D’Souza’s thesis in the raw

Here are the opening two paragraphs of the first chapter of Dinesh D’Souza’s book, The Enemy at Home: The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11:

In this book I make a claim that will seem startling at the outset. The cultural left in this country (such people as Hillary Clinton, Ted Kennedy, Nancy Pelosi, Barbara Boxer, George Soros, Michael Moore, Bill Moyers, and Noam Chomsky) is responsible for causing 9/11. The term “cultural left” does not refer to the Democratic Party. Nor does it refer to all liberals. It refers to the left wing of the Democratic Party—admittedly the most energetic group among Democrats, and the main source of the party’s ideas. The cultural left also includes a few Republicans, notably those who adopt a left-wing stance on foreign policy and social issues. Moreover, the cultural left includes organizations such as the American Civil Liberties Union, the National Organization for Women, People for the American Way, Planned Parenthood, Human Rights Watch, and moveon.org.

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 myself have argued that fear and disgust at our decadent popular culture is an important factor in the Muslim hatred of America. But for D’Souza to state that the cultural left as such “is responsible for causing 9/11,” because it is “the primary cause of the volcano of anger toward America that is erupting from the Islamic world” is one of the looniest statements I’ve ever seen. In its sensationalism and meretriciousness, and in its naked service to Republican and establishment conservative political purposes, it’s pure D’Souza. The left is the cause of it all! Meanwhile, America’s uncritical openness to non-Western immigrants in general and to Muslims in particular—an attitude shared by the entire American official mainstream, not just the “cultural left”—had nothing to do with it. (The words “immigrant” and “immigration” do not appear once in this 10,000 word chapter.) Bush’s statements against racial profiling and against surveillance of terror suspects had nothing to do with it. And the tiny little historical fact that Muslims have been waging jihad against the West for 1,400 years had nothing to do with it. It’s all the left’s fault. This is one of the cheapest, grossest ideological ploys I’ve ever seen.

It is also a re-packaging of one of the standard neocon anti-multicultural, pro-open immigration argument from the early 1990s, namely that multiculturalism is caused solely by the left which deliberately encourages immigrants not to assimilate, and has nothing to do with our having admitted many millions of unassimilable immigrants.

The entire chapter is available online at D’Souza’s website.

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Dimitri K. writes:

With my Russian background, I can compare D’Souza’s position with the following situation. Suppose, year 1941, the Russian army is retreating and the Germans are advancing. Simultaneously, in the Russian army there occurs a struggle for discipline, against some indecent behavior. For example - homosexual relations between soldiers (purely hypothetically). And at some point Russian commanders learn that in the German army there is no such behavior, it has been completely eradicated. So, they say: look, the Germans are our allies in our fight for decency. Let us unite with them and together do away with those of us who are involved in indecent behavior.

Randy writes:

What underlies D’Souza’s position is the fact that he is an immigrant from a third world country. How could he ever take the position that we should stop taking in people from the same third world countries from which he came. As I have seen so often here in Southern California, when dealing with people from outside the West, their racial loyalty always supercedes all othe considerations. Mexican racial loyalty is well established.

D’Souza has to find some other “cause” than the fact that the Third World is incompatable with the Judeo-Christian west. When a few from the Third World came under a controlled and limited immigration policy, they assimilated and did well. D’Souza himself is an example-although I understand he grew up as a Catholic in India. It is a different story when immigration becomes migration in massive numbers. They are not assimilating but rather conquering.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at January 17, 2007 09:13 PM | Send