingly unpopular, Johnson's liberal views on domestic politics -- and perhaps even more than that, his intense animosity toward traditional Judeo-Christian belief -- evidently drew him back toward the Democratic Party. Thus, in recent months, he has repeatedly lashed out against Glenn Beck and the “Tea Party” movement.

Ruby Slippers links us in the comments at a Hot Air thread featuring Mark Levin's interview with Stephen Smith -- yet more right-wing raaaaacism! -- with a lot of LGF-related discussion by the commenters.

We also get some much-appreciated linky-love from Adrienne's Catholic Corner who informs us (without linking LGF) that Mad King Charles is on a new crusade. Now he's attacking "the Christian far right -- the extreme fundamentalists behind much of the home-schooling movement -- and their almost total withdrawal from American culture," for which he cites as his authority fellow Obama idolator Frank Schaeffer.

This accusation is perversely ironic for several reasons. First of all, anyone who opposes home-schooling automatically forfeits any claim to be libertarian. I'm a home-schooling father of six, which made me a natural ally of VodkaPundit and Michelle Malkin in supporting the Sept. 8 boycott of the Obama Mass Indoctrination (which was opposed by Allah and CJ).

Secondly, if you want to see what "total withdrawal from American culture" looks like, go watch some of the PJTV interviews with Charles Johnson that Smitty linked earlier. If sitting around feeding your 24/7 paranoiac obsession with blog commenters is "American culture," then I guess my confident, outgoing children -- all hail the mighty Brick Squad! -- are freaks. (Of CJ's recent madness, one Christian blogger recently e-mailed to tell to me, "It's demon possession, straight up." Don't know if that was before or after seeing those videos of pale, nervous, shifty-eyed Charles.)

As I've said before, Charles Johnson seems to live a hermit's existence. He is rumored to be so introverted as to be anti-social, even misanthropic. If Mad King Charles hates populism -- and is he fixated on that 9/12 rally, or what? -- maybe it's because he hates people.

By contrast, I'm a notorious party animal, especially when I'm hanging out with friends like Ann Coulter. And I just got a helpful Facebook note from that notorious member of the "Christian far right," Baldilocks. Remember, there are five A's in raaaaacism!

Andrew Jackson's mother advises this response to Charles Johnson's lies

"Meanwhile, white supremacist blogger Robert Stacy McCain (new darling of the right wing blogs) is attacking again. No linkies for him."
-- Charles Johnson, Little Green Footballs, Sept. 15, 2009

"Never tell a lie, nor take what is not your own, nor sue anybody for slander, assault and battery. Always settle them cases yourself."
-- Andrew Jackson, recalling his mother's advice

Charles Johnson's gutless passive-aggressive act -- outrageously libeling me, trying to prevent me from reporting on the 9/12 March on DC, and then falsely claiming that I am attacking him -- has been permitted to continue too long. Honest people are now compelled by simple decency to denounce him as the craven, sadistic liar he is.

Contrary to anything Mad King Charles may tell his dwindling pool of yet-to-be-banned readers in their "private" discussions, this engagement began when Johnson attacked my friend Pamela Geller for her attendance at the October 2007 Brussels conference. Though I was not involved in that dispute, as I told Pamela in a brief phone conversation this morning, I now regret that I did not immediately leap to her defense.

Pamela Geller is a brave woman who can fight her own battles without my aid, but by the time I finally spoke up -- in November 2008 -- Charles had already irrevocably committed himself to the disgraceful campaign by which he has since destroyed his own reputation and influence:

Charles Johnson at Little Green Footballs has apparently decided that the problem with the conservative movement is that it needs more purges, and Pam Geller at Atlas Shrugs seems to be his designated scapegoat. . . .
Pam is a good person and I would suggest that this guilt-by-association "urge to purge" is antithetical to the best interests of conservatism. You can't build a movement by the process of subtraction.

Now that Mad King Charles is so obviously lost beyond any hope of redemption, I blame only myself. If I had been paying attention in 2007, rather than selfishly absorbed with minding my own business, perhaps I could have intervened at the outset. Had I been vigilant and dutiful, I would have warned Charles against poisoning his mind by giving heed to duplicitous and/or ignorant creatures like LGF commenter "Dave of Sweden," who were maligning the friends of liberty in Europe.

Word to the wise: Beware the advice of Internet trolls. A cautious attitude toward anonymous sources is something every journalist must learn sooner or later. If someone is peddling materials attacking someone else, and asks you not to tell anyone where it came from, you must consider the motives of the attacker.

Consider why such attackers are always intent on conducting their business secretly -- protecting their own anonymity -- and ask whether you wish to lend your name and reputation to pursuing someone else's private vendetta. (Hint: Before Trig-Truther "Audrey" and her friends blame me, they need to ask themselves who she pissed off before she became "Audrey." It wasn't the Palins, who had nothing at all to do with the investigative reporting Dan Riehl and I did.)

Only Fighters Need Apply
Say what you will about Pamela Geller, she is not afraid of a fight. And what the conservative movement needs now -- far more than we need ideological unity among intellectuals or would-be intellectuals -- is people who are not afraid of a fight.

The Chicago Way has come to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, and if anybody in the conservative movement doesn't know what that means, they need to stop hitting the snooze button and wake the hell up. A few months ago, I read an account of how Rahm Emanuel -- now President Obama's chief of staff -- masterminded the Democrats' 2006 mid-term congressional victory. From my May 26 American Spectator column:

Emanuel's tenure as chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee during the 2006 election cycle is the model Republicans must attempt to reverse-engineer if they hope to regain power in Washington anytime soon. And Republicans are never going to succeed if they listen to those who tell them the reason they've been losing elections is that the GOP is too "mean-spirited." . . .
Rahm Emanuel . . . unloads f-bomb barrages as remorselessly as the RAF pounded Dresden . . .
Emanuel is a hard-driving Chicagoan ("intense+Rahm+Emanuel" = 46,800 Google results) who takes pride in the brutal effectiveness of his political tactics. . . .
In summer 2006, accusations of shady dealings by Democratic Rep. Al Mollohan of West Virginia threatened to wreck Emanuel's message that Republicans had a monopoly on corruption. And if an incumbent Democrat were defeated, that would change the math on Emanuel's strategy to recapture a House majority.
How did Emanuel rescue Mollohan? By calling the incumbent's Republican rival a liar. The GOP challenger had been in the military during Operation Desert Storm in 1991 and called himself a "Gulf War veteran," although he hadn't deployed overseas. Emanuel seized on this and had DCCC staffers push it to reporters. "We need that story," Emanuel said. "It's all about Al Mollohan unless we come up with something." The result? "Mollohan Foe Battles Résumé Charges," said the headline on a news story by Roll Call's John Bresnahan. Other publications followed suit, effectively changing the subject -- exactly the outcome Emanuel sought. Was this unfair? Ask Emanuel that question, and you'll get a two-word response. (Hint: The second word will be "you.")

Charles Johnson deserves nothing but the same two-word response from any conservative. His conduct for the past two years has been, in a word, dishonorable.

"No linkies for him," indeed! As if any honest man need fear such a miserable coward as Charles Johnson.

In April of this year, Charles Johnson smeared Pamela Geller as a "Poster Girl for Eurofascists." Calling a proudly Jewish woman an advocate of fascism? Madness. This was a continuation of his months of attacks on Pamela and Robert Spencer for having attended the October 2007 Brussels Conference, and for her subsequent defense of those courageous Europeans waging a desperate struggle against the alliance of the Left and Islamofascists. (David Horowitz has described that "Unholy Alliance.")

The Sissy King of LGF
Two days after the "Poster Girl for Eurofascists" smear, Charles Johnson threatened Michelle Malkin (!) for having linked in her "Buzzworthy" sidebar feed to Robert Spencer's Jihad Watch. Trying to end a potentially damaging conflict among conservatives, I wrote:

Is there someone -- anyone -- who can stop this madness? As previously noted, I ignored the dustup between LGF, Geller and Robert Spencer for months, hoping it would fade into insignificance. It was only because of Johnson's continued ax-grinding against them that I mentioned it in November, and it was only because he went after Ann Coulter in February that I began paying more attention.

