The Good, The True, and The Beautiful: An Interview with Conor Friedersdorf

Conor Friedersdorf is a name that one increasingly sees popping up around various points in the blogospheric highways and biways. Whether guest blogging for Andrew Sullivan, writing pieces for the quickly rising Daily Beast, being railed against by radio talkshow host Mark Levin, or offering insights and analysis via his home digs at The American Scene and True/Slant, Conor’s is a name on the move.

Some folks have come to know of Conor through his mix ups with big name conservatives like Mark Levin and Andrew Brietbart without also familiarizing themselves with an essay he wrote called Electric Kool Aid Conservatism for the American’s Future Foundation Doublethink Online (and catching the eye of C11 Managing Editor Joe Carter, which helped to land Conor the gig wherein I became familiar with his work) wherein Conor laid out the need for an increase in conservative journalists as opposed to conservative activists. It struck me that no analysis of Conor’s recent work could really be called complete without also looking at Electric Kool Aid Conservatism.

As a result, I emailed Conor to see if he would be game for conducting an interview on that and hios newest project The GOP Speaks. Graciously, Conor agreed.

Check out the transcript after the jump.

Conor, whether it is fair or not, you’re increasingly developing a reputation for challenging big name conservative media types. You’ve been in a fairly nasty scuffle with Mark Levin, openly critical of Rush Limbaugh, and now you seem to have drawn the ire of Andrew Brietbart.

Opinions seem to be mixed about the efficacy of your approach, but to what extent are your actions driven by the ideas you presented in the essay Electric Kool Aid Conservatism, written in May 2008 for America’s Future Foundation’s Doublethink Online?

One insight I’ve gleaned in my career is that journalism impacts the quality of life in a given community. During college, I saw how the quality of campus debate rose when The Student Life published particularly good opinion pieces. My gig as a beat reporter in Rancho Cucamonga, California, exposed me to instances when exceptional local reportage directly resulted in better governance. Later, as a columnist and blogger on the immigration beat, I saw how even the most heated, intractable debates yielded productive exchanges when they were carried out properly. I see the same thing among my favorite writers in the blogosphere — our discourse is improved by the temperament of Eugene Volokh, the willingness of Will Wilkinson to solicit feedback from the smartest critics of his ideas, Andrew Sullivan’s willingness to air dissenting opinions on his blog, Jim Manzi’s attempts to ground his analysis in empiricism, the intellectual generosity of Reihan Salam, the ability of Julian Sanchez to broker honest conversations even on topics where he has an overwhelming information advantage, Megan McArdle’s ability to make dry economic matters an enjoyable read, the uncompromising intellectual independence of Daniel Larison, the research Hilzoy used to put into posts. I am leaving out a whole lot of writers I adore, on various sides of the ideological divide, whose best qualities are as impressive as the ones I’ve named. There is a great deal of first rate reporting and commentary produced everyday.

Unfortunately, there is also a lot of dreck that harms public discourse. I’d never want to be the arbiter drawing a definitive boundary between folks who add to the conversation and those who take away from it. That line is impossible for anyone to consistently and reliably discern. But it is possible to identify folks whose transgressions are so frequent, blatant and influential that one must either oppose them or stay silent as they corrode our polity’s primary means of testing ideas and deciding among them. I think it is important that this opposition is grounded in substantive arguments, that it avoids ad hominem attacks, that it is rigorous, and that it is intellectually honest. It is a difficult project insofar as a lot of people would rather just ignore these folks. It is also noteworthy that these people generally react to polite, substantive criticism as a vicious, illegitimate attacks. Write a forceful critique of Mickey Kaus, or Ezra Klein, or Freddie, or Matt Yglesias, or James Taranto, or James Joyner, and they’ll defend themselves as forcefully, or concede the point. Offer as forceful a critique of a talk radio host, and if you catch their attention, they’ll lash out as though it is an inherent truth that you’ve no grounds to criticize them. I criticize lots of ideas in my writing. My reputation is for criticizing high profile conservatives partly due to the thin-skinned, hyperbolic reactions of those figures and their sycophants whenever they are criticized.

