Posted on 02/08/2007 5:46:12 AM PST by Tolik
After 9/11, many leftists cited American faults that supposedly accounted for Osama bin Laden's savage attack.
The late Susan Sontag, for example, justified the terrorists' suicide bombing: "Where is the acknowledgment that this was not a 'cowardly' attack on 'civilization' or 'liberty' or 'humanity' or 'the free world' but an attack on the world's self-proclaimed superpower, undertaken as a consequence of specific American alliances and actions?"
But there were also those on the right who argued that the jihadists' furor was payback for our own sins.
Rev. Jerry Falwell pronounced that America the godless had gotten what it deserved: "Pagans and the abortionists and the feminists and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle . . . I point the finger in their face and say, 'You helped this happen.'"
Now there is another angle to the "blame America" game, this time from the secular right. In his book "The Enemy at Home," Dinesh D'Souza, of the Hoover Institution (where I work as well), charges that our decadent culture turns off traditional Muslims — otherwise the potential allies of American conservatives — and often renders them sympathetic to jihadist rhetoric.
He then goes further, arguing that the cultural permissiveness and obscenity of our leftists indirectly created a bin Laden. Now in a de facto alliance with the terrorists, the left, according to D'Souza, plots an end to traditional America.
D'Souza's solution is for conservatives here to embrace conservative Muslims, in a shared struggle against both the American left that misrepresented us and the jihadists who now misrepresent them.
But D'Souza's strained effort to fault millions of Americans for 9/11 proves no more convincing than was Susan Sontag's or Jerry Falwell's.
<...snip...>
(Excerpt) Read more at jewishworldreview.com ...
Let me know if you want in or out.
Links: FR Index of his articles: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/keyword?k=victordavishanson
His website: http://victorhanson.com/
NRO archive: http://www.nationalreview.com/hanson/hanson-archive.asp
New Link! http://victordavishanson.pajamasmedia.com/
I like VDH and think he writes extremely well. However, I disagree with him on this. I actucally believe Carter, Ivins, et al; wish the USA to lose. I believe in thier minds they cannot see al-Qaida setting up shop here like in Afghanistan - though they are already here in such places as Dearborn and in New Jersey - but they want the USA to become a second class power.
http://victordavishanson.pajamasmedia.com/2007/02/05/what_readers_wrote_posted_and.php
Sorry, non hic porcus.
I am reading Dinesh D’Souza’s latest, The Enemy At Home: The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11, and confess to a certain sense of shock. The theme seems to be that American conservatives are natural allies with traditional Muslims—that is, if it were not for our own decadent Left. Its supposed export of a bastardized culture worldwide tarred America and thus empowered al-Qaida.
The result is that we must fight this leftist enemy at home and thereby take the argument away from bin Laden—who apparently had some logical reasons to do what he did.
But wait. Bin Laden has NO argument other than incoherent rambling. When he wishes, he can sound just as often a leftist in his demagoguery by blaming us for Kyoto and white racism. Personally, I have more in common with an American rapper or a liberal professor than with the Saudi moral police who whip women who dance or sanction honor killings or stone the promiscuous or kill those who proselytize Christianity.
I think Salman Rushdie who survived a fatwa, contrary to D’Souza, really does not want to see bin Laden win. Nor do most liberals. Being naïve and pathologically hating Bush still doesn’t equate to wanting bin Laden to win, any more than the isolationist Right who despised FDR wanted Hitler to win after 1941.
I was sick of Falwell blaming us for 9/11, just as we all were with the lunatic Michael Moore or the then Dean of Woodrow Wilson school at Princeton. All these who fault us for some such sin—imperialism, Zionism, decadence, Christianity, or atheism—seem to be saying that unless ‘my vision of America is realized, I have no commonality with the America that doesn’t listen to me.’
So I am writing up this week’s Tribune column on the book and this strange phenomenon of blaming the US rather than the terrorists. I had no desire to see Brokeback Mountain or the atrocious Natural Born Killers, but would rather sit through such nonsense than through one of the daily harangues at Middle East mosques and madrassas, hearing imams blaring out about the Jewish monkeys and the apes or the very real need to kill your sister if she goes out alone.
