D'Souza's argument is: Divided we stand united we fall.

I don't think that is going to work.

Heck FDR and Churchill were willing to unite with Stalin against Hitler. Uniting with homo lovers and assorted libertines seems much less excesssive.

Bravo Eric. I've commented on D'Souza time and time again. He seems to embrace the values of fundamentalist Muslims even if he adds that it is better that “virtue has special luster because it is freely chosen.”

And here I thought that the Radical Islamic Fundamentalists hated us because we aren't Muslims and proclaim the ideal of the universality of human rights to self-determination. Why, silly me!

What the Left is by and large responsible for is the erosion of the Nation State as a concept and so destroying it both externally and internally that the ability of a Nation to stand up for itself is now seen as 'biased'. The terrorists probably *thank us* for doing that and being such easy targets and willing patsies that seek to blame ourselves for their intolerance. The confluence of Transnational Progressivism with International Terrorism joins together into Transnational Terrorism, which seeks any and all methods to work distributed means agains the Nation State so as to remove it as an obstacle and viable alternative to Empire. Yes, you do get commonality of agenda from that, although different views as to which Elite class gets to rule.

That is about the only difference I can see between the Left and the Radical Islamic Fundamentalists: the rest is window trappings as *any* Empire is repression and death to those stuck in it. Doesn't really matter *why* they come to kill you, you end up dead just the same. And that confluence is deadly to us *today*.

Just which dimension has Mr. D'Souza been living in recently? Because it certainly isn't this one...

I find D'Souza a mixed bag. He has made points about the cultural left worth knowing, but this isn't one of them. This argument is an odd reverse of the liberal argument that the Muslims hate us because of colonialism and capitalism. In both cases, it makes the fundamental error of thinking that what Muslims say are their motivations must be true - a courtesy the left and right in America do not always extend to each other.

Yes, the Muslims say it's our decadence, or our support for Israel, or our crusader spirit, or whatever, that cause their hatred of us. I doubt that, at least among the leaders. When we pressure Israel, they don't like us better, when we bring tsunami rescue, they don't like us better, when we go out of our way to say respectful things about Islam they don't like us better.

They don't know why they hate us, because it's not about us. They hate their own failure, not our success.

if the "cultural left" is stopped, then the terrorists will stop hating us?

Herein are lots of good points bashing Dinesh, but you have to give him this ... if Conservative America were to win the American culture war, we would arguably return to being the kind of strong America that won WWII.

And that America would then annihilate the Islamic threat, without reservation.

In other words, it is the traitorous American Left, composed of all the components that Dinesh cites, that has sapped America's belief in herself.

So, in this sense, Dinesh is right: in order to win the war against the maniac Islamists, we will first need to defeat the American Leftists who yearn for the defeat of America, just as enthusiastically as the Islamists.

D'Souza clearly was a tool with the way that he wrote this book. The Islamic world does not need Hollywood to have its own deep-seated problems with outright sexual depravity. If you do a bit of digging on it, you will find that there are signs that there exists a problem with pedophilia that is probably as bad or worse than anything we have in post-Christian America.

I have some good examples of such depravity, here.

Freedom or peace. Choose one.

Paul,

Is there no room for the consensual libertine anti-jihadist Jewish Right in D'Souza's universe?

if Conservative America were to win the American culture war, we would arguably return to being the kind of strong America that won WWII.

The thing is, that's a totally different argument than what D'Souza is apparently making (or at least, than what Eric is criticizing--D'Souza might make that argument elsewhere). He's not talking about changing Americans so we will be better at fighting terrorism, he's talking about changing Americans so we won't upset radical Muslims so much. That's not increasing our fighting spirit, that's appeasement. And it won't work, for the same reason appeasement on other issues won't work.

Right after 9/11 it was the left that said it was more important to ask why they hate us than to defend ourselves. Since the left raised the issue I think it is entirely appropriate that someone look for the answer. And it is the left that gives aid and comfort to our enemies, that hates America every bit as much as the Jihadis do, so it's not far fetched at all to give them a pretty healthy share of the blame, in answer to their own question.

If anyone can explain by what standard things like sexual desires or marital status can be called "left wing," I'm all ears.

