Responding to Helen, Conor fails to acknowledge the distinction between “critiquing an argument” and “writing a hit piece”, or at the very least implies that the two phrases may be used interchangeably.
It’s funny, I thought Helen’s post made it pretty clear that she was not objecting to changing one’s mind, or to writing about how one has changed one’s mind, but rather to writing about it in a certain scummy, sniveling, skulking, yet sanctimonious way. In other words, I read Helen’s post as making a partially aesthetic claim rather than a purely positive one, with the positive subclaim restricted in scope. Then again the two are frequently combined in Helen’s writing, so who knows?
In any case, I think Conor is being rather unfair in broadening what was a narrowly-argued point, but my undying loyalty to Helen may be clouding my judgment.
P.S. Previous installments in this saga may be found here, here, here, and finally here.
December 2nd, 2009 | 12:32 pm
I’ve known Helen to write a hit piece or two….
December 2nd, 2009 | 12:49 pm
The grand, unanswered question is this: why does Conor not receive Helen’s loyalty? He is someone who broadly aligns himself with the right. Why is he not entitled to the protection that Helen’s vision of loyalty entitles? The simply answer is that Helen is not consistent about when she applies her vision of loyalty, and that fully fleshed out it would lead inevitably to direct internal contradictions and consequences which are antithetical to Helen’s point in this whole edifice. It’s a position to be seen having, not to enact. As I have been saying for some time.
December 2nd, 2009 | 1:04 pm
Feel free to say this goes too far afield, but I suspect that the demand that a system of ethics or other ‘code’ produce an unambiguous answer in any situation without seeming contradiction is actually entirely unreasonable.
As for the grand unanswered question, I don’t know all the history, but is there a meaningful sense in which Helen and Conor have been comrades of some sort?
December 2nd, 2009 | 1:22 pm
I’d add that Helen doesn’t seem opposed to hit pieces per se, merely to hit pieces conducted on current or former friends and allies.
This seems reasonable. I’m fortunate in that I’ve had very few friends turn into enemies, but it’s still happened once or twice. I wouldn’t dream of ever revealing dirt on such a person which was confided to me when we were friends. If I were to receive dirt in passing concerning somebody who had never been a friend, using it would still be scummy by the very nature of dirt, but using it would be *additionally* and excessively scummy in the prior case.
December 2nd, 2009 | 1:27 pm
Feel free to say this goes too far afield, but I suspect that the demand that a system of ethics or other ‘code’ produce an unambiguous answer in any situation without seeming contradiction is actually entirely unreasonable.
That’s totally right! Which is why I think, if you consider Helen’s original (as in way back when) post on loyalty, you’d have to ask her to walk it back just a bit– because it seems to insist on a ethos of certainty (certainty in loyalty) in the way that you are excusing her from having.
is there a meaningful sense in which Helen and Conor have been comrades of some sort?
This here, exactly, is what is at issue. Is there a meaningful sense in which Charles Johnson has been comrades of some sort with all the people he derides? If not, then why is he disloyal to them to write the post he did? If people are merely allowed to set the boundaries of who is or isn’t a member of their protected loyalty group, then you’re right, I have no ability to say that Helen is being disloyal to Conor– but then Helen has no ability to say that Conor is being disloyal in the post she disagrees with. Defining who is worthy of loyalty by whim or by happenstance is exactly the same as saying that loyalty is important but not an absolute.
And that really is the point of all this; I think Helen can make her point and maintain her stance that loyalty is very important without the all-or-nothing stance that her original posts announced. It’s less sexy to say that loyalty is important but not all important, but I’m afraid the alternative is inevitably self-defeating.
December 2nd, 2009 | 2:18 pm
My impression is that Johnson was in some important sense a “comrade” to a lot of the people that he attacked, and furthermore that being in the movement with them was what made him a comrade.
Look, my loyalty-theory is sorta medium church, lying somewhere between Helen’s and Conor’s, and I’ve said before that the idea of loyalty to a movement is vaguely disturbing, and something approaching a category error (which is not to say that there aren’t other good reasons for irrational attachment to a movement, just that loyalty is the wrong word to use). That said, I’ll totally buy what I think is Helen’s claim here, namely that the mere fact of being in a movement with somebody can lead to a bond which is deserving of loyalty.
December 2nd, 2009 | 2:35 pm
It wouldn’t make sense to disavow something you were never a part of, right?
December 2nd, 2009 | 5:02 pm
The topic of loyalty, vis-a-vis blogging, is not one I can get very concerned about. Vis-a-vis the ugliness that is the apostate’s hit-piece, a la Damon Linker, well, that’s Helen’s main point and I think it stands. I’m with Wilson’s interp of her main point and Conor’s confusing broadening of it, and I do not care an iota about loyalty owed b/t her and Conor.
What I do care about, as I’ve argued in his comments, is that Conor is not any recognizable part of the conservative coalition, and has serious love-hate issues with conservatism that he needs to come to terms with. Ideologically, he either represents a new brand of conservative (“anti-war,”[i.e., anti-Bush II] but libertarian-esque), or a more distinctly-defined sort of independent. He needs to highlight and develop that–this whole schtick of claiming to criticize the conservative team in the name of intellecutual rigor, etc., from the inside just doesn’t work. He’s criticizing from a particular inside position that’s awfully near the outside of the big tent. The issue for him is not loyalty, but credibility.
Pyschologically, well, who can say and who should even try to say, but I am willing to say his ready ire towards 95% of conservatism’s spokesmen and women moves beyond his ideological differences, AND moves beyond his specific arguments for a purer punditry. Even though his specific arguments are often pretty good, or at least usefully gadfly.
As for Charles Johnson, I am not surprised by the news, and I can only imagine the ugliness already exchanged and yet to be exchanged b/t he and his lizardoids. Being den-mother to that pack would have to take a toll on one’s faith in the goodness of the American/conservative masses…but I will just say here that a couple of years ago, out of the blue, Johnson suddenly began to obsess about Creationists. And I mean obsess. They were everywhere. I stopped visiting within that month, as I could see something was very wrong, and because I had to think, “gee, maybe his (genuinely useful) obsession with Islamists had similar psychological sources and motivations?” And maybe I and other conservative “lurkers” let ourselves be too swayed by that, just as many “9-11 Republicans” were too swayed by A. Sullivan’s intemperate rhetoric of the early Daily Dish days.
So, all ye aspiring gadflys, remember the original’s most annoying words of all: “know thyself.”
December 2nd, 2009 | 8:02 pm
Carl, could you point me to where you posted those comments on Connor (to the extent that they flesh out what you wrote here). I think you make good points about his choice of targets, but I also think that reading him gives my brain a workout even when I disagree with him.
December 29th, 2009 | 3:06 pm
“In other words, I read Helen’s post as making a partially aesthetic claim rather than a purely positive one, with the positive subclaim restricted in scope.”
I strongly suggest that Helen’s claims are a bit more than partially aesthetic. Aesthetics are what Helen is all about.
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