Dinesh D'Souza, author of "Illiberal Education" and "The End of Racism" has decided to set us all straight and let the world know that the "Cultural Left" are the true culprits responsible for 9-11 in his new book "The Enemy at Home: The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11" (Random House).
From Newsmax
Although it has been officially embargoed before its release on Tuesday, January 16, it is already drawing some heavy gunfire from the left.
Their anger begins with D'Souza's own words: "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."
For sure, even some conservatives may do a double-take on that charge.
Would they? Obviously not
Chris (Why Didn't you do anything about the Cole, Mr. Clinton?) Wallace.
Newsmax continued...
But before every liberal in America blows a collective gasket, the term "cultural left" to D'Souza doesn't refer to the Democratic Party, or to all liberals. Nor is he saying that anyone on the cultural left actually attacked us on 9/11. And the book avoids much of the strident rhetoric seen in other "liberal-bashing" books.
Oh really? Count me among the skeptical on that point...
Despite the protestations of Newsmax, this argument is far from unfamiliar coming from the Right.
They still
blame the Hippies for much of what is "Wrong" in America.
America won't win another war until the 1960s flower children are pushing up petunias.
Radicalized, the flower children morphed into lefty loonies who now masquerade as social progressives. No matter what they rename themselves, however, their agenda hasn't changed.
And that agenda would be what - Peace and Freedom in our Lifetime? Those
Bastards.
However Dinesh's book apparently attempts to make a somewhat different point.
"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," explains D'Souza.
These are the true "root causes" liberals are always looking for, but seem to always miss or get wrong.
What he means by this is that the secular progressive left during the past few decades, with its focus on promoting and even glorifying (at home and abroad) what most of the world's more traditional societies see as depravity and atheism, has provoked a backlash among traditional, moderate Muslims who see their religious and moral values threatened by an aggressive, immoral, anti-religious crusade.
That's right boy and girls - it's the
War on Christmas Gambit again.
Secular-Progressives (Or "S-P's" as
Bully O'Lielly likes to say) have been waging a veritable
jihad against religion and morallity - and that is the reason and "root cause" for the anti-American violence we've seen over last half-decade.
If Liberals have their way it'll be
Gays and Straights, Jews and Gentiles, Agnostics and Christians Living Together, causing chaos in the streets... and true religious traditionalist simply
aren't having that, ok?Gee, where have I heard that idea before? Hm, could it possibly Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson who on
September 13, 2001 said...
FALWELL: And since 1812, this is the first time that we've been attacked on our soil, first time, and by far the worst results. And I fear, as Donald Rumsfeld, the Secretary of Defense said yesterday, that this is only the beginning. And with biological warfare available to these monsters; the Husseins, the Bin Ladens, the Arafats, what we saw on Tuesday, as terrible as it is, could be miniscule if, in fact, if in fact God continues to lift the curtain and allow the enemies of America to give us probably what we deserve.
PAT ROBERTSON: Jerry, that's my feeling. I think we've just seen the antechamber to terror. We haven't even begun to see what they can do to the major population.
JERRY FALWELL: The ACLU's got to take a lot of blame for this.
PAT ROBERTSON: Well, yes.
JERRY FALWELL: And, I know that I'll hear from them for this. But, throwing God out successfully with the help of the federal court system, throwing God out of the public square, out of the schools. The abortionists have got to bear some burden for this because God will not be mocked. And when we destroy 40 million little innocent babies, we make God mad. I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For the American Way, all of them who have tried to secularize America. I point the finger in their face and say 'you helped this happen'.
Yep, I was right. And did Pat Robertson step up and knock down this ridiculous fantasy? Er, not so much.
PAT ROBERTSON: Well, I totally concur, and the problem is we have adopted that agenda at the highest levels of our government. And so we're responsible as a free society for what the top people do. And, the top people, of course, is the court system.
JERRY FALWELL: Amen. Pat, did you notice yesterday? The ACLU, and all the Christ-haters, the People For the American Way, NOW, etc. were totally disregarded by the Democrats and the Republicans in both houses of Congress as they went out on the steps and called out on to God in prayer and sang 'God Bless America' and said 'let the ACLU be hanged'. In other words, when the nation is on its knees, the only normal and natural and spiritual thing to do is what we ought to be doing all the time- calling upon God.