Well, the left accuses anyone who questions any of their dogma on these issues as being "right wing". The left claims (falsely) to have sole moral and itellectual authority on these (and many other) issues. So I suppose that's why he uses that term.
Not that I agree with D'Souza, the "right" believe in plenty of things that'll get them thrown into Muslim hellfires! The Muslims just plain hate all heathen, and are praised and encouraged by their society to do so.
Nothing the heathens can do except convert or die.

The Muslims just plain hate all heathen, and are praised and encouraged by their society to do so. Nothing the heathens can do except convert or die.

BULL. This is religious bigotry. There are something like a billion Muslims in the world, and this fantasy of yours does not reflect the beliefs of anything like a majority of them. Some of them are even loyal American citizens. Some of them have given their lives fighting for this country instead of you. So let's grow the hell up.

Dinesh D'Souza? There's a good ol' Arkansas name.

Sounds like Mr D'Souza is comparing two cultures foreign to him and misunderstanding both. Thesis: if you didn't grow up watching Scooby Doo, none of this will make sense.

Actually, to the point...

"a few libertarians and leftists made the case that perhaps we ought to examine our own foreign policy, and see if U.S. interventions may be spurring anti-American hatred around the world."

needs to be refined, to counter the argument that it doesn't matter to extremists like bin Laden what we do -- but that OUR INTERVENTIONS ALIENATE REASONABLE PEOPLE OF THE WORLD THAT HELP CREATE THE SUPPORT SYSTEMS FOR EXTREMEISTS THAT ALLOW THEM TO CONTINUE TO EXIST UNABATED.

IOW...it's not about changing the unchangable view of the extremist.

(think capital letters help my point? probably not)

D'Souza has done a lot of good work in the past, so I'm inclined to cut him some slack, but his view of "social conservatism" is apparently irreversibly political. If this is taken as a conservative or Republican policy direction, it will poison the movement back toward sensible conservatism that's just begun to swell.

"Social conservatism" must be made apolitical: enforced, if you will, entirely by freedom of association. Else it will produce either American muttawa or a social-fascist state. Neither prospect is appealing.

Excellent post. Clearly, what D'Souza is pointing out has something to do with what's going on. Clearly, homosexuality, freedom of women, etc., etc., has the Islamists riled.

But if any criticism can be laid at the door of "liberals", it's that they are dimwitted hypocrites in not wholeheartedly supporting a WoT that's actually taking a stand against the Islamist reaction to liberal values!

I can't debate the values issue but I do know that Hollywood's big profits are made with movie which reflect hatred towards America and just how classless, vulgar and crass is our culture. Hollywood's biggest money makers, geared specifically for the overseas markets, are the ones that show America in the worst possible light; they translate easily and make non-Americans feel good about themselves.

Brokeback Mountain wasn't mark for a worldwide audience, but Syriana was.

Wonder why Hollywood never makes really good comedies yet overloads the slap-stick vulgarity? Because eye-candy is easier to translate than well-written words.

Without cheesy, crass, vulgar, hate-America movies Hollywood would go bankrupt.

One more point, haven't read the book, but from having been in the entertainment industry I can understand what D'Souza might be getting at with regard to Hollywood. The industry creates unfounded images of a crass, violent, vulgar 'American culture' the brainwashes the rest of the world to believe that is what America is all about.

Hollywood is an illusion that the entire world believes wholeheartedly exists.

That said, aren't the Jihadist making huge profits though the worldwide opium/meth indutries and porn industries? Ironically, both these industries compliment one another in generating bigger profits. Gotta get high to get a hard on so watch the porn to sustain the pleasure that will never come.

A great refutation. D'Souza is calling for a cultural form of appeasement here. If we need to give up contraception, gay rights, female equality, etc. because they are anatgonizing the Islamists, then we might as well cut out the middleman and put Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar on the Supreme Court so they can simply tell us what we can and can't do, eliminating any grey areas.

The irony is that there is one area where D'Souza's argument has some validity. If the US were to convert en masse to Islam and give up all other religions, including Christianity, then this would indeed mollify most Islamists and cause them to stop attacking us. Of course, no rightist in the US will ever make this argument. Only the aspects of US culture which they themselves dislike are to be thrown to the wolves.

He's is dead on right! So what, I can't stand effeminate gay men either but guess what? They have a right to do what they choose. You simply lose the moral right to criticize anyone's life choices when you terrorize, cut off heads and are the world's greatest religious bigots.