All I wanted was for Charles to end his malevolent campaign of character assassination against conservatives.

It is important to note that, from the very outset of this affair in October 2007, Charles has always been the aggressor, attacking others, doing everything in his power to destroy the reputations of decent people who never wished him ill, and then -- when they objected to his repeated libels -- dishonestly claiming that they were attacking him.

Clearly, the man has succumbed to a narcissistic personality trait that is all too common among weaklings. As his habit of successively banishing nearly all of his commenters clearly shows, Johnson is a control freak, incapable of tolerating disagreement. He will heed no counsel of caution and reacts with fury to the slightest hint of criticism. Trustful only of those who flatter him, he is suspicious of strangers and envious of the merits of others.

The character of a deceitful backstabber -- weakling, bully, coward, liar --is a species of sociopathic evil which, in real life, wise men know and avoid. But remembering Steiner's Law ("On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog") we see how long Charles Johnson succeeded in pretending to be what he never was, nor could ever be. He lacks not only sound judgment, but also honesty, courtesy and courage.

Every conservative blog must defend itself against trolls -- i.e., you don't have the right to use my bandwidth against me -- and Professor Glenn Reynolds doesn't even allow comments at Instapundit. However, Mad King Charles has let his authority over commenters tempt him into megalomania.

It has been years since Charles has done anything that could rightly be called "reporting." He himself does almost nothing, and never anything constructive, original or genuinely helpful. This has turned LGF into the Kommenter Kidz Klub, over which Mad King Charles reigns as the despotic overlord. Without any warning, he will banish commenters merely for linking the "wrong" source or referencing some story he wishes to ignore.

This dictatorial attitude is a surefire formula for blogospheric oblivion. I despise the New York Times as an institution of Evil (with a capital "E") and yet, if they report something I want to quote, I have no trouble giving them the linky-love -- or linky-hate, as is more often the case. And occasionally, they give a little back.

Mad King Charles did not attack me until I defended Pamela against his vicious lies, and let us not neglect to observe that chief among his targets have been three women -- Geller, Coulter and Malkin. If Charles Johnson were a Sioux, his tribal name would have to be "Fights With Girls."

Should Mad King Charles wish to begin describing me as a "homophobic white supremacist blogger," let him do so immediately, for certainly I am not alone in the suspicion that he is getting in touch with his inner Andrew Sullivan. NTTAWWT. IYKWIMAITYD.

Pray to Nothing, Charles
Having extensively defended myself since Sunday (see here, here and here, just for starters), I noticed Monday -- see: Charles Johnson 'making even Andrew Sullivan and Markos Moulitsas look sane' -- that Da Tech Guy had commented:

McCain has been countering and putting up a good defense here in Round 2, but has yet to shift to offense, as we’ve seen in the Griffin and Audrey fights. McCain tends to mount his offense in mid to late rounds but they simply overpower their opponents.

Very perceptive, sir. When a man knows that he has been falsely maligned by a worthless fool, he can be confident of the outcome against his overmatched antagonist, and there is no need for haste. Being vilely insulted by Political Cesspool's James Edwards . . . well, I'll worry later about that minor distraction. Surely the SPLC's attacks have rendered my right flank impregnably secure and, as my old music buddy Haywood Tucker told me yesterday, the Lord knows who I am.

Haywood's praying for me, as are others. Charles Johnson hates God, and he hates all those who believe in God. As I once advised the atheist anti-Palin blogger Jesse Griffin:

Speaking of prayer, Griffin, on your blog you say you're an atheist. Maybe you should pray to Nothing and see if that helps.

Well, guess what? When you pray to Nothing, the results are predictable. A God-fearing man may suffer terrible wrongs, yet has the comfort of knowing that God's grace is constant. The God-hater suffers far more painfully, for when his destruction draws nigh and he is predictably abandoned by his phony two-faced "friends," he suffers alone. In such circumstances, the unrepentant atheist inevitably proves a vicious liar and a coward, like Charles Johnson.

Behold, God's Mighty Warrior
I have often urged readers to purchase Sam Childers' remarkable book, Another Man's War. Sam is a mighty warrior for God. As I told him over breakfast one morning, "Sam, you're going to be an action figure." And I meant that quite literally.

That was February 2008. Eighteen months later, the film deal has been signed, and I'll bet every leading man in Hollywood has his agent begging for the part of Pastor Sam Childers. When the movie becomes a box-office sensation, Sam will be like Indiana Jones or Luke Skywalker. Little boys and girls will be begging their mothers to buy them the Happy Meal so they can get the Sam Childers action figure.

Sam risked everything -- his fortune, his friendships, his family, his reputation, even his very life -- to build an orphanage in Sudan. And he very nearly lost everything, more than once, yet he remained faithful. He has been through that dark valley of the 23rd Psalm, he has seen times when it was just him and the Lord, and whatever struggles he must now endure, the favor of God is upon him.

Buy Another Man's War, and study Sam's life. When he was a young hoodlum, when he was an outlaw biker, when he was a shotgunner for drug dealers, Sam learned all that any man needs to know about fighting. He never suspected that one day, God would call him to use those skills to save the lives of children in Uganda and Sudan.

Sam is not about politics. He is not a Republican or a Democrat. He has no ideology but the gospel of Christ. After interviewing him, seeing the work he does, and studying his character, I told him, "Sam, you're a natural-born libertarian." But that's just an intellectual label, and Sam is not about words or labels. He is a man of action.

Let the intellectuals sneer at him, the son of a Pennsylvania steelworker, but you must know this one thing: If it ever comes to a fight, bet on Sam Childers. You throw the first punch against Sam, and you'd better be ready to kill him, because he won't stop fighting so long as he has the strength left to fight. And if Sam ever decides to throw the first punch . . . Dude. Don't even ask.

Sam is an easygoing, friendly guy by nature, happy to serve the Lord and willing to help anyone who needs help. Having seen Sam angry, however, I promise you that you don't ever want to make Sam angry.

Just Keep Digging, Charlie!
All of this I explain not to praise Sam -- who has no need of my praise -- but rather by way of explaining why, when I came under attack from LGF, my response may have struck some readers as an expression arrogance:

Charles Johnson will regret it but once,
and that will be continuously

Because I am a professional journalist, this was not a threat, but a statement of objective fact. Within 48 hours of his infamous assault on my character, Johnson reaped the consequences of his own maniacal hatefulness, bringing upon himself disasters independent of anything I had done. LGF was delinked by Power Line and Charles burnt one of his few remaining bridges to conservatives by de-linking Pajamas Media.

Johnson was unconscionably wrong in attacking Pamela Geller and her friends. However, because he refused to admit or recant his error, he committed himself to a path of unjust vengeance against the innocent. In the process, he revealed himself to be a creature of unscrupulous cruelty, an immoral monster who can never expect anything but contempt from civilized people.

There is a God in heaven, and the man who spitefully chooses to pursue unrighteousness will ultimately destroy himself. Therefore, wise men observe the madness of King Charles and shake their heads sadly, knowing what the final outcome must be.

Charles Johnson is already in a very deep hole and, at the frantic pace he's digging now, can be expected to reach the fiery pit of hell no later than next Thursday.

Bon voyage!

UPDATE (Smitty):
Linked at Jaded Haven. Thanks, Daphne!

UPDATE II (Smitty):
Also picked up at Bonzai. Thanks, mate!

UPDATE III (Smitty):
SI VIS PACEM says CJ has pulled a Sully.

UPDATE IV (Smitty):
The Fabulous Pamela links us and brings the Rifqa Bary angle. Pamela packs more heat in her little toe than everything Charles can muster.

UPDATE V (Smitty):
Fishersvill Mike completes the phrase "Little Green" with "Apples". Why do you hate fruit, Mike?

UPDATE VI (Smitty):
Dennis the Peasant links Pamela's Downfall treatment from mid-April. New to me, quite well done.

