Dinesh D'Souza: Terrorist apologist

In Dinesh D'Souza's newest book, Enemies at Home: The Cultural Left and its Responsibility for 9/11, he argues that the "cultural left" is responsible for terrorism for two basic reasons:

1. For spreading/promoting a culture of secular "liberal" decadence around the globe

2. For perpetuating an "aggressive global campaign to undermine the traditional patriarchal family" by insisting/encouraging these nations to bring themselves up to the standards of human rights enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

In the book, D'Souza urges traditional Christian conservatives to reach out to traditional conservative Muslims to let them know that they have a common enemy in the "cultural left." The basic gist of the book is that to win the war against terrorism, Christian conservatives must first defeat "the cultural left" i.e. "the enemy at home". I'll return to the implications of that a bit later.

That D'Souza is an intellectually dishonest liar has already been covered. That D'Souza is a peddler of hate has also been covered.

But let's pause for a moment and consider what it is that D'Souza is defending when he says "traditional patriachal" Muslim society. Is it this?

Am I supposed to believe religion is a force for morality, when I see so many examples of it more being a force for mindless obedience to arbitrary rules? This story out of Pakistan is disturbing in many ways.

Zilla Huma Usman, the minister for social welfare in Punjab province and an ally of President Pervez Musharraf, was killed as she was about to deliver a speech to dozens of party activists, by a "fanatic", who believed that she was dressed inappropriately and that women should not be involved in politics, officials said today.

Ms Usman, 35, was wearing the shalwar kameez worn by many professional women in Pakistan, but did not cover her head.

Executed for not having a piece of cloth on top of her head; what god looks down on our world from his cosmic perspective and thinks that is an important concern for humanity?

Or this?

Pakistan's legislature is considering an appalling bill that would put people to death for leaving Islam:

A draft bill adopted in first reading by Pakistan's National Assembly is now before a standing committee. Tabled by a six-party politico-religious alliance, the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal or MMA, the Apostasy Act 2006 which the government sent to the committee would impose the death penalty on Muslim men and life in prison on Muslim women in case they leave Islam. It would also force them to forfeit their property and lose legal custody of children.

D'Souza is not just a terorist apologist, he is a terrorist sympathist. He shares much of their general (fundamentalist authoritarian) outlook, they just happen to be on the wrong team. This point was cleverly pointed out by the folks at Sadly, No! and by Armed Liberal at Winds of Change who notices the similarity between D'Souza's critique of Western secularism and that of Salman Qutb, the man who is the intellectual forefather of our modern al Qaeda terrorist.

Now back to the implications of D'Souza's book. Despite D'souza's presentation of himself as just a controversial thinker who is hated for stating unpleasant truths, I consider him to be a hate-monger on par with the likes of Father Coughlin or Henry Ford. In the book, D'Souza says that if you're a member of the ACLU you are part of an organization that is at least as dangerous as Bin Laden's American sleeper cells, for example.

And then that becomes fodder for the noise machine "liberal" bashers to continue their demonological scapegoating of "liberals" as an Eternal Enemy of the United States. But to illustrate the full implication of D'Souza's book, let's take a look at what prototype-of-what-an-American-fascism-might-look-like Christian nationalist Republican Mark Noonan, of Blogs for Bush, has to say about the book.

D'Souza is arguing, essentially, that the Islamo-fascists have a point - that our cultural depravity, exported by our seductive popular culture, is viewed as a threat in traditional societies, especially the very socially conservative Islamic societies. While deprecating the concept that the enemy hates us for what we are, D'Souza asserts that the enemy does hate us for what they think we are - a Godless society sunk into the worst sort of pagan iniquity.I really can't argue with that - anyone looking at us from the outside would see a Godless society sunk into moral depravity ...

Over the past 40 years or so, our society has been ripped to shreds by the cultural left - a body of people who have probably never exceeded 20% of the American population, but who have been very successful at imposing their worldview upon American civilizaiton.

Please note,that this a plainly fascist motif. The decay and fall of the nation due to secular liberal decadence. Noonan continues

What remains of the Judeo-Christian west (70% of America, 40% of Canada, 20% of Europe) is under double-siege: beset on all sides by Islamo-fascists and leftist who, for varying reasons, want it destroyed. Caught between these two fires, it is often hard to figure out whom to fight first. As for me, I reckon that the external enemy is the greater threat, but in the by and by we must finally confront the domestic left and force it out of power and influence.

Like I said: fascist. Considering that Noonan believes that we should be fighting an all-or-nothing war to wipe terrorists off the face of the earth and that he has in this passage equated "Islamo-fascists" and "leftist(s)" the bit about confronting the left and forcing it out of power and influence certainly takes on an ominous tone.

But here's the thing. D'Souza is Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. Noonan just had a book released (in which he and co-author Matt Margolis [whose personal site is linked in Michelle Malkin's blogroll]) "expose" the corruption of the "corrupt cockroaches"* in the Democratic caucus and Noonan (and Margolis) have a column that appears at Townhall, which is one of the premiere conservative websites on the internet. And yet no one (in a position to do something about it) seems to mind that Noonan is pretty close to being a fascist (the only thing missing is the outright advocation of violence as a means of national rebirth) or that a Fellow at the Hoover Institution is putting out books that argue on the side of the terrorists. What we're seeing in the mainstreaming of hate, at least within the ranks of the conservative movement.

*This is itself a form of eliminationism. The Hutus in Rwanda were calling the Tutsis cockroaches before they began "forcing them out of power and influence," too.