Conor Friedersdorf’s Grassy Knoll

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Conor Friedersdorf is the Lee Harvey Oswald of journalism — an alienated young man consumed by irrational hatred of his own country.

Fortunately, the Secret Service need not worry about Friedersdorf purchasing a Mannlicher-Carcano rifle just now. The focus of his manic obsession is not the current president, but his predecessor.

Bush Derangement Syndrome — the psychiatric malady that seized the minds of liberals for eight years of their paranoid nightmares — has left the landscape littered with deranged kooks. In 2011, Jared Loughner succumbed to 9/11 Truther craziness and went berserk in Tucson. Barrett Brown flipped out last year, ranting about a mad conspiracy against him. Down in Alabama, Roger Shuler is convinced he is the target of a corrupt scheme masterminded by Karl Rove. Anonymous hacker Jeremy Hammond blames Bush, too.

Then there is Conor Friedersdorf, superficially rational yet consumed by the delusion that George W. Bush was the worst president in American history, and in the grip of a dread fear that there will be a Second Coming of Dubya if the GOP ever wins another election.

Today, the target in Conor’s crosshairs is Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, whose Crime Against Humanity is publishing a book:

The latest evidence can be found in a McKay Coppins profile of Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, whose recently published book, Unintimidated: A Governor’s Story and A Nation’s Challenge, was coauthored by Marc Thiessen, a former Bush Administration speechwriter whose work as a commentator has marked him as one of the most fervent apologists for “enhanced interrogation techniques.” . . .
The question being posed here is as follows: is it ethical to take a blindfolded human being who hasn’t been given any due process, to strap him to a board, to force water into his cavities until it fills his lungs, to induce the physical terror that accompanies drowning, and to leverage that terror in order to coerce him into giving information he may or may not possess.
The euphemism we use for that is “water-boarding.” And the answer an ambitious Republican governor gives, when asked about it, is that he doesn’t have enough knowledge or information to comment. This is alarming, for this is the answer given at a moment of relative calm, when fear of terrorism isn’t much on anyone’s mind. Imagine a plausible future where Governor Walker has been elected to the Senate, or a less likely but still plausible future where he takes the White House. What would he say to water-boarding in the panic that follows a terrorist attack?
The arc of the moral environment the Bush Administration created bends toward torture. The taboo against it is not strong enough to prevent its resurgence.  . . .

Thus, an al-Qaeda terrorist “who hasn’t been given any due process” is rendered a victim of “the panic that follows a terrorist attack.”

Conor is here expressing the same sympathy for America’s worst enemies that led Lee Harvey Oswald to defect to the Soviet Union, to distribute “Fair Play for Cuba” leaflets in New Orleans, and ultimately to fire three shots from the Texas School Book Depository.

Let us pose a simple question: Would the al-Qaeda terrorist have more “due process” if, instead of being taken prisoner, he had been shot dead, died from a bomb blast or (as seems to be the current policy) was taken out by a Predator drone strike?

Torture is a bad thing, and I’m against it, but I don’t lose much sleep at night with worries that somewhere a violent jihadi isn’t getting “due process.” If we are at war and al-Qaeda terrorists are trying to destroy us, then I am quite decidedly in favor not only of depriving them of “due process,” but also killing every last one of them.

“Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill,
that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet
any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe,
to assure the survival and the success of liberty.”

Some of us still believe in America that way, but Conor Friedersdorf speaks for that decadent fringe who perversely imagine that John F. Kennedy should have said, “Ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for America’s enemies.”

The Secret Service need not view Conor Friedersdorf as an active menace just now. But if any Republican is ever again elected to the White House, look out for Conor somewhere on a grassy knoll.




 

52 comments

  1. Also note how he pulls the war on terror out of his nether regions with which to tar and feather a state governor who had nothing to do with the decision making processes in place at that time. That’s like saying Hitler liked dogs, so anyone who likes dogs is a Nazi. Logic is not his strong suit. And, clever how you did to him what he does to Scott Walker.

  4. Our foreign policy during the Bush administration is not something I’m much interested in debating nearly five years after Bush left office. But you see how The War on Terror has become one of those things — like racism and homophobia — employed as a symbolic scarecrow to frighten jittery liberals: “If the Republicans win … THIS!”

    It has never been my method to get down in the tall grass with pseudo-intellectuals, to take their arguments point-by-point, as if they deserved serious consideration. My point is simply this: Conor Friedersdorf is a worthless fool.

    And if you disagree, I question your patriotism!

  5. I’ve never understood this fetish they have about giving these enemy combatants due process, as if they are entitled merely by being captured by us. They’re technically not even entitled to Geneva Convention protections, yet the Bush Administration went out of it’s way to exceed them, to no credit from the chatterers.

    The policy becomes simply “take no prisoners”, because who wants THAT hassle?

  6. His critique of Walker is patently ludicrous and obviously designed to deflect attention from the governor’s success in Wisconsin, which success causes Progressives’ heads to explode.