It just blows me away that people on the left are so against this war. The people we are fighting and all their sympathizers would come after the left first should they prevail.

It is certainly true that homosexuality, feminism, letting women learn to read, etc. offend Islamists. But that's not why they attacked us. It is the cognitive dissonance between, "We worship the one true God" and "We are so poor that a bunch of cow-worshipping Indians are about to pass us in wealth--and they don't have oceans of $60 a barrel oil under their country."

A lot there, and I probably would have to write as long a reply to get it all in since there are a lot of complexities inherent.

Brokeback Mt., a victory film, well, that is one approach to converting an enemy. Kick them in the teeth when they are down. It has its virtues...I'd have been happier if we MOABed Fallujah, and salted the fields.

The mini-skirted girl who got raped did not invite it, but she should have known better than to walk through the bad part of town so attired without a firearm that she was trained in the use of. This is not a moral judgement, but a prudential judgement.

I think its clear that Hollyweird and the other parts of the cultural left are in part responsible for Muslim rage. Now as Radney Balko says, other people have tried to play this card before, and gotten torched for it.

The thing is, I think to some degree, the libertarians and lefties were right (even if inflamed with hatred, or otherwise a touch unbalanced). We have done things in our foreign policy that offend Muslims. So too, we have done things in our culture that offend.

Now, the Right didn't want to admit the Left had a teeny-tiny point about our foreign policy. Thats the result of partisan excess. So too the cultural libertines won't want to admit that D'Souza might have a point (I haven't read his book, and so I'm going by what I read here).

But, to put things in perpective, the larger reason the Muslims hate us is that they have a broken culture, and they see the chance to loot us and avenge their shame. Its just that secondarily, it makes it worse that we base airplanes in the sacred soil, and that we allow Hollyweird to portray Americans as hypersexual crooks out to score some drugs before shooting some innocent people for no reason.

Now, my strategy for this would be to try to minimize the offense so that the hundreds of millions of supposedly normal Muslims don't feel like we're trying to annoy or repulse them. Do this if the cost is not too great, and perhaps we can help win the supposedly moderate Muslims around to liberal democracy. However, don't let the charm offensive get in the way of the "Kill the terrorists and make the wicked scream in fear" offensive. Also, don't give up things that are essential to our character, to ourselves.

Now, I don't think Brokeback Mt. is essential to us, but the freedom to produce such a pile o' tripe certainly is. And I don't think that socons making alliance with traditional minded people around the world against the terrorists and against the terrorists' kindred, the Left is such a totally bad idea, and I don't see that as giving up something essential--patriotism.

Its not unpatriotic because the Right would be trying to use that alliance to put down the enemies of civilization--the terrorists and their enablers.

It is sad though.

A while back, Belmont Club talked about the virtue of a quick, crushing war. He said that a long war was a march toward damnation, and we would find ourselves doing things we would never have considered earlier. The problem is that this applies to the cultural war in America too.

The Left led by making alliance with the terrorists, and so the Right has to follow by making extra-national alliances as well. This time, with the poor oppressed schmucks who just want an ordinary life. I'd rather keep American poltics inside America, but in a long war with the Left such an act would be naive.

Okay, that was really long, and yet I didn't begin to address half of your points.

Didn't Prez Bush once say "they hate us for who we are, not what we do"? I guess DD'S agrees--and thinks they're right.

How come conservatives never get "totally discredited" by you? Distort D'Newzah has a long record of false, partisan garbage and yet you quote him regularly. Jeez. Micheal Moore or Glenn Greenwald make a single mistake and they're on their shit list. And you still can't cut loose of the mendacious Right.

All religious-based social conservatism taken to its logical conclusions winds up agreeing with Osama. We're decadant and need to die.

I've never understood why social conservatives hate Iran and them. They're just like you. In fact, you should move there.

Yeah, B, we were just discussing at church this morning how sad it is that we haven't had a good beheading lately. I did get a good deal on jack-boots with crosses on the soles this week, though.

Wanker.

All religious-based social conservatism taken to its logical conclusions winds up agreeing with Osama. We're decadant and need to die.

I've never understood why social conservatives hate Iran and them. They're just like you. In fact, you should move there.

1. Social conservatives are not interested in sending homosexuals to prison, much less execution. We would prefer homosexuals to be discreet, and not to be propagandizing our kids, but if consenting adults want to do something we don't like in private, that's hardly the government's job. (And it doesn't matter if it is sodomy or employment.)

