The Sad Isolationism Of David Frum

Given the widespread linkage to a recent guest post by Mark Levin, I've been able to get a view of just who carries weight link-wise in this new media world. In his latest, David Frum accuses Mark Levin of being walled off and alone. As a matter of fact, David even encouraged his, um, readers to click the link. So, what kind of a deluge have I experienced?

Over the weekend, Mark Levin replied to us all on the Riehl World blog. It’s worth reading the reply in full, but a few quotations will give the flavor of it.

Here is a man who has literally isolated himself in a little box in his home. No social ties with anyone outside his family and pets. He does not interact even with the producers of his program. He has cut himself out of the feedback loop, and when something unwanted intrudes itself into his carefully sheltered experience, he reacts with rage.

Well, Hot Air rocks if you want traffic on your blog, there's no mistaking the blog dominance there. And of course, Mark's own site continued to throw traffic my way well after the post was linked.

The Conservative Grapevine provided hundreds of readers. The American Scene was more than respectable due to my debate with Conor Friedersdorf. The Science blog, Five Feet of Fury by Kathy Shaidle, Stacy McCain and AmSpec - and several other blogs who I hope will forgive my not mentioning them, did their part. Dreher's Belief Net? Weak, but certainly noticeable.

Unfortunately in all this, I hadn't even noticed David Frum's New Majority linking me last evening. I noticed it as one or two people eventually passed by today despite his touting the link. My sense is they just aren't there. At least not in any numbers. What kind of Majority is that, or will he blame that on Mark Levin, too?

Seems to me if there's anyone isolated and walled off from the world talking to himself, it's David Frum, ... until MSNBC or Jon Stewart gives him another call, anyway.

But then, that majority currently exists in Congress. It's members have a D after their names. Perhaps, in the end, it's where David Frum actually belongs.

Comments

[JCELEPHANT]

What is amazing is that this argument is 33 yrs old. The same stuff was being stated in 1976. The same limp-wristed Chablis drinking moderates spoke about becoming Demlite. Reagan proved through two successive elections what could work and still they argue the same theories. Pathetic.

[Jim Caldwell]

Frums idea of a new majority has gone nowhere. It's dead. The only time anyone goes there is when he comes out with one of his "bash Rush" posts that gets picked up everywhere. Even the concept is laughable, you can't have a majority that has moderates at the core because moderates don't stand for anything. They're too pliable.

[Conor Friedersdorf]

Dan,

Again, you show the weakness of your arguments by trying to make this a contest over the size of one's audience, rather than one about the merit of ideas. It is mighty strange for you to make this move in one breath, and criticize Jon Stewart in the next, given that the latter has a bigger platform than Mr. Levin. I don't think the size of someone's audience is a useful metric for the quality of their ideas, but apparently you do. So what's Oprah talking about these days?

[Eric K]

Frum's argument is simple, although completely wrong. If you are beaten by Liberals, then you have to become a Liberal to win, right? Of course, if the fact is that you ran with one of the most Liberal members of your party and still lost, then what does this tell you? Such is the white noise that seems to be of a frequency above which moderates can hear effectively, or perhaps they just ignore the facts to gain access to the proper manhattan cocktail parties.
Socialism has never worked, and if Capitalism is so bad, perhaps we need to tell China that fact, as they seem to have embraced it fully and are moving to take us out as a world superpower, with guys like Frum and Obama gladly allowing America to circle the drain with a bottle of draino.

Nero may have fiddled as Rome burned, but Frum is all too happy to fiddle as the Democrats light the fires of American greatness.

[Dave C]

Again, you show the weakness of your arguments by trying to make this a contest over the size of one's audience, rather than one about the merit of ideas.

The size of the audience does correlate to the merit of the ideas. Is Levin pandering? Not as much as Frum panders to The Daily Show. (if at all)

Hence, Mark wins. And he can trump you on that.

[Dan Riehl]

Conor - Stewart's ratings are far below Marks based upon the numbers. Do your homework if you are going to argue a point.

This post was about traffic, pure and simple. That it reflects so poorly on Frum is just a fact.

[kathleen]

Conor, how self-congratulatory of you to argue that a small audience has nothing to do with the quality of ideas. Of course, since you have no audience, you wish us to infer that the quality of your ideas is higher than that of people with a sizable audience. The problem with this is that you have never engaged with Levin's actual ideas, you just point out Levin says nasty stuff sometimes. Newsflash -- that doesn't disqualify his ideas for us, nor should it.

Meanwhile, you continually shrink from presenting any ideas of your own. I don't blame you, because you probably have never so much as applied to law school, whereas Levin has decades of real world legal experience. You probably don't even understand how law and politics are supposed to coincide (here's a hint: read the Constitution, or at least a USSC opinion or 2). (here's another hint: "USSC" stands for United States Supreme Court)

Perhaps this is a case where the masses are right, sir.

[Jim Treacher]

"Again, you show the weakness of your arguments by trying to make this a contest over the size of one's audience, rather than one about the merit of ideas."

Your ideas stink too. There, now run along.

[Rob Crawford]

The whole "socially isolated" thing is more than a bit creepy. What the hell is Frum claiming? How the hell would he know?

[epobirs]

Frum may pick up a trickle of new people for the side but he has driven far more off. For example, Jerry Pournelle, cites Frum as his main reason for feeling driven off from the Nation Review circle, because he dared to question some of the rationales for Iraq and other actions in the first Bush 43 term. Engaging these questions and finding respectable answers would have gone a long way toward making a better argument to people weren't remotely friendly, as the questioner was in this case. Instead, Frum's reaction was to drive out the infidel rather than address the complaint for which he was hard put to find an answer.

If you cannot deal with contention from those on your side, you're going to fail badly when you come up against the opposition. Frum and his ilk is a big reason we're in this fix today.