UPDATE VII (Smitty):
Linked by one lonely Troglopundit in Wisconsin who seeks abuse. Apparently an erroneous reference to his metrosexuality was insufficient.

UPDATE IX (Smitty):
NOVA Townhall picks it up. This post is going to turn into a mini-FMJRA Real Soon Now.

UPDATE X (Smitty):
Fish Fear Me takes us back to single Roman numerals. But is Charles Johnson a fish?

UPDATE XI (Smitty):
Carol's Closet turns it up to 11. Now, were she given a choice between a free Spinal Tap and Obamacare, would there be an apparent difference? Never mind, I wouldn't wish either on anyone. Even Charles Johnson. A cluebat, now...

UPDATE XII (Smitty):
The Daley Gator makes a dozen in the parade of support.

UPDATE XIII (Smitty):
Saber Point makes it a baker's dozen. Thanks, Stogie!

UPDATE XIV (RSM): At last, Charles Johnson exposes the real neo-Nazi: HIMSELF!

Point One: Charles Johnson doesn't know me from Adam's housecat

His attack on me at LGF is a classic "ransom note method" attack -- the assembling of this, that and the other to create a collage, like a kidnapper glueing together words clipped from magazines.

In February, I described the ransom-note method in examining an SPLC attack on Ann Coulter. The term was subsequently picked up by others, and I later explained -- in reference to an attack on Rush Limbaugh for his "I hope he fails" remark -- how such attacks distort meaning:

Limbaugh, as he made clear from the outset, was responding to a "major American print publication" which was "asking a handful of very prominent politicians, statesmen, scholars, businessmen, commentators, and economists to write 400 words on their hope for the Obama presidency."
The fact that Limbaugh's "I hope he fails" was a response to such an insipid inquiry -- this newspaper was actually framing their inaugural commentary in terms of "Hope," the Obama campaign's own propaganda slogan -- has received too little attention. One of the basic tactics of the Ransom-Note Method is to separate the stimulus from the response in this manner. In other words, someone sees or hears something outrageous, says or writes something outrageous in response, and the smear merchants then isolate the response, so that it is presented without adequate reference to whatever stimulus produced it.

You may read the whole thing there. A little Ransom-Note Method, a little guilt-by-association and -- voila! -- you might actually believe I was a hateful nutjob like Jeremiah Wright.

But I've never met Charles Johnson, nor have I ever met Mark Potok, Heidi Beirich, Michelangelo Signorile, or Duncan "Atrios" Black. So the first thing you should know about Charles Johnson -- besides the fact that he argues like a liberal, using second-hand arguments borrowed from liberals -- is that he doesn't know me at all. Like my various liberal critics, he presumes himself so superior as to be fit to judge a man he's never even met.

Do you subscribe to Charles Johnson supremacism? For that is the doctrine to be debated here. Charles Johnson believes himself superior to me, superior to VodkaPundit, superior to Ace of Spades, superior to Pamela Geller, superior to Robert Spencer -- indeed, superior even to God, whom Charles Johnson considers himself qualified to declare non-existent.

The starting point of any argument with Charles Johnson is the same as its conclusion, namely, the unquestionable superiority of Charles Johnson. Once you understand Point One, the rest is easy.

UPDATES:
Point Two: Charles Johnson is prejudiced, and subscribes to stereotypes
Point Three: Charles Johnson will regret it but once, and that will be continuously

Who is Kejda Gjermani? Is she actually LGF's 'Medaura'? And if so . . .?

My friend Sam Childers, a missionary to Africa, titled his book Another Man's War, and my appreciation for that title has been deepened in the past 12 days, since Charles Johnson began attacking me. This was not a fight I sought. I came to the defense of my friend Pamela Geller and have since found myself drawn into a long-running conflict which would have been in my personal best interests to ignore.

Which brings us to the subject of Kejda Gjermani, who joined the Little Green Footballs attack on me yesterday and replied to my defense by accusing me of "threatening" her:

All I need to know about you before I opine on you are your own statements and a list of people and organizations you are affiliated with.
Before you issue further threats, a word of caution: Research Robert Spencer’s exchanges with me. He has called me many unflattering an epithet and tried to shut me down. He has harassed my employer with seething e-mails. But he is worse for wear. My research on him has brought to his reputation ruin from which he may never recover. The only reason I have not taken him down even further is because he bores me.
You, sir, do not wish to become my target if you have skeletons in your closet.

Gjermani does not "opine" on me, but asserts flatly that I am a "white supremacist." Understand that I've been a professional journalist for 23 years, so I know libel law inside and out.

When I call Charles Johnson a cowardly lying crazy fool, that is not actionable (besides which, truth is an ironclad defense). American libel law does not protect anyone from verbal abuse. However unbecoming it is for a professional journalist to engage in such behavior, it's not libel. If I were to state as a fact that Charles Johnson has sodomized Thai child prostitutes, that would be actionable. (Note that this is a hypothetical; I have no interest in or knowledge of Charles Johnson's sexual interests or activities.)

One of the most important points in this engagement is that since October 2007, Charles Johnson has accepted the credibility of LGF's pseudonymous commenters (e.g., "Dave of Sweden") attacking Geller, etc., without making any evident independent effort to verify these charges.

Is Vlaams Belang "fascist"? I can't even pretend to know that. I've never set foot in Belgium, I don't know any Belgians, and everything I know about the political sympathies of Vlaams Belang would therefore be second-hand at best. An old reporter's motto: "If your mother says she loves you, check it out." No one has offered to pay my way to investigate extremism in Europe, and I claim no authority on the subject.

Are Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer (Diana West, Richard Miniter, et al.) fascist sympathizers, as Charles Johnson has repeatedly alleged? All four of the individuals named are persons known to me, and I am utterly certain that these allegations against them are false. That Robert Spencer may have an unfortunate habit of sending "seething e-mails" (a temptation to which I have at times yielded myself) is known to me, but does not cause me to suspect him of being a crypto-fascist.

If I know that Charles Johnson has lied about people whom I know, and whose bona fides I have no reason to doubt, the question arises as to Johnson's motive. As I have repeatedly pointed out, Johnson has become obsessed with his commenters, promoting their contributions to his blog, and relentlessly purging those who question these accusations against Geller, et al.

Considering how accepting at face value the accusations of pseudonymous commenters has played such a large part in the Madness of King Charles, I am hesitant to do the same. However, a commenter on a previous post suggested that Gjermani is the LGF contributor "Medaura" who, in May, was subject of a post at the ex-Lizard site Blogmocracy:

Charles Johnson is the gift that keeps on giving, his new target: Michael Savage. As I posted earlier Savage has been banned from the UK. This is bogus as the UK allows Islamist groups to operate on its soil. Charles agrees with the banning and even lumps in Savage, who is Jewish with Neo-Nazi Don Black. Savage hates Nazis and Fascists, but Charles thinks anyone who stands against Islam and for America is a Nazi. . . .
But wait it gets really better, now The Militant Albanian Islamist Medaura chimes in.
Medaura was one the reasons LGF went down. She came in and spread Albanian/Al Qaeda propaganda against the Serbs. She also instigated the Charles-Robert Spencer split. Now if anyone on LGF supports Serbia’s struggle against Islamo-Fascism, they get banned.

Cited in that Blogmocracy article was this comment by "Medaura":

361 medaura18586 5/05/09 10:37:49 am
Savage is nothing but a conceited fuck, and while I don’t listen to his show enough to know whether he has advocated violence on air, I know he has supported genocide and attempted genocide in Bosnia and Kosovo, respectively. That’s good enough for me

Read the whole thing. Accusing Michael Savage of advocating genocide in Bosnia and Kosovo? To borrow from Marc Anthony's funeral oration for Caesar, if Kejda Gjermani is indeed "Medaura," it is a grievous fault, and grievously shall she answer it. See Robert Spencer's writings on the subject of "Medaura," Kejda, and the KLA.

Yet I cannot vouch for this commenter's assertion that Kejda is "Medaura." Please see my comment (2:09 p.m. 9/23) on the Green Room LGF thread:

It is an elementary mistake of logic to suppose that any particular fact you know (or think you know) is the only fact relevant to a controversy. In a universe of facts, the numerous facts you don’t know may be far more important than you think. This is the Hayekian insight, with which you ought to acquaint yourself.

