While I shouldn't give this imbecile Friedersdorf more time than Mark Levin already has, let's take a look at what he actually attempts to do in an item at Forbes. It's a shame that these on-line publications seem to have no standards when hiring whatever no-talent gets recommended to them for God knows what reason. First, as he so often does, Conor (with one N) must let readers know how important he thinks he is.
Over at The Daily Dish, where I am a senior editor, my boss Andrew Sullivan offers a qualified defense of President Obama’s decision to put an American citizen on an assassination list.
He then picks up on and uses arguments from better thinkers, but twists them to fit his own purely silly agenda in yet another attempt to attack Mark Levin. Is it really a secret to any conservative, other than this poseur and nitwit Friedersdorf, that Obama's is a statist approach to governance? I think not. It's what Friedersdorf does from there that makes him either a dishonest, or genuinely weak thinker. As he isn't completely stupid, I imagine dishonest is the better choice.
... I’ll focus my remarks on the arguments offered by a particularly unlikely defender of President Obama: the talk radio host Mark Levin, author of Liberty and Tyranny, who has argued on many occasions that the Obama Administration is composed of “statists” who are pushing the country toward tyranny.
Friedersdorf links to an item by Mark in which he points out that Obama is correct to name Anwar al-Awlaki an enemy of the state for the crime of treason. He also disingenuously labels Mark's argument as cavalier, despite its containing several cites. Friedersdorf isn't simply relating facts to his readers, he's dishonestly mischaracterizing a would be opponent for effect - a weak thinker's rhetorical device. But I digress. In fact, as Mark says, at that point, the case can be made that Awlaki has willfully rejected his American citizenship.
Then, Friedersdorf combines that post with a link to, of all places, Media Mutters, with audio of a Levin riff on how Obama seems to go from subject to subject creating proverbial enemies of the state - the insurance companies today, the doctors tomorrow, etc.... Now, would any honest or rational person argue that Mark Levin is equating those proverbial enemies of the statist agenda, with his characterization of Awlaki as a bona fide enemy of the state? Of course not. But that doesn't prevent Conor from advancing such a dishonest non-argument dressed up as deep thinking. Forbes should be embarrassed by this boy wanderer.
Conor also links National Review's Williamson to support, not his own, but other's arguments. Actually, what we should do is call Williamson's concrete, non-complex thinking as that which views the Constitution as a suicide pact, which it was never intended to be, obviously.
Whatever kind of conservatism is arguing that we should invest the president with sole, secret, unreviewable authority to order the assassination of U.S. citizens because the alternative is unworkable (!) in the considered view of John Tabin, because war exists (!) — I am not that kind of conservative, I suppose. I propose we call that school of thought ahistorical, morally illiterate conservatism.
Then, as is also so typical of his nonsensical musings, Conor ends with a woeful plea, please link, please notice me! Yet, as with what passes for his logic, Conor's character is so obviously twisted, he can't help but launch another attack, while pretending it is he, Conor Friedersdorf, who is the better man. See how he does that? Why disparage if honest engagement is what Conor truly seeks? It makes no sense. It's as dishonest as the rest of his often rambling, tedious, when not unreadable, prose.
In that spirit, I’d like to ask it of Mark Levin. I urge him to break with habit and confront the most forceful arguments contrary to his own (preferably without any ad hominem).
Conor often comes by after I cite him and whines, why didn't you engage my argument? Well, they aren't usually your arguments, Conor. You seem incapable of mustering a sound one on your own. And it takes so long to un-twist your dishonest patchwork quoting of others in your striving for the attentions of still others, what really is the point, other than risk giving you the attentions for which you so consistently plead, ones you so clearly don't deserve?
Note to self: Call Mark and tell him to stop linking this headcase, so Conor's incessant pleas for attention at Forbes and the Atlantic can dissolve quietly and ignored as they fade into the Internet ether, along with whatever nonsense he composed at his now infamous first grand failure, Culture whatever the hell it was.