Call me silly if you will (just not to my face please), but I think I see a similarity between the Falwell/Robertson view - which was ginned up just two days after the tragedy and long before any specific culprit had been identified - and D'Souza's.
In a sense, he says, Muslims are right: The West (led by the American left) is waging a war against Islam, just as it is waging a war against traditional Christianity.
Muslims are not enraged by our political freedom or democracy, but by the left's abuse of that freedom, specifically the excessive sexualization of our society.
This decadence repulses most of the world's traditional and religious societies, just as it repulses and angers religious conservatives at home. D'Souza argues that American Christians and traditionalists have more in common with moderate traditional Muslims than they may realize. Ultimately, we should make common political cause with them to fight the cultural radicals, says D'Souza.
So let me get this one straight, Christian Conservatives have a lot in common with
the Taliban (a point on which I happen to concur) and therefore should find common-cause with them
against the left and their abuse of "freedom"?
Hmmm...
The battle we fight with Radical Extremists has nothing to do with the application of U.S. Foreign Policy, it's simply all
'dem Libruls fault? That's a great theory, too bad that isn't what Bin Laden says (From Imperial Hubris Page 129)
For God's sake, what are the documents that incriminate the Palestinian people that warrant the massacres against them, which have been going on for more than five decades at the hands of the Crusaders and the Jews. What is the evidence against the people of Iraq to warrant their blockade and being killed in away that in unprecedented in history. What documents incriminated the Muslims of Bosnia-Herzegovina and warranted the Western Crusaders, with the United States at their head, to unleash their Serb ally to annihilate and displace the Muslim people in the region under UN cover. What is the crime of the Kashmiri people and what documents do the worshippers of cows possess to make them sanction their blood for more than fifty years. What have Muslims in Chechnya, Afghanistan, and the Central Asian republics committed to warrant being invaded by the brutal Soviet military regime and after it communisim's killing, annihilating, and displacing tens of millions of them. What evidence did the United States have the day it destroyed Afghanistan and killed and displaced the Muslims there. It even launched prior to that the unfair blockade of under UN cover. Under the same cover indonesia was ripped apart; Muslims were forced to leave Timor... Under the UN cover too, it intervened in Somalia, killing and desecrating the land of Islam there. It is even the first to urge the Crusader ruler in the Philippines to annihilate our Muslim brothers there.
There are many other countless issues.
We say that all the Muslims that the international Crusader-Zionist machine is annihilating have not committed any crime other than to say God is our Allah.
Bin Laden sees what he is doing a
defensive war against not just the social and cultural attacks of the west that D'Souza describes but also the physical and murderous attacks against Muslims
by Christians and Jews in many parts in the world as a result of the actions and often
inaction of the U.S. Government.
But let's be frank for moment, Bin Ladin is
full of shit. It was America - and specifically Bill Clinton - who made going into Bosnia and
ending the ethnic cleansing and genocide that was taking place against Muslims and Serb alike, a priority.
Al-Qaeda tried to disrupt our efforts and were thwarted. We aren't responsible for what Russia did in Afghanistan, nor are we responsible for what is currently happening in Chechnya. It's not like Putin is really listening to us these days is it? We do not support Bush's hands-off response to the Israels aggressive policies with Palestine and Lebanon. The Left is
not in accordance with Bin Laden's view of American foreign policy.
Yet there is one small glimmer of truth to Dinesh's argument in that Bin Laden does not want to conquer us - he wants to find common cause with us, only not exactly on D'souza's terms. In fact, he practically sounds like a
dirty-hippie Liberal with his anti-materialism talk. Hubris Page 154.
A message to the American people: Peace be upon those who follow the right path. I aman honest adviser to you, I urge you to seek the joy of life and after life and to ridyourself of your dry, miserable and spiretless materialistic existence. I urge you to become Muslims, for Islam calls for the principle of "there is no God but Allah," and for justice and forbids injustice and criminality. I call on you to understand the lesson of the New York and Washington raids, which came in response to some of your previous crimes. The aggressor deserves punishment.
We call you to Islam; the last religion that has replaced all previous religions; the religion of good manners, sincerity, mercy, fear of Allah, kindness to others, justice between people, giving the rights to the people who deserve them, protection of people from oppressors and unjust acts; the religion which calls upon it followers to amr bi maroof (enjoin the good) and nahi an al-munkar (forbid the evil) with hand, tongue, and heart.
