re: #109 Charles Johnson

Thanks so much for the words of support. It took quite a bit of determined work to reach this spot, and I’m glad to hear that it’s paying off.

No worries Charles, and yep, I can only imagine the amount if work it must have taken to get here.

I do know a bit if the history of LGF though, and I think the history helps explain why it is such a great site. The way it seems to me, as a reader, is that you have been honest and open with your views, and that when those views changed, when your perspective shifted, you were able to explain clearly and cogently why. I remember reading your post on why you changed your views re: global warming, with great admiration, and I had the same feeling when I read the well known ‘why I parted ways with the right’. You did not hide your changes, or minimise them: you did the opposite, you posted them for all to read.

How many other political blogs, let alone authors, would do that? I can’t think of one, on any side of politics, particularly not one with so much to lose. I might be wrong, but I think that LGF could have increased its traffic and readership far beyond any of the current conservative weblogs, if Charles had chosen to ignore the craziness and hypocrisy of the right from early in Obama’s term to now. Consolidating this mass of readers would have probably made Charles handsome profits and given him a platform to which conservatives would have listened. I imagine politicians would have wanted to post guest posts, or at least to get access to the readership to use as donors. So it is mot far fetched to think that Charles could have gained significant material benefits, had he ignored his conscience, and ignored the increasingly disturbing behaviour of the right.

But instead, he used the platform to challenge his readers and conservatives worldwide. He showed them that they were doing the same as the far left had done to Bush, ie personal vilification by drawing comparisons to Hitler. He pointed out the racism, the hatred and the ignominy if all this. And to do that was to risk a very great deal.

Not often do people put their work, their money, or their capital on the line for what’s right. Particularly not in politics, and particularly not on blogs. If I had a blog with thousands of readers, would I risk losing the traffic, to voice my conscience? I don’t know. But Charles did.

Anytime someone puts something on the line, for what is right, it is a rare enough event that I think it should be commended. I wish I could buy into the Snowden story, but when I hear about how he planned to get the job just to steal the data, it turns the story from “naive young American is changed by the truth of his job, decides to blow the whistle on the NSA to ensure the US lives up to its ideals”, to, “young libertarian with dislike for Obama, possibly in collusion with cynical anti-government ex-lawyer, studies how to best steal NSA secrets, gets job with NSA under false pretences, cons colleagues to get their passwords, steals data, gives or sells it to governments who will benefit from seeing US humiliated, then goes to live in the country whose foreign policy amounts to, ‘what would Stalin do?’”

So the fearless intrepid Snowden is, when you read the facts, a guy who has helped Putin. The same Putin who helps the genocidal Sudanese government and their Janjawid militias who burn children alive in Darfur. Who protects Assad as he drops bombs on his own towns and cities. Who annexes parts of sovereign nations when those nations do things he does not like.

Charles, when you read the facts, is a guy who put an important piece of his life’s work, LGF, at risk, in order to tell people the truth. It is too bad those people didn’t want to hear the truth. But LGF survived, and in its current incarnation, how could it ever be anything except a place where the truth gets told?

That is, from my perspective, what makes LGF the best blog on the net. Just like every country has a founding story, that shapes it today, so does LGF. I never see dogma here, or rigid thinking. It is a stalwart against dishonesty and unscrupulousness, on all sides.

I live in Australia, about as far from the US and the Snowden controversy as possible. But even here, the overriding opinion of Snowden is of a whistleblower. Because the newspapers never tell the full story. Neither did I read it at any of the left wing blogs, right wing blogs, or any newspaper, online, or television outlet. Only when I read LGF did I read the truth, the full story. Snowden is no Ellsberg. He is no different to the guy portrayed in The Falcon and the Snowman, who sold government secrets to Russia during the 80s. That guy charged in cash, and admitted he broke the law. We don’t know what price Snowden asked, nor what his payment was. That is a secret.

So as a reader, the way I see LGF is a very unique, very important site, a product of its history and its readers, all of whom are likeminded in at least one sense: the truth is more important to them, than a good yarn.

Where else can you get such spirited discussion, marked by unfailing good natured politeness and respect? Where people will have intense conversations for two threads, then a post later, be talking on local sports, traffic, or the weather, like old friends - which they probably are. Where posters ask about the absence of others, with legitimate concern and empathy? Where, as I was shown today, the posters all welcome a new contributor, even before he has said anything.

With these hallmarks of community, respect, and topical analysis, LGF is like a giant drawing room, or smoking room, as close as I have seen to an actual online community. For me, as a younger man watching Cosmos with Carl Sagan, I remember being taken by his description of Johannes Kepler, the astronomer and mathematician, who believed strongly that celestial orbits had a divinely ordered geometry, with planetary orbits being spherical, and ultimately explainable or measurable using different combinations of platonic solids. But experimental data proved him wrong: planets orbited the sun in elliptical geometries, with no way for platonic solids to predict or describe the mathematics of orbit.

“When he found that his long cherished beliefs did not agree with the most precise observations,” said Carl Sagan of Kepler, “he accepted the uncomfortable facts. He preferred the hard truth to his dearest illusions.”

Such commitment to accuracy and truth is always admirable to behold, especially in contemporary politics where it is almost unknown. But that is why LGF is important to me. Nowhere else has that commitment. Not a single site.

(I should say there are trade weblogs, for drug discovery, pharmacology and medicinal chemistry, but they offer little room for political discussion and feel inappropriate for such anyway. The same probably goes for all Lizards, who have their trade or hobby, whether it is engineering or birdwatching or computer programming, or anything else….while sites exist for those trades and hobbies, they are not as broad in scope as LGF, and might not have room for politics.)

So thanks, Charles, for going through what you did, and exemplifying a real person of conviction. I am astute enough to know one when I see one. Thanks to the lizards, too, for perpetuating that openness and true independence, while maintaining dignity, respect and the emotional ‘high ground’.

I have tried to think of other sites that do what LGF does,and I think it is alone. Countless, fruitless Google searches have led to nothing, but in fact the real centre of the political web, moderate, independent and lucid, is here.

Really, who else does what LGF does? Who does what Charles does? Who has this history, and who has this type of analysis, without any trolls, partisans of any extreme, cynics, and fomenters of hate?

Let alone the advanced frontend interface, which was web 2.0 before web 2.0 was even a thing! This place is one I am so happy to have found and followed, and I am looking forward to using that interface, and to getting to know my way around.

There is an old quote by John Maynard Keynes, “when my information changes, I alter my conclusions. What do you do, sir?” I like it: it is apt for science and for LGF.

It didn’t work for Mitt Romney though, because he tried to replace ‘conclusions’ with ‘convictions’, every time the wind changed. He may still be trying.

Forgive the length of my post, actually I had a shorter one on this topic but the computer crashed. I wrote this to cover old ground, but covered some new ground too. Thanks again for the welcomes, and for now, I will lurk, comfortably, and try to work (uncomfortably)!