In Electric Kool-Aid Conservatism, I argue a few things: a) certain conservative insights and core critiques of liberalism intrinsically resist the narrative form. b) As the right’s echo chamber grows, the ideas that reverberate weaken. Ghettoizing smart writers within rally-the-base publications is something the left can afford, given the present media landscape, while the scarcity of journalists who grasp right-of-center ideas make their isolation particularly costly. c) The right doesn’t need more activists, it needs more journalists — folks who buy into and excel at the journalistic project, rather than folks intent on trying to destroy it. Unlike the Doublethink piece, in which I am offering advice to the right, however, my criticism of talk radio hosts is grounded not in the accurate notion that they are bad for the right, but in the larger conviction that they are bad for healthy political discussion, and thus the country. Put another way, all my work is predicated on a belief that public discourse is important, that journalism properly executed improves it, and that various journalistic benefits are undervalued on the right. But I’d say that Electric Kool-Aid Conservatism and my criticism of talk radio folks are overlapping projects, not identical ones.

How would you respond tithe criticism that by assuming the approach that you do, you ultimately feed into the dynamic you seek to undermine by simultaneously drawing increasing attention to it while failing to win over the hearts and minds of Levin/Limbaugh/Hannity/etc. listeners because their hearts and minds are not up for grabs?

When you refer to “the approach” that I assume, what do you mean precisely?

Nothing fancy, simply your inclination to take folks like Levin and Limbaugh on publicly rather than ignore them.

Casting our minds back into history, is there any wrongheaded line of thinking, or demagogic personality, where we say, if only folks would’ve ignored them, or spoken up against them less frequently, things would’ve turned out a lot better? I can’t think of any examples. And I very much doubt that is the case here.

The folks I criticize are already rich, famous, influential men. People who could be persuaded that they’re doing harm won’t be convinced if they never hear relevant arguments explaining why. It is also important to show independent voters and young people that the right isn’t uniformly accepting of these folks, that they don’t speak for everyone on the right, that there are plenty of conservatives and libertarians who are willing to criticize them when they’re wrong, even as we assert that the right has political and philosophical insights to offer our polity.

When I point out wrongheaded remarks that these men make, I am unlikely to change the minds of their most ardent fans, or political junkies who’ve already formed strong opinions one way or the other, but I am writing for a wider audience than that. If I make cogent, persuasive arguments, I can change some minds — and there is little or no chance that folks will read my pieces and decide based on them that these men are worth their while.

(Addendum) If I may, I’d like to append one thing to my answer about whether it is counterproductive to target the wrongheaded statements of folks in the conservative media. I’d ask readers who think so to read this report. It is a powerful demonstration of the influence these figures wield among conservative Republicans.

What do you take to be the relationship between a project like the one that you presented in Electric Kool-Aid Conservatism and the base of so-called “movement conservatism”? Does such a project’s success pivot on a shift in that base? Is such a project involved in the very efforts to shift that base? Or do/can the two operate with a certain mutual exclusivity?

The project I propose in Electric Kool-Aid Conservatism depends on more young people on the right choosing careers in journalism, and producing high quality narrative non-fiction that incorporates valid conservative insights in an intellectually honest fashion. This work should be aimed at a general readership, aspiring to engage folks regardless of their ideological affinities. It cannot settle for reaching an audience that is already persuaded that conservative ideas are correct.

But wouldn’t it be fair to say that that audience has a pretty firm grip on the narrative that those writers are seeking to present? In that way, is it not inevitable that this new generation of Tom Wolfe’s, as you referred to them, will have to interact with the base if only as a means of asserting their influence and place in the articulation of the conservative narrative? Doesn’t failing to do so mean that their efforts will be constantly undermined by a much louder narrative being presented to which the currently unpersuaded audience is likely to pay more attention? Or am I missing something?

What exactly do you mean when you ask whether it is inevitable that young writers who happen to be conservative will have to “interact” with the base”?

