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. [Read more →]
October 20, 2009 18 Comments
Feeding the Hydra, It Might Just Work
I’ll try to update again tonight on this post addressing some of the good points commenters have made (busy day).
Via Sullivan and Yglesias, I see that various talking heads of the right seem to have initiated the age old dance of cannibalism,
“I don’t rally people and haven’t since the first year of my radio show,” he wrote to POLITICO. “At that time, all local talk hosts were attempting to prove their worth by getting people to cut up gasoline credit cards, call Washington, etc. I thought it was cheap and disingenuous. The few times I did, early on, suggest people call Washington, the reaction to it from the media was that the response was not genuine (I shut down the House switchboard) because people only did what they did because ‘Limbaugh told them to.”
As well as, and more explicitly,
“To say [McCain] would be worse [than Obama] is mindless, mindless, incoherent as a matter of fact. [...] I think there’s enormous confusion and positioning and pandering. It may be entertaining, but from my perspective, it’s not. It’s pathetic,”
It would be easy, of course, to sit on the sidelines and take in the sights with a bowl of popcorn in hand, but I think there is a larger dynamic at play here that warrants consideration. Namely, your choice of old adages that either, “It’s always darkest before the dawn,” or, “Things will always get worse, before they get better.” Each means essentially the same thing, so take your pick, but it strikes me that beyond the kind of jeering that a tripartite battle between Levin, Limbaugh, and Beck would obviously draw from some corners, the intra-nature of the fighting is an important sign to those of us ever disgruntled with personality based politics. [Read more →]
September 22, 2009 38 Comments
rethinking a strong national defense
I came across Levin’s response via Stacy McCain, who writes about the Iraq War:
My position on the Iraq war was nuanced, as the liberals would say. Unlike Kerry, I was against the war before I was for it. Basically, from 2002 until the war started, I was very skeptical toward arguments for the invasion and conquest of Mesopotamia. However, the time for arguing ended when the first shot was fired. My attititude about war is, “If you’re in it, win it.”
No nation ever benefitted from losing a war. Military defeat tends to demoralize a nation and, if repeated, can result in absolute decadence. (Cf. France.)
I had a similar take, actually, though I was far more than skeptical. I was downright appalled – as much by my fellow countrymen who touted the “love it or leave it” faux patriotism, as by the Bush administration’s nonsensical arguments for invasion (and the Democrats’ cowardly compliance). I was still reeling from the creation of the Department of Homeland Security and the advent of the Patriot Act. The Iraq rhetoric – and the broader “war on terror” language – seemed only to add to the overall Orwellian spookiness of those days.
Like McCain, once the war began my attitude shifted as well – at least toward the Iraq war in particular. (The “war on terror” which might “last decades” still scared the hell out of me. Now that the Obama administration has made the Doublespeak even more glaring by renaming it the Overseas Contingency Operation, I think the chill has in fact deepened.) [Read more →]
July 20, 2009 33 Comments
The Tyranny of Mark Levin’s Liberty
July 10, 2009 12 Comments
Mark Levinsane Strikes Again and Again and Again
June 30, 2009 11 Comments
The First Rule of Fight Club…
I’ve been holding my tongue on Levingate 2009 because most of what I would say is old trope around these parts and I didn’t want to add to, as commenter and fellow blogger Bob Cheeks astutely noted as, the “bullshit” of this ridiculous firestorm. But E.D. has reawakened the discussion here at our home digs and so while I might not feel compelled to link to and comment on others in the fracas, now that it’s at my door step I can’t but give in to the urge to stamp on this flaming bag. [Read more →]
May 28, 2009 8 Comments
Mark Levin, Asshole
May 26, 2009 9 Comments