Read the whole thing. Hey, I'm just askin' questions.

UPDATE 6 p.m.: Conservative lesbian Cynthia Yockey:

Is Kejda Gjermani working as a concern troll to support Islamic jihad?
Charles Johnson -- and his minions, including Kejda Gjermani -- are, (1) forcing legitimate anti-jihadists to defend themselves non-stop so they can't do any work against the Islamic jihad against the West, AND (2), put such a fog of complicated accusations on them that it is almost impossible for their prospective supporters and allies to recognize them as allies.
Another technique that Kejda Gjermani seems to be using is the pose of the "concern troll."
I learned about "concern trolls" in the fall of 2008 from HillBuzz, which was a regular target of the Obama campaign's paid trolls. They operate by feigning agreement and support, but then express fears and concerns with the objective of demoralizing the blogger and his or her readers. This is consistent with the persuasion model employed by sociopaths: say one thing, do another. Kejda Gjermani may say she opposes Islamic jihad against the West and just wants to purify the European and North American anti-jihad movement of people she claims oppose jihad for the wrong reasons -- racism, fascism, whatever. Never mind the reality that she -- and Charles Johnson -- are destroying the reputations of jihad’s legitimate opponents like Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer and thwarting their efforts against the Islamic jihad against the West. . . .

Read the whole thing. Meanwhile, we note this from former LGF admirer Brian Ledbettter at Snapped Shot:

Once again, we can conclusively show that Charles Johnson cares not for the facts when they're found to be inconvenient to him.

Frankly, Brian, at this point, I fear that the Madness of King Charles is so far gone that he wouldn't even recognize a fact if you showed it to him. And I have replied to Wild Irish Rose.

Standing at mid-ring, I await the bell . . .

Point Two: Charles Johnson is prejudiced, and subscribes to stereotypes

Johnson's attack on me at LGF depends largely on convincing his readers that, because I am an obstreperous Southerner . . . well, nudge, nudge. You know how those people are.

Except when they aren't. I've sometimes had occasion to warn my fellow Southerners not to imagine they can defend the South halfway, or be a "moderate" defender of the South.

People who hate the South -- and I think Charles Johnson might fit that description -- will not permit you the leisure of merely saying, "Well, we're not all bad." They will insult you and goad you until you feel the temptation . . . well, remember when Zell Miller wished he could challenge Chris Matthews to a duel?

No Southerner should ever think he will be allowed to defend his homeland and her people without being insulted for it. If you're going to defend the South, you must be prepared to defend it down to the last boll weevil on the scraggliest cotton patch in front of the most decrepit tar-paper shack in Mississippi.

So widespread is anti-Southern prejudice, especially among the intellectual elite, that the man who presumes to defend the South might as well begin by foreswearing any further ambition in life. Assume at the outset that you will be denounced and castigated and exiled to outer darkness, and resolve that this daunting prospect will not deter you from your duty.

Ask yourself this, my Southern friend: Who are these people who insult you, your friends and your family? Why does it give them so much pleasure to insult you? And why do they imagine that you will let the insult pass by unnoticed?

Does Charles Johnson suppose that I am a coward? Or that I am too stupid to understand when I am being insulted? Does he believe himself so infinitely superior to me that I cannot hold my own in debate with him?

At one point in what he imagines to be an indefeasible attack on me, Johnson quotes one sentence from a speech I made to a Sons of Confederate Veterans camp in 2003. Permit me to quote a little more of that:

Some people desire to wish away the past, or to revise history to fit the passions and politics of the present. Forgetting seems to be the most popular course; surveys show that mere fractions of Americans today know even the most basic facts about the war, or about any history at all, for that matter. If Americans are intent upon a general amnesia, I suppose we must be regarded as spoilsports for insisting that they remember at least part of our past. An America that knows nothing of Saratoga or Brandywine or Yorktown will be annoyed that we scold them for forgetting Sharpsburg, Chancellorsville and Franklin.

So I began, you see, by pointing out the widespread ignorance of history, a problem the SCV is pledged to fight against. Subsequently, I observed that this kind of ignorance is certainly not a new problem:

One of the more shocking claims of our radical adversaries is that, in commemorating our Confederate ancestors, we are somehow "un-American." But this is nothing new. The Union cause attracted to itself numerous German revolutionaries who had fled to America after collapse of the European uprisings of 1848. Though they had left the Fatherland behind, these Germans had not abandoned their radicalism, and so were among the most militant of Yankees. Professor Clyde Wilson reminds us of an encounter between one of these German radicals and Confederate General Richard Taylor. In his elegant memoir, "Destruction and Reconstruction," General Taylor recalled the occasion in 1865 when the duty fell to him to surrender the last Confederate army east of the Mississippi River. At Union headquarters, a German, wearing the uniform of a Yankee general and speaking in heavily accented English, lectured General Taylor that now that the war was over, Southerners would be taught "the true American principles." To which General Taylor -- the son of Zachary Taylor --- replied that he regretted that his grandfather, an officer in the Revolution, and his father, President of the United States, had not passed on to him these "true American principles."
Ironic, yes? Just as ironic that those of us who today remember General Taylor and his fellow Confederates are denounced as un-American by people whose ideas of "true American principles" are derived not from the Founders, but from radical intellectuals and foreign philosophers whose ideologies were unknown to Washington, Jefferson and Madison. They accuse us of "hate," when in fact we are motivated by love, love for our ancestors, and love for the America they created. Worse still, when provoked, these radicals will even compare our ancestors to Nazis. My father was wounded within an inch of his life while fighting the Nazis in France. Who are these people to tell such insulting lies about my ancestors?

My father served honorably, as had his grandfather, Winston Wood Bolt, an illiterate farmboy who fought as a private in the 13th Alabama Regiment and was captured at Gettysburg.

Southerners aren't prone to back down from a fight -- Sen. James Webb (D-Va.) wrote an interesting book on this subject called Born Fighting -- and an admiration for stubborn tenacity in conflict explains one thing some people don't understand about me.

Why do I always stick up for people like Ann Coulter, Mark Levin, Michelle Malkin, Mark Steyn and Kathy Shaidle? Because they fight. And the harder they're attacked, the harder they fight. What's more, because they do not flinch under attack, they fight and win, and every victory makes them stronger.

The kind of fighters I admire are smart enough to distinguish friends from enemies. Malkin or Coulter might criticize a squishy member of the Republican "jellyfish caucus" from the right, but they spend most of their time attacking liberals. This habit makes them valuable conservative allies.

Charles Johnson . . . eh, not so much:

• Attacking Matt Kibbe as a "Naderite."
• Attacking Ron Paul supporters as a "cult."
• Attacking crowd estimates at "some right-wing blogs."
• Attacking pro-lifers and Second Amendment activists.

Note: Charles Johnson was not there. I was. And so were lots of people from Virginia, North Carolina, Texas, Georgia . . . oh, wait. I forgot. All Southerners are ignorant racists, right, Charles?

So never mind the people who attended from Ohio, New York, Arizona, Pennsylvania, Colorado, Idaho -- you get the picture. Charles Johnson sits in front a computer whining because nobody's acknowleding his superiority, while I'm out busting my ass to report this story, and when VodkaPundit uses my reporting, this results in Charles accusing Vodka of being in league with the (Southern raaaaacist) Devil.

Except Charles Johnson doesn't believe in the Devil. He also doesn't believe in God, because the only deity Charles Johnson acknowledges is himself. He is omniscient and omnipotent, and your refusal to bow down to him is blasphemy.

Kind of like Obama, really.

PREVIOUSLY:
Point One: Charles Johnson doesn't know me from Adam's housecat
Point Three: Charles Johnson will regret it but once, and that will be continuously

Victor Davis Hanson: 'How many people in America want to be called a racist?'

Professor Hanson posed that rhetorical question to me during an August 2003 interview (full text of the 1,200-word feature below) after he published Mexifornia, a book for which he was, naturally, condemned as a "racist."