[epobirs]

Ah, that would be National Review. Oops.

[Conor Friedersdorf]

Kathleen,

I have engaged with Levin's ideas: http://theamericanscene.com/2009/05/26/mark-levin-part-ii-the-dispatcher-is-dispatched

See especially this portion:

Criticism #2

This concerns the following exchange on Mr. Levin’s show:

HOST: My God. He’s so smart. His own party voted against him on Guantanamo Bay. How stupid was that, Cindy? His own party refused to fund the closing of Guantanamo Bay.

CALLER. Yeah but you know he can just move those people over here anyway. He’s already doing it with the one guy.

HOST: Yeah, sure, he can do whatever he wants. Let me ask you a question. Why do you hate this country?

CALLER: No, I love this country.

HOST: (angrily shouting) I SAID WHY DO YOU HATE MY COUNTRY! WHY DO YOU HATE MY CONSTITUTION? WHY DO YOU HATE MY DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE? You just said it. He can blow off Congress. He can do whatever he wants, right?

In this exchange, Mr. Levin berates the caller for asserting that Barack Obama can move Gitmo detainees to the United States, even though Congress objects to the transfer. His logic seems apparent: the caller is saying that President Obama can “blow off Congress” and “do whatever he wants,” therefore she is anti-American and anti-constitution — she’d just give President Obama whatever power he wants to transgress against the rule of law.

What a weird argument for Mr. Levin to make, I thought. A person opposed to executive power might well argue that it’s anti-Constitution to say the president can move detainees, Congress be damned. As I noted in my original post, however, “the host is weirdly blind to the irony that he himself thinks a wartime president possesses the power to house detainees where he sees fit… by the host’s own standard of executive power—not to mention Dick Cheney’s standard — President Obama possesses the inherent power to close Gitmo, what Congress says be damned.” How could Mr. Levin berate a caller as anti-American for articulating his own view of executive power, albeit applied to a new president?

Well. Here’s how Mr. Levin responded to my criticism:

"Where did I say the president does not have the power to move the prisoners to the United States? The reason they were housed at GITMO was because of a 1950 Supreme Court decision (Eisentrger) in which Justice Jackson made clear that the court had no jurisdiction over detainees held outside the United States. I have written at length about it. The issue of the Constitution, the nation, and the Declaration relates to the danger moving terrorists into this country would pose to the country, a fact that even the Democrat-controlled Congress somewhat understands, and is the reason they voted down Obama’s $80 million request to shut GITMO. And, yes, Conor, I believe such a mindless position is unpatriotic. That may offend you, but it seems you are easily offended, except by your own accusations."

Is it just me, or is Mr. Levin clearly fudging what the exchange with the caller was really about? After all, he stated on his show that the caller is anti-American and anti-Constitution not for thinking that Obama SHOULD move Gitmo detainees to the United States, but because she thought HE POSSESSED THE POWER TO DO SO. “You just said it. He can blow off Congress. He can do whatever he wants, right?” What Mr. Levin claims after the fact makes no sense given the language that he used.

Having established that, let’s assume the point he meant to make is his latest offering. As far as I can tell, Mr. Levin’s position is now as follows: Under the Constitution, President Obama possesses the inherent power as Commander in Chief to move Gitmo detainees to America — and if he exercises that inherent constitutional power, he is anti-constitution.

[kathleen]

wow, conor, by finding that 10 second snippet of talk radio you've successfully convinced me that Levin knows NOTHING about separation of powers. And kudos to you for holding a talk radio host to the same standards as an attorney arguing in a courtroom, or writing a brief, or a law review article. Being a hardass for consistency makes you special and illustrates to the world that you are, indeed, smarter and more accomplished than the fraudulent Levin. We're all just too dumb to recognize your brilliance.

[Jim Treacher]

"In this exchange, Mr. Levin berates the caller for asserting that Barack Obama can move Gitmo detainees to the United States, even though Congress objects to the transfer."

No, he berates the caller for asserting that Barack Obama can do whatever he wants because he's Barack Obama. If you can't even tell the truth about that, why should we take anything else you say on the subject seriously?

[Ran]

"What kind of Majority is that, or will he blame that on Mark Levin, too?"

Like it or not, numbers are a direct reflection of influence and success in the marketplace of ideas. Remind me of the failure of the "moderates" and Monarchists during the Revolution.

"By what do we mean the Revolution? The war? That was no part of the Revolution; it was only an effect and consequence of it. The Revolution was in the minds of the people, and this was effected, from 1760 to 1775, in the course of fifteen years before a drop of blood was shed at Lexington. The records of thirteen legislatures, the pamphleteers, newspapers in all the colonies, ought to be consulted during that period to ascertain the steps by which the public opinion was enlightened and informed concerning the authority of Parliament over the colonies." - Adams to Jefferson, 1815.

Hey, Adams... you forgot the blogs!

The Revolution is just again revving up. Our intellectual giants (Frum, Friedersdorf, Brooks & Co.) aren't making a decent effort to sell the superiority of their ideas. Perhaps they are; but their present influence, then, reflects the quality of their proposals. Something is holding them back, and it can't be the value of Levin's ideas. Or can it?

[WarEagle]

Frum is truly a sad and pathetic man. I kind of feel sorry for him. His only friends seem to be far Left wackos like Olbermann and Stewart, and yet he claims to be a conservative. But the real conservatives can't stand him and completely ignore him. His lib friends at A Mess NBC and NPR barely tolerate him because they need to at least give the impression of being balanced. It must suck to be him. To know that you have no influence on anyone really. That the people with whom you most identify think you are a D-bag, and your other friends (who you supposedly disagree with) only talk to you because you are occasionally useful. Sad.