    What I really find interesting, however, is one of the things which distinguishes those like Friedersdorf from regular human beings is the extraordinary ability deploy their ostensibly moral preening in only one direction, especially in circumstances where they themselves will never be in a position to make a decision where lives are in the balance. In other words, it’s all an abstraction to them. The idea that discomfiting another human might be the only way to save thousands of innocent lives doesn’t enter into their thoughts.

  7. Given the One’s embracing of Bush’s methodology for dealing extra-judicially with terrorists, these diatribes don’t come up very often any more. Nonetheless, it’s good to remember that FDR did far worse during WWII to German spies caught on our shore: trying them before military tribunals with minimal if non-existent procedural due process; forbidding acess and appeals to U.S. civil courts contrary to established SCOTUS precedent; and executing them before SCOTUS could rule on the case. Hearing a Progressive’s sputtering, nonsensical attempts to distinguish FDR from Bush in the face of those historical facts is always good for a laugh or two.

  9. Same crap, different idiot. It’s like trying to tell the difference between crappy pop singers that all process their voices so much because none of them can hit a proper pitch.

  10. Good stuff, Stacy. Another line from that Friedersdorf excerpt that deserves examination is that our country is

    at a moment of relative calm, when fear of terrorism isn’t much on anyone’s mind.

    But he won’t be asked to examine it, of course. That would require asking hard questions about President Obama.

  11. I also notice he has no idea what waterboarding is. “to force water into his cavities until it fills his lungs” Ummm..no, it does not force water into your “cavities” or fill the lungs. These people argue about things they don’t even understand.

  12. I would wager you’ve mistaken Conor Friedersdorf’s motors. An alternative hypothesis:

    1. Friedersdorf has attempted to earn a living for 11 years as a word merchant in lieu of learning a proper trade (which is to say one which is not in an imploding market).

    2. His stock in trade is guises and poses. Over the years he has attempted to sell himself as

    a. a ‘conservative’ who just happened to ever be arguing for a portfolio of pet liberal causes. This is a niche product for liberal opinion outlets, but the market got glutted – David Frum, Kathleen Parker, Daniel McCarthy, &c.

    b. a media critic – specifically of talk radio programs. The thing is, the seriality of the format means you only can offer a critique once and there are few new releases. Also, elongated discussions of Mark Levin’s manners are a bore for the uninitiated.

    c. the national conscience on ‘torture’. The issue is petty (half-a-dozen reprobates being subject to simulated drowning is not that important), but la gauche have an onanistic devotion to discussing it and you impress Rod Dreher.

    —

    Of course he might just knock-off the shuck and jive and do something serious with his life. He is 34 and time’s a wastin’

  13. Tsk, tsk, tsk.

    Stacy, I’ve repeatedly warned you and others about this punk. His sole methods for getting attention are this sort of sick attack on Republicans (masquerading as one himself, intermittently) and “punching up” by picking fights with bloggers and writers far more popular and widely-read than he (which is most of them).

    He survives on the publicity like Tinkerbelle survived by children believing in fairies.

    The boy can’t write and his thinking is anything but logical – it quite resembles a college freshman’s attempts at sounding profound. If only you and Ace and Hot Air and others would ignore him, he would go away.

    But, NOOOOOOOOOOO, when that little fairy flame flickers, dying, there you all are, applauding and declaring your heartfelt belief that he does, in fact, exist.

    Phooey!

  16. So, we need to worry about him if the Republicans ever win the Oval Office again? Wooh, that is a relief, I was worried there for a minute. Good one about the Stupid Party winning another election though. Had me going for a minute.

  19. “a blindfolded human being who hasn’t been given any due process”

    Er… there’s the problem. Category error. An unlawful combatant isn’t granted any “due process”. The laws of war specifically exempt them from ANY protections.

    Doing that is how you punish people for war crimes.

    So why does Conor Friedersdorf want to reward terrorists with rights explicitly removed from them by centuries of international agreements?

  21. Now you’ve gone and offended honest worthless fools. I guess doing such things is simply a deeply ingrained habit.

  22. I blame his parents for not giving him that other “n”. Imagine having to go through life constantly reminding people that your name is missing a letter.

    I can understand as, although I have an easily pronounced name (said just like it’s spelled), it still gets mispronounced by about 30-40$ of people. (I don’t know why).

    It’s almost put ME around the bend a few times. Now that I’m older it’s a minor blip on a screen full of targets.
    (Even FireFox’s spell check doesnt’ recognize Conor)

    Conor (one EN) Friederdorfs suffers from Pre Natal (simul natal?) PARENTAL ABUSE.

    Free Conor from his tormentation.

    Donate YOUR ENs NOW!!!!

  23. So why does Conor Friedersdorf want to reward terrorists with rights
    explicitly removed from them by centuries of international agreements?

    1. It’s his brand.
    2. He has no conception of how anything works or might work or could possibly work outside the milieux in which he has spent his vocational life.

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