I mean that it seems likely that they will, if they are to be successful in the project of impacting the prevalent conservative narrative, need to write pieces that aren’t just designed to present a palatable and persuasive narrative to an audience that does not identify as conservative, but also write pieces that are aimed at precisely those people who identify most vociferously as conservatives.

You’ve somehow gotten the idea that I advised young people on the right to produce “palatable narratives.” That isn’t the case. The Electric Kool Aid Conservatism project is aimed at a general audience — and it calls for narrative non-fiction that is exhaustively reported, enjoyably told, and uncompromisingly true. Were I interviewing an applicant for a job at a magazine, and he told me that his aspiration was to write “palatable narratives,” I’d politely request that he find another profession.

Perhaps we’re getting at what puzzles and galls me so much about recent posts at The League of Ordinary Gentlemen about how dissident conservative writers ought to conduct themselves. The notion is that these writers should assess an ideological subset of the American public, discern their sensibilities, and craft all subsequent writing so as not to offend them. What a fool’s errand. There are times when people react badly to hearing the truth plainly stated. It is a journalist’s job to tell them that truth anyway, as forthrightly and accurately as one can put it.

Do you want to corrupt public discourse? Ask those engaged in the fights over ideas to pull their punches whenever what they regard as the truth might upset a segment of the public. Tell writers that if they find wisdom in the political philosophy of conservatism, and desire that its insights be incorporated into the governance of American society, they ought to refrain from writing things they regard as true whenever doing so will cost them credibility among some folks with whom they’d share a political coalition in a more rational world.

Think what you’re asking! It’s as if you were to travel back in time to George Orwell at his desk writing Homage to Catalonia, and to say, “Sir, I know you’ve got a low opinion of certain folks who were fighting Franco, but among those who oppose fascism, you’re needed as a thought leader, so please don’t write too bitingly about the false propaganda spread by folks within Communism. Some of your Comrades will never take your subsequent writing seriously otherwise.”

When writing on politics, only one approach guards against the dozen rationalizations for making truth subservient. It is to write what one believes on whatever topics one deems to be important, whenever you’ve got what you regard as a significant contribution to that conversation. Should an ideology and the political movement most closely associated with it find itself full of writers who instead privilege loyalty, or the sensitivities of the base, or their future influence, what you get is a misbegotten war in Iraq, a systematic regime of officially sanctioned torture, reckless spending, a Congressional majority rife with corruption, incompetents appointed to important positions in the federal government, and the list goes on. You’d think that the “palatable” journalism so many right-leaning outlets served up during the Bush Administration would discredit the notion that such an approach is the right one for conservatism or the country as a whole.

I’d add one more thing too. Even if one wanted to cater to the sensitivities of some subset of conservatism, hoping to strategically game the discourse in order to facilitate an attitudinal shift (or a viable political coalition), there isn’t a reliable way to discern which subset’s sensitivities should matter, or what their attitudes are — or, for that matter, to avoid creating an incentive system whereby folks figure out that the way to succeed in public discourse is to be loud, stubborn and utterly unwilling to entertain any arguments against your favored tactics or position.

Do you take it to be the case that any writer, whether they are of a conservative, liberal, libertarian, progressive, or other political persuasion, is actually able to write something that is uncompromisingly true insofar as they report on and analyze a state of affairs without any discernible bias according to their own beliefs, experiences, values? Do you believe that you have achieved such writing?

If nothing else, I’ve written a lot of newspaper copy that reported on stories like, “The City Council unanimously approved a new law governing the placement of billboards at its most recent meeting…” So yes, I think I’ve written things that are without any discernible bias, and I think that other writers who’ve repeatedly attempted that feat have achieved it sometimes too.

Let me be clear, however, that I am not asserting that a journalist writing on any given subject can always produce objectively true copy without bias merely by willing it. What I am saying is that one thing a journalist conducting himself properly should do is to figure out the truth as best he can, and write that.