2. Social conservatives not only have no objection to women going to school, we think is actually important for them to learn to read. This is part of the Protestant tradition for many centuries.

3. I can't for the life of me remember the last social conservative I've met who objected to women driving. Or owning a gun. Or having an equal voice in court when testifying. Or voting.

4. Even social conservatives who aren't keen on mothers of small children working outside the home don't have any problem with women working the rest of the time. I think you would have to search long and hard to find a social conservative that thinks that there should be laws preventing women, even mothers of small children, from working outside the home.

5. While social conservatives tend to be more supportive of capital punishment than the general population of the U.S., it isn't all dramatic of a difference. I oppose capital punishment, and I know that I am not alone among social conservatives in this respect.

You might want to actually find out what social conservatives think, instead of what you want to imagine that they think.

D'Souza is an idiot. I do not care why Islam hates us. Actually I already know why. It is not our freedoms per se, but because we are what they have been told is sinful--and we are successful anyway.

It drives Osama and the boys absolutely batty.

There is no pandering to that.

A couple years ago the blogger right was saying the "left" were terrorist sympathizers (see David Horowitz's "Discover the Network.") and Ward Churchill gets run out of town on a rail. D'Souza's the real thing: a self-declared terrorist sympathizer with a cushy job at Stanford. Several fellow-travelers above.

FWIW Assistant Village Idiot, I agree: Whatever problems I have with social conservatives, I agree most of y'all are humane thoughtful people who don't want to kill people like me.

Great post.

It is perfectly obvious that social changes in the West over the last few decades has increased the social distance between the West and Islam.

It is also obvious that responding to jihadi attacks by attempting to decrease the social distance from our side is a form of appeasement. Moreover, a fruitless form, since the increase in social distance is such a minor aspect of the jihadi rage.

BTW, your Clayton Cramer link doesn't work because http// is repeated.

Avenger - well said. It doesn't do any good for Left and Right to demonise each other, because actually this struggle goes back to a time before the Right/Left split, when the argument was between rationalism and theocracy in the West. Plenty of time to fight each other afterwards. We need to get our heads together now, stop the old catcalling habits.

Regarding something somebody said above re. Hollywood. It's just struck me that actually this makes perfect sense. It's not that Hollywood actually hates the US, it's that a substantial proportion of their world market hates the US, so like good capitalists they're simply "selling the rope with which they will be hanged."

i.e. Hollywood makes hate-US films because a substantial proportion of the world hates the US, not because it's full of crazy "liberals" who actually do genuinely hate the US. (There are a few, obviously, but it's difficult to believe a whole industry is caught up in a syndrome like that.)

It just blows me away that people on the left are so against this war. The people we are fighting and all their sympathizers would come after the left first should they prevail.

Um, which war? The one in Afghanistan, which was certainly justified, or the one in Iraq, which started out as a lie and has degenerated into the potential for Armageddon?

It's the right in this country that hates America, because they don't understand it, misread history, and hate those unlike themselves.

Clayton: You prefer homosexuals be 'discreet'? Please explain that in detail.

And just what is preferred to happen to those that are not "discrete"? Will there be penalties for the lack of discretion?

If President Bush in a speech to the Muslim world would say:

"I know some of the products of our nation that come out of Hollywood disgust you, hey, they disgust me. But we have to allow people the freedom to choose Heaven or Hell on their own otherwise what benefit to a forced choice. Now speaking of things that morally disgust the American people, and of Hell, we have proof that certain Iranian 'volunteers' were massing near the border so we blew them and the Iranian military base that was housing them into little bitty pieces. May God bless America and Iraq. Good night."

That is not appeasement. If we did just the one, then maybe it would be appeasement.

Now you can argue that we should show no concern for the enemy's feelings of 'face' and of revulsion at some aspects of our culture and foreign policy. You can argue that we should just shove it down their throats with a pitchfork a la WW2 and the Romans.

You might be right.

But thats not the strategy of this government. If my strategy had been followed, we would have invaded Syria already, bombed Iran and fostered a revolution via air power to block their military units and let the young people storm the capital themselves, and then leaned hard enough on the Saudi's to make them scream in fear. If I was in charge, this would already be accomplished, and the Republicans would be putting the next Scalia's in position on the Court.