Racism has replaced blasphemy of the Holy Spirit as the unforgiveable sin in 21st-century America, and Hanson's good-faith effort to discuss the real problems of his native California were, naturally, greeted with accusations of mala fides from defenders of the indefensible status quo which was even then threatening California with bankruptcy.

Given this background, then, I was perplexed by Professor Hanson's reaction to LGF's war against Pamela Geller, Robert Spencer, their European friends and American supporters:

Some bloggers sent me postings the other day about Charles Johnson's Little Green Footballs website, and suggested that the site has changed -- as in flipped sides. I have not followed the controversy, but I once rode a bike down in LA for an afternoon with Johnson and found him both a serious and bright guy with all sorts of original ideas about radical Islam and the anti-Enlightenment dangers it posed.
Out of curiosity I went to the site today. All I discovered different was a change in emphasis, but not necessarily attitude. He still is strongly anti-jihad; the difference is that he now worries just as much about creationism, paleo-right tribalism, and the white supremacists' piggy-banking onto efforts to stop radical Islam. Those are legitimate worries for any liberal (as in 19th-century liberal) minded. (Emphasis added.)

What interests me here is Professor Hanson's apparent assumption that Johnson (or anyone else, for that matter) is so solidy positioned in a stable center of 19th-century liberalism as to function as an infallible arbiter between the "anti-Enlightenment dangers" of radical Islam on the one hand and what Johnson would have us believe are the equally menacing forces of creationism, tribalism, etc., on the other.

Let us leave aside the question of whether The Flemish Menace or Beck's Legions are as dangerous as al-Qaeda. Nor should we be distracted, as I have tried to emphasize during this long engagement -- since I first came to Pamela Geller's defense in November 2008 -- by wondering if any particular figure involved in Vlaams Belang or Sweden Democrats is guilty of mala fides. Rather, the question is whether the judgment of Charles Johnson is sufficient to determine the motives of people he has never met.

Charles Johnson's assertion of his authority as a Platonic archon, deciding which "noble lies" are acceptable for consumption by the citizenry, has had several disastrous consquences, which Pamela Geller related to me in recent telephone conversation, impairing efforts to build a solid trans-Atlantic alliance to prevent the sort of cultural, social and political problems that Melanie Phillips summarizes under the title Londonistan.

This rather reminds me of an incident, recounted in David Horowitz's memoir, Radical Son, when he and Peter Collier finally parted ways with Robert Scheer at the radical journal Ramparts. The occasion was Scheer's dealings with Susan Sontag. The article in dispute was called "The Right Way to Love the Cuban Revolution."

What Johnson is asserting, it seems to me, is his supreme authority on "The Right Way to Love Western Civilization." Not only are creationists, paleo-right tribalists and white supremacist piggybackers disqualified from any role in this effort, but so also is anyone who questions Johnson's soundness of judgment in making these determinations.

Glenn Beck and Tea Party people are not loving Western Civilization in the "Right Way," according to Charles Johnson. Nor are Geller, Spencer, Diana West, Richard Miniter, Jim Hoft, Baldilocks, Pajamas Media, Michelle Malkin, Rush Limbaugh, etc. As I said early on in this engagement, the extremist ideology which Johnson demands that all of us must accept is Charles Johnson supremacism.

Well, Professor Hanson, here I must draw the line. Nothing that might be gained by acceding to this insulting demand could compensate the dishonor involved in abandoning so many friends who have in the past two years suffered from the wickedness of Charles Johnson, whose superiority I refuse to acknowledge. Kejda Gjermani, while keenly intelligent, is yet only 26 and deficient in the hard experience of life and long decades of study that might qualify her to dictate what are the appropriate "components of Americanism."

Not 10 feet from where I sit typing these words, in a frame on the wall of my home office, are the medals my father won while fighting for the liberty of Europe, including the Purple Heart from the German shrapnel that nearly ended his life in 1944. Yet God evidently desired that my father's life should be spared, and therefore it seems to me that a debt is owed, which honor forbids me to evade. Some things a man writes with tears in his eyes.

Immigration limitation
Californian examines issue politicians shun
By Robert Stacy McCain, THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Aug. 19, 2003
California is being transformed by "massive illegal immigration," says one fifth-generation resident. In neighboring Arizona, residents have formed armed militias to patrol the Mexican border.
From Maine to Iowa to North Carolina, small-town residents are protesting what many call an "invasion" of immigrants. And some warn that terrorists are taking advantage of U.S. immigration policy.
One recent poll showed that 85 percent of Americans consider illegal immigration a "serious problem." That poll, conducted in March by Roper ASW, found that two-thirds of Americans would support reducing legal immigration to fewer than 300,000 newcomers a year, less than a third of the 1 million who came to the United States in 2002.
Immigration seems to be a concern everywhere except Washington, where -- except for the 66 members of the Congressional Immigration Reform Caucus -- neither Republicans nor Democrats appear interested in tackling the issue.
"How many people in America want to be called a racist?" Victor Davis Hanson says, when asked why politicians avoid the immigration issue. He answers his own question: "Not very many."
Being called a racist has been a new experience for Mr. Hanson in the two months since he published "Mexifornia: A State of Becoming."
A professor of classics at California State University at Fresno, Mr. Hanson is a military historian who says he reluctantly agreed to write a book about illegal immigration at the urging of his publisher.
He credits a "strange alliance" of special interests with stifling popular unrest about immigration. "You have the power of the employers that have a lot of money - meat-packing, restaurant business, agribusiness, hotels, construction. They like to have a perennial supply of cheap labor, all the better if it's illegal and it won't be able to organize or advocate for higher wages," Mr. Hanson says in a telephone interview.
"They're in alliance with the race industry on the left, [who] want a nonassimilated constituency. You put the two together and the people in the middle get drowned out."
Mr. Hanson, who will be the featured speaker at a forum on immigration today at the National Press Club, says defenders of the status quo distort the issue.
"The way the political climate is, the issue is never illegal immigration. It's always portrayed as one is against immigration per se, or is against a particular ethnic group," he says. "So when you try to talk about the need for legal, measured immigration, it's easy to caricature you as a nativist, a protectionist or whatever."
A decade ago, U.S. immigration policy was debated widely - 59 percent of California voters approved Proposition 187, the 1994 ballot initiative that limited public benefits for illegal aliens. But both President Clinton and Congress ignored the immigration reforms proposed in 1994 by a commission.
Since then the only significant attempt to change U.S. immigration policy was a 2001 Bush administration proposal to extend amnesty to some illegal aliens from Mexico. That plan was dropped after the September 11 terrorist attacks made immigration a national-security issue.
The immigration debate often pits conservatives against conservatives. When syndicated columnist Michelle Malkin pointed out that seven of the September 11 hijackers obtained fraudulent identification with the help of illegal immigrants in Virginia, she was criticized by the Wall Street Journal, which expressed concern that new restrictions might "upend the lives of Mexican nannies in San Diego."
Such internecine politics dismay Mr. Hanson, who notes that he's a registered Democrat.
"I love California, and I think it's going to implode if somebody doesn't talk about this issue," he says.
The immigration debate has spread nationwide in the past decade:

• In Iowa, many residents were outraged in 2001 after Democratic Gov. Tom Vilsack proposed making the state an "immigration enterprise zone" to attract foreign workers. Fort Dodge City Council member Greg Nolting was among those signing a petition of protest, saying the governor's plan would take the "bread off our table."


• In North Carolina, protesters have staged rallies chanting "Illegals go home" and holding signs proclaiming "Now swim back." In Chatham County, the Hispanic population increased by more than 700 percent in 10 years.


• In Maine, concerns were raised last year after more than 1,000 Somali refugees moved to Lewiston [population 36,000]. Many went directly onto welfare rolls. Schools were swamped with Somali children who spoke English as a second language. "The city had to adjust quickly to this arrival of a group of people who are clearly identifiable by their race and their dress, language and religion. They arrived in a fairly large group," said Lewiston resident Douglas Hodgkin, a retired professor of political science at Bates College. Rumors swirled that more refugees were on their way. In October, the town's mayor wrote a letter to Somali leaders, complaining: "This large number of new arrivals cannot continue without negative results for all." The Somalis responded by branding the mayor a "racist."