Of course, there is always the chance that a writer will fail in this pursuit, and I’ve certainly failed at it. Perhaps every writer fails at it sometimes. That is why one writes in a certain way — using transparent, intellectually honest reasoning, citing sources when appropriate, drawing distinctions between statements that one believes to be true and ones that reporting has proven, etc. There is an appropriate posture after having written too: making use of editorial oversight when it is available, being open to that idea that one is wrong, taking dissenting opinion or challenges to a piece seriously, acknowledging and correcting errors when they arise, etc.

I regard public discourse as valuable largely because it serves as a crucible, testing ideas by fire, so that only the worthy emerge, intact and strengthened. This metaphor presumes that a lot of untrue material goes into the fire. That is fine. What corrodes public discourse and corrupts writers is adopting a posture whereby one refrains from writing the truth in an attempt to strategically game the outcome of political discourse. That is the attitude a propagandist takes: ambivalence about the truth, rather than fealty to it.

To switch gears here, you’ve started a new, for lack of a better term, project recently called The GOP Speaks. I’m wondering if you could talk a bit about what it is your doing and why you’ve decided to start the project.

Although we’re told that right-of-center pundits are divided between elites and folks who are loyal to the grassroots, the fact is that the most well-known pundits who claim to speak for Republicans all across the country are themselves elites, from folks in the New York City studios of Fox News to coastal dwelling multimillionaires like Rush Limbaugh to law professors like Glenn Reynolds to information elites like the inside-the-beltway cocktail party mainstay Robert Stacy McCain.

That isn’t anything to hold against the folks that I’ve mentioned — it’s the inevitable consequence of a media age wherein everyone working in the field is plugged into information sources that are unavailable to the average person, whether due to lack of access (elites from both political parties are mostly located in Washington DC) or media savvy (the average voter doesn’t understand how to use Twitter, much less who to follow) or time/interest (who wants to spend their time skimming all the e-mails that The Heritage Foundation sends out except a professional political junkie).

I’ve closely followed the debate within the Republican Party about the political tactics it ought to use in an effort to better the country, retake Congress and challenge President Obama for the White House in 2012. But I’ve mostly heard from elites. I think that is unfortunate insofar as it is incomplete, and I got the idea to survey folks working in politics at the local level to get their insights about the best way forward. It’s partly a matter of being curious about what they’d say, party a conviction that their voices ought to inform the ongoing debate, and partly a desire to see if maybe other writers wouldn’t take the information I generated via my questionnaire, and do other worthwhile things with it that I haven’t even thought about.

A quick peruse of the site indicates that so far you have 26 responses to your questionnaire that you have posted. Do you have any preliminary thoughts about the answers you’ve received thus far? Any particularly striking insights that seem missing from the national debate that have arisen from these local activists? Any trends that seem to emerging with the responses?

As yet, I want to refrain from commenting on the responses.

Have you received any reactions from the respondents on their participation? Are they surprised to be receiving the questionnaire? Happy to be asked about their opinions? Skeptical about providing them?

Thus far, I’ve published every word I’ve received in response on the site, with two exceptions: a request from the State Chairman of the California GOP that I give him a call, and one guy — I’m not sure from where — who said that because he didn’t know me or who I was he wouldn’t answer my questions.

Do you have any thoughts about further steps you’d like to take with the site or will the project be considered complete once you’ve received and posted all of the responses you will get to the questionnaire?

Absent some sort of funding my involvement will end when I’ve gathered all the responses possible. Should someone find site improvements a worthwhile investment, I’d take the time to implement them for pay, but as a freelancer, the amount of time I can dedicate to unpaid work is limited.

Were someone to come up with additional funding are there further ideas you have about injecting local voices into the national debate about the GOP?

Given funding, I have further ideas about every aspect of the national debate!

Heh, would you like to provide us with some teasers about those ideas without giving the milk away for free, as it were?

Well, for example, I’d like to see an exercise wherein partisans right and left are asked their opinions on various politically charged factual questions, asked to rate their confidence in the answers, and then given an opportunity to wager money on the answers.

Many thanks to Conor for taking the time to trade emails with me and I’d highly recommend anyone who is interested in hearing from more local voices in the GOP visit The GOP Speaks and consider helping to keep the work Conor is doing there going with whatever contribution is within your means.

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