Funny thing, I'm not in charge. This "Make Nice/Kill Terrorists Politely" strategy is what we have. You might as well deal with reality instead of getting annoyed at folk who try to better reality. Its more than a little late to suggest that we turn from Make Nice to Make Dessert. Perhaps on the next nation we invade, we can do Make a Dessert, but not in Iraq.

Who hates Hollywood more? "The Muslims"? American social-"conservatives"? The French?

I've lost track.

Social conservatism, as a political movement, is dying. In the last election, some of the greatest losses were by candidates supported by the religious right. America is slowly becoming more socially liberal, and unless the GOP embraces tolerance, they will continue to lose many elections to come.

The younger generation, especially, seems to be more liberal about sexual matters, stem cell research, etc.
While there might be some conservatism in this country on national defense and law enforcement, most people don’t like the government to tell them what than can and can’t do with their own bodies.

The right is more out of touch of the American mainstream on moral issues more than ever.

There are indeed a small cadre of leftist who hate America. But, at least they don't try to pass themselves off as "patriots" like America-bashers on the right do.

"3. I can't for the life of me remember the last social conservative I've met who objected to women driving. Or owning a gun. Or having an equal voice in court when testifying. Or voting."

Here's a link to one anti-gay street preacher with a bullhorn who opposes women becoming President. A true successor of John Knox.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8KiYlgeeG8

BobN:
http://www.shooter.net/index.php/weblog/Item/folsom-street-fair-2004-photos/
(Warning, the first page is *probably* work safe, those that follow are probably NOT).

This is not discreet.

I think D'Souza has it back-asswards. It is not the Cultural Left that *caused* the problem, it is the Economic and Political left that that has for years preached the evils of capitalism and open national-republic style democracies. This has left many countries both desperately poor AND beleiving that we are rich because we stole from them. This abject poverty gives people the time to listen, and the anger to beleive the nonsense spread by the imams.

Logically, it makes as much sense as arguing that we were attacked because the terrorists hated Jews.

Wait a bit, that argument will be along.

As a Jew with a sense of history, I have often wondered when our current authoritarian swing (which includes Bush's "unitary executive" theories, the abridgement of civil liberties, the secret prisons, torture as an official policy, etc.) will start to include the traditional feature of anti-Semitism. For the most part, people like D'Souza have, so far, turned their ire on gays or "leftists" in general instead. But I think it will turn out to be a short step from liberal-bashing to Jew-bashing. Especially if (when) there's an attack on America or our forces that can be plausibly blamed on Israeli intransigence.

"we would arguably return to being the kind of strong America that won WWII"

Huh? People like Dinesh D'Sousa would hold circle-jerks in which they would ponder the question of how to persuade traditional Japanese, Germans, and Italians that America isn't so bad. How that would contribute to victory passeth my understanding.

Oh please...were does it say anywhere, or even infer, in the constitution that porn, gay marriage, and the lewdness of Howard Stern are protected as rights? And, yes, it doesnt say that these "freedoms" are not rights either, but lets use some common sense!!! In the founding fathers time, lewdness and porn and gay marriage were outlawed.
This moral evolutionary interpretation of the consitution is bull.

Lets get real, all those three modern liberal "freedoms" have nothing to do with the freedoms of that the constitution grants. Just as abortion and even porn, in some communities, is now being restricted more and more, the same can go for the three big "freedoms" of liberals.

Without having any restrictions on freedom you have license, which allows anti-semites and a host of other bigots and racists in this country to shake the foundations of this country. It does not make our country stronger in the least. If you do not care about the morals of a person, you will eventually not care about their bodies. Why do we see on a more regular basis anti-Semitic and anti-Christian acts of vandalism? Why do you think radical Muslims like CARE, are now using our own system against us? Because, at present, anti-semiticism and anti-christianity are protected under freedom of speech.

this is so foolish to not see that the libertines in this country are the worst abusers of our wonderful system. The problem with Dinsesh is he does not see that Osama is also using our system to "divide and conquer." Dinesh could have made the same arguments he is making without even touching a devil like Osama.

for years, moral conservatives have done just that, whether they be Catholic, Protestant, or Jewish.

We do not need the words of a terrorist to validate a positon that even the founding fathers would agree.

If the founding fathers agreed that "anything goes," then this country would have been dead years ago.