All D'Souza said was "that our decadent culture turns off traditional Muslims".
This is not blaming, or faulting Americans. It is stating the obvious. After all, using toilet-paper is decadent to some.
The author of this article seems oblivious to the difference between moral blame and the pointing out of cause and effect.
I agree with you. For the socialists, including many Dims leaders, the US represents the imperial power that needs to be made weak so that other powers can share the new world order. They do not want the US to disappear altogether, I believe, but they do want the US to be like European countries: cannot live independently.
That's about right. These journalist/politicians think if we lose it will chasten us, we won't get involved in foreign conficts any more, the people of the world will love us again, we can spend more money on the domestic programs they love and buy off any potential French revolutionaries who might pose a threat to their positions in the world, and they can resume taking all-expense-paid junkets to the Third World on the pretext of doing serious reporting without having to worry about being shot at. ;)
There is a good, legitimate argument for the US refusing to get militarily involved in foreign conflicts - it's the George Washington argument. But that isn't the argument these people are making.
I think smoking is a dumb and obvious fault, but it doesn't mean I don't have a lot of commonality with Americans who smoke.
I think reflection will yield a legion of other counter examples.
I do not think you quite get it. The isolationist Right who despised FDR had an awakening after Pearl Harbor. Also, look at the press and entertainment media during that time. Prior to Hitler invading Soviet Russia in 1941, the isolationists also consisted of the left - specifically those of the socialist mind-set. The conservative Right, contrary to what most people believe, though they do not like the cultural degradation of our society, are of the mindset that of "okay - you can do that over there, but for me and mine, we will not participate." The conservative Right gets bent out of shape when the deviant leftists want to impose by government fiat their views. What is ironically disturbing is while the Muslims hate the cultural degradation of the west, the left constantly snipes at the right when they should be helping us. For while the right does not like it, they view that God will sort everything out in the end. The Muslims want to sort it out now, with beheadings and such. Feminists, homosexual groups, enviro whackos, etc; have a more vested interest in helping us but are too blind to see.
Well, I also disagree with that last point of VDH's. What I believe in - and most Freepers - is no gun control by the Feds, Freedom of Speech (no hate speech laws), a smaller government taking care of the basic's (law enforcement, road works, fire departments, defense of the country, securing the borders). That is just a few. A lib professor at Harvard would disagree with me on all these points and yet - when the rubber hits the road or the sword the neck - the lib will scream for the rough man to protect him or her.
bump
...Feminists, homosexual groups, enviro whackos, etc; have a more vested interest in helping us but are too blind to see.
...A lib professor at Harvard would disagree with me on all these points and yet - when the rubber hits the road or the sword the neck - the lib will scream for the rough man to protect him or her.
I agree with the above, of course. The Religion of the Left blinds them, no argument from me here. Nevertheless, take a typical liberal: in the day-to-day life many of them are way more conservative than one would guess from their sayings and they themselves would ever admit. There is such cognitive disconnect. Do what I say, not what I do, etc. Can't speak for VDH, but I think that we have much more in common with gay vegan antigun green party voter than with that "Muslim conservative" from Saudi Arabia, don't you think?
I'm sorry, but I have nothing in common with either of these two. Both, in my mind, are dangerous. Given the circumstances, the gay vegan would attempt the same radical methods on me as would the Muslim.
So does D'Souza.
"Why should we think Islamic objections to our culture could justify the violence of the extremists? Jihadists may not like Western drug use, homosexuality, rap music or abortion any more than we do female circumcision, polygamy, sharia law and gender apartheid, which are as common in the Middle East as our purported offenses are in the West. But would anyone thereby justify Americans suicide-bombing Muslim civilians?"Yes, if Americans were convinced that Muslims were successfully imposing such things on them.
The culture of Western nations--and especially the United States--dominates the world, and the de facto effect is the imposition of Western culture on people throughout the world.