That's a familiar story to Mr. Hanson, whose book on California's immigration problem has met similar responses.
"People who like me say, 'Why would you do this? You're not a racist,' " says Mr. Hanson, whose Swedish ancestors settled in California's Central Valley more than a century ago. He says that if the United States "had 18 million illegal Swedes who couldn't speak English, I would be picking on Swedes."
He initially resisted offers to write a book on immigration.
"Myron Magnet at City Journal had heard I lived in the Central Valley, so he asked me to write an article about immigration," recalls Mr. Hanson, who still farms his family's land near Selma, Calif. "Peter Collier at Encounter Press read the article and asked if I would expand it [into a book]. It took him a lot of persuading. It's a no-win situation."
He says U.S. policy amounts to "rolling amnesty" for illegal aliens. "They have amnesty about every five or six years, without any reform or concessions from the Mexican government," Mr. Hanson says. "That's terrible message to people waiting five years to come legally to America from other countries."
In the state's recall campaign against Democratic Gov. Gray Davis, rival candidates are largely avoiding the immigration issue, although Mr. Hanson says most Californians know it is a major cause of the state's $38 billion deficit.
"You just can't pay any longer for people to just come across the border to use health care facilities, education facilities, law enforcement, social services. People understand it's just an outlay that's no longer sustainable."
After discussing his book on dozens of radio talk shows, where he says he has been criticized from both the right and the left, Mr. Hanson says he's tired of the issue.
"I'm not bashing immigrants, but the taxpayers of California cannot continue to fund entitlements at the present level, because the state's broke," he says, likening the issue to "the 800-pound gorilla in the living room that no one wants to talk about."

Remember: There are five A's in raaaaacism.

David Weigel reports on LGF

I noticed the bad blood between Little Green Footballs and Pam Geller many months ago, and said nothing about it at the time. Now Dave Weigel of Washington Independent -- perhaps the best young reporter in D.C. -- interviews LGF's Charles Johnson to get to the bottom of it all:

"I don't think I've changed," Johnson said. "I've always been pretty independent. This is something I've really tried to put out there on my blog. I don't consider myself right-wing." . . .
"I don't think there is an anti-jihadist movement anymore," Johnson said. "It's all a bunch of kooks. I've watch some people who I thought were reputable, and who I trusted, hook up with racists and Nazis. I see a lot of them promoting stories and causes that I think are completely nuts."

Read the whole thing. No blogger wants to get in a pissing match with Charles Johnson. It strikes me that, like a lot of people who jumped onto the Global War On Terror (GWOT) bandwagon after 9/11, Johnson's commitment to conservatism was very limited.

He was opposed to Code Pink and Cindy Sheehan and International ANSWER, and he supported George W. Bush over John Kerry. Evidently, however, Johnson cared nothing at all about opposing the Left as a political movement in general. In fact, he appears profoundly sympathetic to the Left's domestic policy aims. In this, he is no different than, say, John McCain. Or Meghan McCain, for that matter.

Somewhere several weeks ago -- I don't feel like looking it up now -- I wrote that it is a bad long-term strategy to base a political movement primarily on foreign policy. Wars come and go, alliances shift, old enemies fade and new enemies emerge and, quite frankly, most Americans don't give a damn about foreign countries unless they're at war with us.

Yet it cannot be denied that in 2002 and '04, the Republicans won chiefly by presenting themselves as the party of get-tough foreign policy, committed to taking the fight to the Islamofascist foe. The post-9/11 appeal to patriotism always had a certain "Remember the Maine!" quality to it, and it was effective only so long as the Democrats were committed to playing the "me too" game.

After the 2004 election, however, the Democratic grassroots stopped listening to their "leadership" in Washington. Instead, left-wing bloggers, MoveOn.org, and the new Soros-funded operations (Center for American Progress, Media Matters, etc.) set about fomenting a "choice not an echo" response to the Mehlman/Rove strategy.

With their champion Howard Dean installed as chairman of the DNC, the Left demonized all Republicans, marginalized moderate Democrats, sought out plausible challengers in "purple" congressional districts, and built a machinery of opposition that was flexible, improvisational and well-funded.

Meanwhile, the Republicans were stuck with a top-down hierarchical political operation that left the conservative grassroots in the position of waiting for the RNC and Sean Hannity to tell them what the key issues were and what the message was. The GWOT, a winning campaign issue in 2002-04, turned into a liability in 2005-06. The Iraqi insurgents were de facto allies of the Democrats, and as the death toll in Iraq rose, so did the Democrats' political fortunes. And the only response that Rumsfelt & Co. offered was, "Stay the course!"

Perhaps we might have stayed the course, if Bush and the Republicans had ever bothered to develop a conservative domestic agenda. Instead, from its very inception, "compassionate conservatism" was a policy of negotiated surrender on the domestic front. Can someone -- anyone -- please tell me what was "conservative" about No Child Left Behind or Medicare Part D? And let's don't even talk about S. 2611, OK?

So when Charles Johnson says he doesn't consider himself "right wing," he's utterly sincere. He is what he always was, a pro-war liberal. Now that the Republicans are out of power and the "conservative" label has been permanently tainted by its association with the hapless Bush administration, Johnson cares nothing for the fate of the GOP or conservatism. Nor does he care anything for the reputations of erstwhile friends like Robert Spencer and Pam Geller, whom he now casually dismisses as racist Nazi kooks.

I'd like to explain to Charles Johnson why he's wrong, but if he won't listen to Robert Spencer, there's no reason to expect he'd listen to me. Johnson supported the GWOT, which ended the day Bush left the White House, and thus ended Johnson's only real interest in politics.

Johnson is not "political" in the sense of trying to calculate ways to build a broad, enduring coalition that amounts to at least 50-percent-plus-one. He cares nothing about, say, figuring out how to elect Lt. Col. Allen West in FL-22 or how to defeat Bud Cramer in AL-5. And since he's never looked at politics in that way, he doesn't grasp the connection between defeating the Left on foreign policy and defeating the Left on domestic issues like "card check" and health care.

You know who does see those connections? The Left. And they've won, because Bush and the Republicans never really understood the real enemy they were fighting. Charles Johnson is just collateral damage in this conflict, incidental to the Left's triumph.

UPDATE: Donald Douglas has kept closer tabs on the LGF situation, and Gates of Vienna is even more directly involved. Both of them see the conflict as being "about Charles," who is accused of banning any commenter who disagrees with him. Meh. If I were in his shoes, I wouldn't want my bandwidth gobbled up by people who disagreed with me, either. So that's not really much of an accusation, in and of itself.

UPDATE II: Linked at Conservative Grapevine. Meanwhile, Charles Johnson tells his side of the story with a post that describes leaders of the Vlaams Belang -- the Flemish nationalist party of Belgium -- as having "met with numerous extreme right wing personalities (including Pat Buchanan)." Well, if meeting with Pat Buchanan puts one beyond the pale, there goes Ronald Reagan, for whom Buchanan was White House Communications Director 1985-87.

UPDATE III: Pam Geller protests against being accused by LGF of promoting neo-Nazism for having posted video of demonstrations organized in the British National Party. This points toward a basic problem at the heart of the dispute: European politics is not like American politics.

European politics is parliamentary and, given the socialist bent of Europe, the mainstream "conservative" parties aren't really very conservative at all. The staid, respectable British Tories are never going to make an issue of mass immigration and the attendant ascendance of Islamic extremism. Ergo, in Britain, the "extremist" BNP owns that issue, much the way that Le Pen's National Front owns it in France and Vlaams Belang owns it in Belgium.

What this situation highlights, really, is the danger to America if the Republican Party refuses to side with its conservative grassroots on the immigration issue. John McCain and other moderate Republicans want the GOP to follow European conservative parties down the path to political irrelevance by distancing themselves from "populist" issues like immigration and abortion.

