'Worked up into a fine froth'? LGF's rage vs. the cheerful laugher of conservatives

Over at the Unlinkable Land of Liberal Lizards, Charles Johnson sneered at the reaction to Obama's Nobel Prize for Nothing, prompting another spectacularly laughable act of sycophantic fellatio by the aptly named Sharmuta:

Posted in: A Peace Prize for the President
»30 Sharmuta
10/09/2009 8:43:23 am
Of course, Republican pundits are worked up into a fine froth over it.
Certainly rains on their Olympic Failure celebration.That was short lived. Perhaps it's karma.

Notice the liberal chop-logic involved here:

• Obama fails to win the Olympics;
• Conservatives laugh;

Ergo . . .

• Conservatives are hateful.

Input different data into the LGF Chop-Logic Dispenser, and still it produces the same conclusion:

• The Nobel committee bestows an unmerited laurel on the eminently unaccomplished novice;
• Conservatives laugh;

Ergo . .

• Conservatives are hateful.

The liberal argument is not actually an argument, but rather an unsupported assertion and a demand: "Liberalism is good! Stop laughing, you haters!"

Their anti-logic begins with the conclusion and accepts any "evidence" to prove it, ignoring all contrary evidence nor even bothering to test the alternative hypothesis: Liberalism is always, predictably, 100% wrong.

Why is the alternative hypothesis rejected? Because it's so simple that even the undistinguished graduate of a third-tier state university can understand and explain it. The truth being apparent to any honest mind, the elitists seek an explanation so complex that their credentialed expertise is required to articulate it.

Whether you call it "socialism," "liberalism" or "progressivism," the worldview of the Left -- The Vision of the Anointed, as Thomas Sowell so brilliantly described it -- has always appealed to the self-congratulatory impulses of the intelligentsia. The complexity of this worldview, constantly calling into service their verbose specialty ("Well, of course the policy hasn't had its desired result, however . . ."), makes them necessary and therefore flatters their sense of their own importance and superiority.

Friedrich Hayek -- who won the Nobel Prize before it had begun the process of progressive political devaluation -- examined this phenonomenon in "The Intellectuals and Socialism":

It is perhaps the most characteristic feature of the intellectual that he judges new ideas not by their specific merits but by the readiness with which they fit into his general conceptions, into the picture of the world which he regards as modern or advanced. It is through their influence on him and on his choice of opinions on particular issues that the power of ideas for good and evil grows in proportion to their generality, abstractness, and even vagueness. As he knows little about the particular issues, his criterion must be consistency with his other views and suitability for combining into a coherent picture of the world.

Read the whole thing (also available in PDF). Yet Hayek only expended 7,628 words on this subject, hardly exhausting its vast potential. Criticism of this phenomenon could fill endless volumes, for every day some liberal elitist makes some new error in logic that is inevitably praised by all the bien-pensants (membership in the Community Of The Well-Meaning And Enlightened being the essential object of the intellectual's pronouncements).

Furthermore, Hayek wrote that essay in 1949 and died in 1992, so he never had the opportunity to apply his insights to the interesting phenomenon of Little Green Footballs. Charles Johnson jumped on the post-9/11 GWOT bandwagon in 2001, rode it as long as it suited him until, in Octbober 2007, he began defaming anti-jihad activists like Pamela Geller.

Yet Johnson's primary loyalty has always been to that "picture of the world which he regards as modern or advanced." So long as Bush and the GOP were riding high, Johnson dishonestly concealed or suppressed his contempt for the traditionalist tendencies of Geller and other conservatives.

Once it became apparent that Bushism had run its course, however, Johnson discarded his selfish pretense and opened fire on an erstwhile ally. Geller was a target of opportunity. She didn't have Sean Hannity's personal cell-phone number in her speed-dial, and her sharp-elbowed New York attitude meant that she had made a few enemies on the Right. Thus, when Mad King Charles began accusing Geller and others of sympathy for "Euro-fascism," he did so with the cynical calculation that no one important would object, at least not publicly.

One by one, Johnson targeted Geller's defenders (Richard Miniter, Diana West, et cetera) who were successively thrown under the Little Green Bus, their reputations besmirched by his dishonest assertion that they were blind to the totalitaritarian tendencies of European conservatives. Of course, these tendencies were apparent only to Charles Johnson and his sycophants, who began to wave the Dreaded Banning Stick at anyone who doubted that Gates of Vienna was plotting a 21st-century Beer Hall Putsch or that Vlaams Belang was a greater threat to American security than Al Qaeda.

Once the 2008 election had passed -- in fact, the day after Election Day -- Mad King Charles resumed his Anti-Geller Inquisition with new zeal, and I took alarm. From that moment, I became a target on the LGF radar, much like Glenn Beck and the Tea Party movement, until the 9/12 convergence gave Johnson an excuse to denounce Stephen Green (?!) as a crypto-fascist sympathizer.

LGF's drain-circling downward spiral into full-blown Sullivanesque parody has relentlessly proceeded until there is no distinction between Mad King Charles and Media Matters ("Right-wing media root against America ... again: Media conservatives cheer when America loses, fume when it wins").

Some commenters have speculated that Johnson is now on the Soros gravy train, a conspiratorial suspicion that violates Occam's Razor. Johnson surely isn't a sellout, for this would mean that he had been bribed to betray some important principle or to dishonor some obligation of loyalty.

Yet no one has ever offered evidence that Charles Foster Johnson ever had any principle or honor, and or that he was ever loyal to anyone but himself. He has been consistently vicious and selfish, and this only escaped notice so long as it served Johnson's interests to deceive those whose assistance he sought in advancing his own self-aggrandizing agenda.

So now conservatives laugh at Johnson's new idol, Obama, and he responds by sneering at Red State's Erick Erickson and others whose favor he once so earnestly elicited. Certainly, I took no part in the "fine froth," as I was busy coping with Vonda and the cable company, my only response to the subject being a sarcastic jest. So far as I expressed any irritation, it was directed at Allah (who hates me) and Erik Telford (who has repeatedly snubbed me).

Yet Mad King Charles, guided by his self-congratulatory commitment to all things "modern or advanced," projects his own rage onto the former friends whose backs are now so thickly studded with his knives.

How shall we react to Obama's Nobel Prize for Nothing? Nonsensible Shoes suggests:

Ignore it, it's a distraction, just like the IOC vote down of Chicago. . . . [W]ho cares if 5 Norwegians think President Obama is a conduit for peace?

Indeed. And yet we can thank those Norwegian fools for this gift and the laughter it has inspired.