At long last, I can say this: The far right conservatives in America actually hate this country and are terrorist appeasers.
I know, I know. That’s the sort of hyperbolic criticism that usually gets said about those on the left. But the exact opposite is true, and I can say it is true. I can say it is true, because conservative author Dinesh D’Souza says it is true himself.
The title of D’Souza’s book, The Enemy At Home: The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11, sounds like a typical blame-the-left book. After all, it’s right there in the title: the cultural left is responsible for 9/11. Or, as D’Souza puts it:
[I]f the political left and the Islamic fundamentalists are in the same foreign policy camp [because they both hate American imperialism], then by the same token the political right and the Islamic fundamentalists are on the same wavelength on social issues. The left is allied with some radical Muslims in opposition to American foreign policy, and the right is allied with an even larger group of Muslims [which includes radical Muslims] in their opposition to American social and cultural depravity. This is the essential new framework I propose for understanding American foreign policy and American social issues.
Now, let’s start with that first sentence. I, for one, don’t agree that the American left and bin Laden share the same foreign policy goals. Sure — both disagree with Bush’s Iraq War, but then again, so does William Buckley, the grandfather of conservative punditry. Other than that, what exactly does the American left and bin Laden have in common, from a foreign policy standpoint?
But the real juice comes after (actually, in the middle of) D’Souza’s first sentence. Read it again.
That’s right. Conservatives and radical Muslims are allied when it comes to their opposition of American culture (which is another word for, in Bush-ese, America’s "freedoms"). Conservatives hate homosexuality, The Vagina Monologues, and Hollywood — and by God, so do Islamic fundamentalists. D’Souza makes no bones about this, and suggests that the 9/11 attacks on America were actually attacks on the American left.
What’s D’Souza’s implicit (if not explicit) message? How would he protect America’s security? By joining forces with bin Laden and others in eradicating the cultural left.
This could easily be dismissed as the rantings of some conservative blogger, typing furiously in his pajamas from his parents’ home’s basement. But D’Souza is a "respected" conservative — a Rishwain Research Scholar at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.
As if more evidence is needed, D’Souza is only saying what other prominent conservative leaders have said. Remember in the days immediately following 9/11, how Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson sat around at the 700 club and blamed the attacks on pagans, abortionists, feminists, gays and lesbians?
So the next time someone on the right claims that America’s left is "supporting terrorism", think about D’Souza, Falwell, and Robertson, and how they happily jump into bed (figuratively speaking, of course) with Islamic fundamentalists like bin Laden.