The problem with that approach is that, if you marginalize dissent -- and look at what happened to Carrie Prejean, if you want to see how marginalization happens -- then you abandon those issues to the real fringe kooks. The genius of the American two-party system has been its ability to channel popular unrest into mainstream politics, so that issues that might otherwise give rise to violent extremism are instead addressed via the ballot box and legislation.

And this is why I have such contempt for Republican elitists like David Brooks, who are always striving to push the GOP toward middle-of-the-road "respectability" and urging Republicans to disdain "populism." That elitist approach will always weaken the GOP, and allow grassroots resentments to fester into genuinely dangerous extremism.

Why It's Not a 'Blog War'

Some have mischaracterized the Little Green Meltdown as a "blog war," which is rather like calling the St. Valentine's Day Massacre a "gunfight."

Those who have tuned in late or who have tried to avert their eyes from the disastrously self-destructive Madness of King Charles must be reminded that, from start to finish, this has been about Charles Johnson repeatedly attacking people who were minding their own business.

As if obsessively policing 400-comment threads for any hint of disagreement weren't enough to satisfy the paranoia of Pol Pot, how does Johnson find the psychic energy to moonlight as Internet Commissar of Affiliation-Investigation?

Let's let Johsuapundit explain what's really happened:

I delinked Little Green Footballs from Joshuapundit about a week and a half ago. . . . It's entirely due to the behavior of the self-styled Lizard King, Charles Johnson. And I should have done it a long time ago.
This started a couple of years ago, when Charles got his panties in a knot and started banning 'fascists' - you know, people like my friends Pam Geller at Atlas and Dymphna and the Baron over at Gates of Vienna who haven't got a fascist bone in their bodies but do take the menace of Islamist jihad seriously. Robert Spencer, the brilliant author and proprietor of JihadWatch was next and it continued from there. . . .
I probably should have dumped Charles back then, but Charles had been helpful to me back when I was starting out. . . . I naively thought that this was simply a personal snit between a few essentially decent people and that it would eventually resolve itself. After all, we were all on the same side, weren't we? . . .
As time went on, what used to be an important place on the net deteriorated into a fetid swamp with pretty much three creatures inhabiting it - the Lizard King's increasingly vicious attacks on his ever increasing list of personal 'enemies', Christians and 'creationists', links posted by the chosen Lizardoids on the site and Charles' occasional music videos.

Meanwhile, the body count continued - Andrew Bostom, Ann Coulter, David Littman, FOX News, Debbie Schlussel, Diane West, Melanie Phillips, Michele Malkin, Richard Miniter, Rush Limbaugh, Vodkapundit, Israel Matsav, Glenn Beck, Sigmund, Alfred and Carl, Geert Wilders, the Brussells Journal, Snapped Shot, Dr. Rusty at The Jawa report, Tundra Tabloids, Yid With Lid . . . hell, probably two thirds of the people I link to, any of whom could write and think circles around CJ and eat his intellectual lunch in a New York minute. . . .

By all means, read the whole thing and try to think about what Joshua is saying here. It's not about what Diane West wrote or what Rush Limbaugh said or who sponsored a conference that Pamela Geller attended. It's about two things: Charles Johnson and his wounded soul.

That's what I explained in a phone conversation I had this afternoon with a friend. Johnson has some sort of void in his personality that compels him into this domineering attitude toward other people, trying to build himself up by tearing down others, exercising power by threatening their prestige and success which is -- inside his envy-twisted mind -- somehow a negative reflection on his own worthlessness.

A control freak gone berserk, a radioactive psyche in Chernobyl meltdown mode. He's gone bonkers. Wacko. Zany. Froot Loops. Cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs. Get out your thesaurus and look up "insane" -- pick a word, any word -- whatever your favorite synonym for "crazy," that'll do just fine. He's nucking futz.

So when my friend said, "Yeah, but I don't know about those European political groups . . ." I felt completely exasperated. Who is the greater dangers, right here, right now? Is it some Belgian right-winger, or is it Charles Foster Johnson?

Like I said, when Vlaams Belang starts blowing up crowded buses and crashing jetliners into skyscrapers, then I'll worry about The Flemish Menace. In the meantime, as William Teach of Pirate's Cove said, Charles Johnson is making even Andrew Sullivan and Markos Moulitsas look sane.

Pamela Geller may be a bit argumentative at times, but she's not the one waging this online jihad against everybody who disagrees with her. She had no problem at all with Charles Johnson until he started calling her a Nazi sympathizer (!) and trying to exile her to the extremist fringe.

He hasn't merely taken a left turn, he's gone around the bend. Lost his grip. Slipped a cog. He's demented, deranged, a few fries short of a Happy Meal.

This problem has nothing to do with Pamela. It never was about her -- it's about him. Now, less than two years after the onset of Chronic Degenerative Lizardmania, people are becoming genuinely concerned for Johnson's well-being.

Myself, I'd be happy if he'd just put up a post called "Autumn Open Thread," surrender the troll-hammer to one of his evil minions and take about a six-week rest somewhere calm and peaceful with no WiFi access.

And enjoy a nice hot cup of STFU, will ya? Stop trying to defend yourself, Charles, or trying to present your monomaniacal fixation as if it were the result of your sudden discovery that everyone who voted for Bush in 2004 has been goose-stepping toward Munich ever since.

Nobody's buying it any more, Charles. There can be no ideological or political explanation for your behavior. People are calling you "Captain Queeg," and laughing about it, but it's really not funny. You need help or one of these days you'll be shuffling around down by the rail yards muttering to yourself "banned! banned! banned!"

And denial is not a river in Egypt.

Charles Johnson Parts Ways With Reality

UPDATE 9:15 a.m.: Cops have shot and killed Maurice Clemmons, so I must catch up with that breaking story. However, I would be remiss if I failed to note this by Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch:

It is interesting that Johnson's hate list appeared just hours after I spoke at length with a New York Times reporter -- excited by his move leftward, they're doing a big story on Johnson. Coincidence? Of course!

Heh. "Question the timing!" Spencer has been one of Johnson's numerous victims, and we may suppose that the NY Times will portray Mad King Charles as a courageous truth-teller.

PREVIOUSLY: So I woke up at 4 a.m. and the first thing I did was check Site Meter -- we ended November with more than 260,000 visitors for the month. The next thing I did was to check Twitter, where I saw this message from John Rambo:

@willwilkinson @rsmccain is a fascist? Coulter is a white supremacist? Sarah Palin is antiscience & homophobic? And he ignores lib. lunacy!

This was my first inkling that libertarian Will Wilkinson -- a notorious dope fiend! arrest him! -- was on Twitter. So I followed him, went over to his blog and saw his engagement with the neo-Keynesian madness of Brad DeLong. Hmmm. Worthy blog fodder.

OK, so now it was time to check the blog fodder motherlode, Memeorandum and . . . whoa!

Little Green Footballs
Why I Parted Ways With The Right
1. Support for fascists, both in America (see: Pat Buchanan, Robert Stacy McCain, etc.) and in Europe (see: Vlaams Belang, BNP, SIOE, Pat Buchanan, etc.) — 2. Support for bigotry, hatred, and white supremacism (see: Pat Buchanan, Ann Coulter, Robert Stacy McCain, Lew Rockwell, etc.)

Exactly what prompted this? Why this? Why now? Your guess is as good as mine.

No, that's wrong. My guess is probably much better than yours, because I followed the whole thing -- LGF and the Madness of King Charles -- back to its roots. So far as can be determined, CJ's descent into madness began when Johnson attacked Pamela Geller for her attendance at the October 2007 Brussels conference.

CJ kept up the attacks, which expanded to include Jihad Watch, Gates of Vienna, Diana West and others -- serially throwing them under his Little Green Bus -- but the rest of the conservative blogosphere tried to ignore it. Shortly before the 2008 election, CJ declared Robert Spencer of JihadWatch unlinkable:

Paul Belien of Brussels Journal is deeply connected with the Vlaams Belang, and Robert knows this. The fact that he’s put them back in his blogroll speaks volumes about the choice he's made.
And Gates of Vienna has turned into a reeking sewer of racism. I'm done with Robert Spencer. And very, very disappointed in him.

