In the interests of fairness...

I offer this Corner post by John Derbyshire on the criticism of Friedman. I'm sympathetic to this sentiment.

Gummed Up [John Derbyshire]

Guys: Tom Friedman is certainly making an idiot of himself over China, but the following should at least be noted.Without at all excusing Friedman, one part of the motivation for remarks like his is the frustration many thoughtful Americans — by no means only China gulls — feel at our inability to get much of anything done. This comes up in lots of commentary by sensible conservatives, e.g. on the long stalemate over the rebuilding at Ground Zero.

A lot of us, including a lot of conservatives (remarks by Mark Steyn and George Will come to mind) feel that we have become so bureaucratized, lawyered-up, regulated, and PC-whipped that great national projects of the past — the trans-continental railroad, the transformation of Manhattan, the interstate highway system, wars we can actually win in less than a decade, . . . — are no longer possible. Our system has seized up somehow, and no innovation much bigger than a hand-held gadget stands a chance.

To us, stuck in this glue-trap, the sheer ability to get things done is bound to have some appeal, even when the agent of it is a brutish and callous despotism like China's. I don't say that explains (let alone excuses) all of Tom Friedman's foolishness, but it explains some of it.

*UPDATE: Jonah Goldberg's reply is also worth reading to place this in context.