This includes the strong current of decadence that pervades contemporary Western culture and includes such things as drug use, homosexuality, rap music...abortion, sexual promiscuity, disintegration of the family, crime, endless and ridiculous lawsuits, atheism, socialism, the confiscation of private property either de facto or de jure, the excuse of such things as rape and sexual assault and purjury for political purposes, suppression of free speech in the name of tolerance and diversity, political corruption, etc., et al., all of which result from the Western decadence manifested as the Left.
This is what D'Souza calls "cultural imperialism." He's right.
People in other nations--and in the Western nations, including the United States--deeply resent having such decadence imposed upon them. It's not just Muslims. It's decent people everywhere.
I personally deeply resent it.
I tend to agree with you .. because the liberals have one major flaw to their character .. THEY NEVER BELIEVE THERE ARE CONSEQUENCES TO THEIR ACTIONS.
They live for the moment.
Now there is another angle to the "blame America game", this time from the secular right. In his book "The Enemy at Home," Dinesh D'Souza, of the Hoover Institution (where I work as well), charges that our decadent culture turns off traditional Muslims otherwise the potential allies of American conservatives and often renders them sympathetic to jihadist rhetoric.
As I haven't read the book yet I can't comment on it. I will say Dinesh has done the job of a good public intellectual, that of stimulating debate in the public square...always a good thing...particularly for those of us who don't have a life. :-)
That said, I've been concerned for some time now about the image America projects to the world particularly the Islamic world, where their view is shaped by what the see in the movies and on TV.
Thomas P.M. Barnett - Part 5
The Hugh Hewitt Show
http://hughhewitt.townhall.com/Transcript_Page.aspx?ContentGuid=958c6c72-2360-497d-8957-e341b11b24db
or
Hugh Hewitt / Thomas P.M. Barnett - Part 5 (Captain Phil and his neural network.)
Hugh Hewitt show ^ | 2/6/07 | Thomas P.M. Barnett / Hugh Hewitt
http://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1780631/posts
(snip)
HH: Yeah, and very perilous times. Now I want to, before we get a couple of calls next segment, go to the one gap in your gap analysis that I find, which is the underestimation of the appeal of fundamentalist Islam, that they don’t want to connect, in fact, what they hate is the connection, and that it’s not a minority position in many places, or at least it’s not a minority among the powerful. They hate the connection.
TB: Well, in the Middle East, you’ve got a weird conflation of two different trends. You’ve got kind of the masses who are afraid, who desire the connectivity, especially the young people, and you’ve got to remember, the Middle East is overwhelmingly young. A lot of these countries, 70% of the population is under 30. So that crowd does want their MTV, by and large, and it’s the fear among the elders, and it’s a fear certainly among the ruling elite, and those who believe that globalization, if it comes in, will be highly pollutive, and very corrupting with its Western influences. So that’s what gets you the kind of middle class educated terrorist like Osama bin Laden, the guys who just find us all reprehensible. That’s a concentration of three different sources that say this is a bad thing: the elders in the population, the ruling elite who know their ability to control as authoritarian dictatorships in many of these situations would be eroded if they allow that connectivity to occur, and then those like Osama bin Laden and others radicals who say this is just a bad thing for our culture. You put that package together, it looks like the bulk of the population is resistant to Westernization, but we know from polls, time and time again, and this has been done very recently in Iran, and it was a kind of stunning result. They say, in effect, you know, we like your politics, we wish we had democracy, we like your markets, we’re natural traders, there’s nothing wrong with that in our minds. What we have a hard time handling is kind of the social norms that you have. You’re just a little too loose and fast and wild for us, and so we really fear that we’ll see the disruption of our social life if we open up. And that’s the fear that the fundamentalists really jump on, and say you know what? It’s so bad, you’ve got to keep our countries really isolated from this negative outside world.
(snip)
I realize there are quite a few VDH fanbois here at FR, but VDH is seriously off the mark on this one.
D'Souza makes some points that Americans need to heed.
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