You see the control-freak method here: CJ declares that a list of people and groups (in this case, Brussels Journal, Paul Belien, Vlaams Belang, Gates of Vienna) are unacceptable. Anyone who doesn't accept CJ's categorization is a "sympathizer" and therefore also unacceptable. Gates of Vienna quipped:

As the arbiter of membership in the Counterjihad, Charles Johnson has finally made it official: he’s a Counterjihad of One.

All of that happened before Election Day 2008. It wasn't until after Election Day that I finally spoke out:

Charles Johnson at Little Green Footballs has apparently decided that the problem with the conservative movement is that it needs more purges, and Pam Geller at Atlas Shrugs seems to be his designated scapegoat. . . .
Pam is a good person and I would suggest that this guilt-by-association "urge to purge" is antithetical to the best interests of conservatism. You can't build a movement by the process of subtraction.

That was Nov. 5, 2008. In February of this year, I spoke out again when CJ attacked Ann Coulter and spoke out again in April when Johnson smeared Pamela Geller as a "Poster Girl for Eurofascists." Two days later, after CJ threatened Michelle Malkin (!) because she continued linking JihadWatch, I wrote:

Is there someone -- anyone -- who can stop this madness?

Apparently not. If the conservative movement would not acknowledge Charles Johnson's authority to decide who was and was not acceptable as a member of the conservative movement, then Johnson would not be a member of the conservative movement.

It would have been nice if he would have made his rules of engagement clear at the outset, or at least issued some kind of warning before he started denouncing people willy-nilly. But he has played the part of a scoundrel, and the damage he inflicted on the counter-jihad alliance -- those who, like Geller and Spencer, have dedicated themselves to fighting Islamofascism -- was quite real.

Giving us a glimpse at the bats that occupy his belfry, CJ randomly lumps in anti-war critics of the Bush administration -- Pat Buchanan and Lew Rockwell -- with Ann Coulter, et al. The nonsensical nature of his categorizations is exposed as he continues down his list of "reasons" for denouncing the Right:

4. Support for anti-science bad craziness (see: creationism, climate change denialism, Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, James Inhofe, etc.) . . .
6. Support for anti-government lunacy (see: tea parties, militias, Fox News, Glenn Beck, etc.)
7. Support for conspiracy theories and hate speech (see: Alex Jones, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Birthers, creationists, climate deniers, etc.)

Wait a minute: Alex Jones? The 9/11 Truther guy? Is there any conservative blogger who hasn't taken a swipe at that particular punching bag? And how does Limbaugh merit inclusion in the same category? But never mind that -- "climate deniers"? After the CRU revelations, isn't that pretty much everybody?

The conclusive evidence that Mad King Charles has slipped into the zero-self-awareness zone occupied by Andrew Sullivan comes when he points the finger at his fellow bloggers and former allies in the counter-jihad:

8. A right-wing blogosphere that is almost universally dominated by raging hate speech (see: Hot Air, Free Republic, Ace of Spades, etc.)

(Vinnie the Jawa replies: "Translation: Anyone that criticizes Charles Johnson.")

9. Anti-Islamic bigotry that goes far beyond simply criticizing radical Islam, into support for fascism, violence, and genocide (see: Pamela Geller, Robert Spencer, etc.)

(Vinnie the Jawa replies: "You left out 'Little Green Football Archives.'")

Bingo, Vinnie! Johnson spent years doing exactly what he now accuses others of doing. But that was back when "anti-Islamic bigotry" was what The Cool Kids did and, at some point, CJ decided The Cool Kids should do something else.

When The Cool Kids wouldn't let CJ make the rules? Well, they weren't The Cool Kids anymore.

End of story. Except that notorious hate-monger Ace of Spades has a few things to say. Heh.

UPDATE: Carl in Jerusalem is among the Legion of the Banned:

Once upon a time, I was a mere commenter on Charles Johnson's Little Green Footballs. Eventually, I posted so many well-received comments on LGF that I started this blog. I admired Charles Johnson as one of the righteous gentiles. Life was good.
But like more than 1,500 other people, when Charles turned Left in November 2008, I became expendable and was eventually banned from posting on LGF.

Admit it, Carl: You're a hate-monger. Just like Ace of Spades. And Pamela Geller. And Robert Spencer. And Ann Coulter. And . . .

UPDATE II: To theorize an answer to the "why now" question about CJ's denunciation, how about his mention of SIOE (Stop the Islamicization of Europe)? Just yesterday, Pamela Geller put up a post with this headline:

Atlas Urges Jews Worldwide to Support SIOE, Ignore Dhimmi "Jewish Councils"

This may have provoked Johnson's rage. So congratulations again to Pamela, whose knack for accidentally pushing CJ's buttons is commendable.

What obtrudes in CJ's hate-list modus operandi is that he cannot rationally prioritize dangers. Pamela Geller, creationists, Tea Party crowds, global-warming skeptics and Sarah Palin are, in the demented mind of Mad King Charles, as dangerous as al Qaeda. Or me.

Speaking of me, friends are jealous of my conspicuous inclusion in Johnson's demonology. It has been his evident intent to deprive me of my livelihood as a journalist: Why else did he bide his time before choosing to attack Pajamas Media for paying me to cover the 9/12 March on DC? (Roger Simon is a friend and I'd been contributing to PJM since May 2008, but after 9/12, PJM editor Rick Moran rejected all my offers for further contributions, which is why none of my coverage of the Bill Sparkman case or the NY23 campaign appeared at PJM.)

So I've enjoyed the laughter as Johnson (who pulled out of PJM in 2007, which some at the time suspected was due to Johnson's resentment of Michelle Malkin) has destroyed his own once-successful site and resorted to the blogospheric equivalent of "busking." Despite CJ's transparent malice, I have kept in mind the advice Andrew Jackson got from his mother:

"Never tell a lie, nor take what is not your own, nor sue anybody for slander, assault and battery. Always settle them cases yourself."

Whatever harm CJ has inflicted on me or anyone else, his "success" in turning Little Green Footballs into an unprofitable imitation of Daily Kos is as much vindication as any of his victims can expect.

Vindication, however, doesn't pay the bills. So if you feel an urge to hit the Big Tip Jar Of Hate -- hey, don't fight the feeling.

UPDATE II: Jules Crittenden provides the crazy-hating exegesis and adds this comment:

I would have preferred a detailed description of the moment when all that inclusive thoughtful concern hit him like a silver bullet, when the switch flipped on the bright shining light on the road to Damascus, when . . . enveloped by its warm, mentally balanced, nurturing embrace . . . he started frothing about the hateful craziness.

Of course, CJ hasn't traveled the road to Damascus, but the road to Bedlam. Rhetorical engagement might require us to stipulate, hypothetically, that perhaps not all liberals are insane. But Johnson's addition to their ranks undermines that hypothesis.

Dan Riehl has seen enough blog-wars to be war-weary. He observes, "When even tempered blogger James Joyner fisks you into ridiculousness, you know you've, well, jumped the lizard, I suppose," and further comments:

Chuckles isn't having an awakening, he's simply living out whatever the hell it is that passes for a reality of sorts in his cyber-induced dream-dementia of a world.

Dead on the money, Dan. My 8-year-old son just brought me an egg-salad sandwich and chips. He made the egg salad himself, from the brown eggs provided by the chickens in our backyard.

That's reality. My wife, my kids, my friends -- reality.

The abstract symbolism of ideological debate on the Internet? Well, at some point, if you start taking that crap too seriously, you can become detached from reality, and begin ranting at people as if they were merely symbols, projected visions of your own externalized fears.

Those who take the historical view of such things will be tempted to wonder: Is the fact that CJ first signaled his madness by lashing out at Pamela Geller entirely coincidental?

Merely a point to ponder while I remind you of my own reality, where people at the heating-oil company and the cell-phone company expect bills to be paid or they'll shut me off. Hit the Big Tip Jar of Hate.