Conservatives Join Radical Muslims in Hating Our Freedoms

When liberals criticize the war or any specific area of (conservative-led) American policy, a frequent response is that liberals hate America and blame America for the world’s problems. This argument is typically made as part of the usual conservative tactic mischaracterizing the opponent rather than ever responding to their actual views. Newsmax reports on a book which takes these attacks to new lengths, The Enemy at Home: The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11 By Dinesh D’Souza. While I am reluctant to say too much about a book I haven’t read, I believe I may have a good picture from this review as well as the descriptions of the book at Amazon, such as:

“In this book I make a claim that will seem startling at the outset. The cultural left in this country is responsible for causing 9/11. … In faulting the cultural left, I am not making the absurd accusation that this group blew up the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. I am saying that the cultural left and its allies in Congress, the media, Hollywood, the nonprofit sector, and the universities are the primary cause of the volcano of anger toward America that is erupting from the Islamic world. The Muslims who carried out the 9/11 attacks were the product of this visceral rage—some of it based on legitimate concerns, some of it based on wrongful prejudice, but all of it fueled and encouraged by the cultural left. Thus without the cultural left, 9/11 would not have happened.

“I realize that this is a strong charge, one that no one has made before. But it is a neglected aspect of the 9/11 debate, and it is critical to understanding the current controversy over the ‘war against terrorism.’ … I intend to show that the left has actively fostered the intense hatred of America that has led to numerous attacks such as 9/11. If I am right, then no war against terrorism can be effectively fought using the left-wing premises that are now accepted doctrine among mainstream liberals and Democrats.”

Whenever Muslims charge that the war on terror is really a war against Islam, Americans hasten to assure them they are wrong. Yet as Dinesh D’Souza argues in this powerful and timely polemic, there really is a war against Islam. Only this war is not being waged by Christian conservatives bent on a moral crusade to impose democracy abroad but by the American cultural left, which for years has been vigorously exporting its domestic war against religion and traditional morality to the rest of the world.

D’Souza contends that the cultural left is responsible for 9/11 in two ways: by fostering a decadent and depraved American culture that angers and repulses other societies—especially traditional and religious ones— and by promoting, at home and abroad, an anti-American attitude that blames America for all the problems of the world.

If we are looking at a war of ideas rather than the misguided hot war in Iraq, then in one sense they are right. As the review above says, “there really is a war against Islam. Only this war is not being waged by Christian conservatives bent on a moral crusade to impose democracy abroad but by the American cultural left.” Of course it is conservatives who claimed spreading democracy as justification for the Iraq war after their other excuses such as WMD and a connection to terrorism were disproven. In the criticism of expressions of our freedom, showing that it is really the conservatives, if anyone, who could be said to hate America, we see that the real war of ideas is one of freedom versus authoritarianism.

In his tirade against freedom, D’Souza shows which side he is on. As we’ve said all along, the religious right in this country and Muslim fundamentalists are basically fighting the same battle against liberalism and reason.

While this argument is of interest in showing how liberalism remains the supporter of liberty against both Muslim and Christian fundamentalism, extension of this to explain the 9/11 attack is weak. To some degree they might “hate us for our freedom” but this is neither justification to give up our freedom or a satisfactory explanation for 9/11. For them to object to signs of our freedom on an intellectual level is one matter. To actually bother to carry out an attack, when they have so many battles to fight closer to home, requires more motivation. If we were not involved in their affairs in the middle east it is doubtful they would have bothered to attack regardless of how much our liberties conflict with their religious views.

Update:  D’Souza on Colbert Report via Crooks and Liars

No Comments

1 Trackbacks

Leave a comment