With this book D'Souza is yet again playing the
blame the Liberals card that was his stock in trade a decade ago when he wrote "Racism" and "Illiberal Education" before that. Way back then I happened to write a detailed rebutal to "Racism" which is
still comes up as the number 2 selection on Google beneath his own listing on Amazon.com. A rebutal which pointed out that that book nothing more than a
500 page long screed against Liberalism filled with false assertions and faulty logic - and that went it finally concluded exactly how racism could be "Ended" presented the completly laughable conclusion.
Back then on my
rusty old geocities page I said...
And the "End" is what?
In the final chapters of his book D'souza claims that the solution to racism in this country is to repeal the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and replace it with a new law that expressly prohibits ANY recognition of race within the government, but allows ABSOLUTE freedom of use of race by private industry in determining how it should operate (pg. 544). He claims that the only racists of any worth any serious danger in America today are black (pg. 412) - this contrary to the evidence that racial violence against blacks and other minorities persons is increasing, and he continues to absolve all (what I tend to call "unconscious" bigots) such as cab drivers from any and all responsibility to even OBEY the law (they are specifically prohibited from discriminating against their fares), let alone curb their discrimination against blacks (pg. 252) when they refuse to serve them for fear that they will be "robbed" by "young black thugs". This is considered "acceptable" to D'souza even though these people are criminals for this behavior. D'souza would make anyone who attempted to stop this activity - a criminal.
Dinesh would essentially have us make discrimination legal in order to cure racism. It's not the racist or discriminators fault...it's those pesky laws against discrimination and racism.
Yeah, Right.
Just where was that Zen mantra of the modern Conservative - "Personal Responsibility" - hiding when he thought of this?
This is his idea of the "End of Racism", to cripple government and law enforcement from any realistic preventative or even punitive measures, and to allow any and all types of discrimination by private industry as if market forces alone will be able to succeed when nearly 400 years of prior experience with those same forces show us just how likely that is.
I expect this new book with be nothing but more of the same, another screed on the "evils" of Liberal/Secular-Progressive thinking -- and how everything that has ever gone wrong on the face of this earth stems from such
wrong-headedness.
This is a view that flies directly in the face of history and fact (Not that has stopped very many Conservatives in the past) as John Dean notes in his own book "Conservatives without Conscience" (Page 15)
In their efforts to present conservatism as an Ameican tradition, conservatives have also reinterpreted the U.S. Constitution. One of the key elements of the Constitution is the establishment of a unique republic, in that a federal system would coexist with state and local governments. Before it was ratified many opponents attacked its progressive and innovative nature, for far from representing teh status quo, the Constitution was dramatically liberal.
James Madison defended it in The Federalist Papers by explaining that the founders "have not suffered a blind veneration for antiquity, for custom" but rather employed "numerous innovations... in favor of private rights and public happiness." Madison sid that "precden could no be discovered," for there was no other government" on the face of the globe" that provided a model. Madison, the father of the Constitution, clearly saw his work as the opposite of conseratism.
I'm certain Dean would see D'souza as a
Right-Wing Authoritian. A Follower. A
Brown-Shirt. One who would be ...
"especially submissive to established authority"; as showing "general aggressiveness toward others when such behavior "is perceived to be sactioned" by established authorities, and as highly compliant with "social conventions" endorsed by society and established authoritees.
Or to put it another way -
a Boot-licking Neo-Con Attact Dog. But then again, what kind of behavior would you expect from
Laura Ingraham's ex-boyfriend at Dartmouth? (According to David Brock's "Blinded by the Right" page 255)
Like Brock himself in his former life as a Right-Wing Attack Dog for the American Spectator who only wished to "Take A Scalp" and make a name for himself while "getting those dirty Liberals". For D'Souza it's not about elevating the discourse of society, or possibly truly looking at the schism between liberlisms demands for ever increasing personal freedom and gratification vs the need to maintain our communal bounds through the excersize of personal and public responsibility.
Actually having a serious review of both liberalism and conservatisms relative advantages and flaws are not on D'souza's plate.
It never has been and it isn't now.
Vyan
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