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.
bump
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.
Latenight bump