Bright's Blog
Politics uncovered by Martin Bright, New Statesman political editor
Not Bright's Blog II
- Posted by Sunny
- 23 January 2007
Martin's second guest blogger of the week is Sunny from Pickled Politics
You have to give it to the Conservatives in America - they have balls. At least they are willing to go out on a limb and prove their big cojones. The latest such contender is the author Dinesh D'Souza with a new book called The Enemy at Home: The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11.
Straight from the Ann Coulter camp of provocatively titled books that leave no doubt about their slant, he is in no doubt that liberal America's crusades in favour of abortion, feminism, adultery and a breakdown of family values has led to, erm, Osama Bin Laden and his crew.
In her view for The Nation, Katha Pollitt states:
Muslims fear the West is out to foist its depraved, licentious, secular "decadence" on their pious patriarchal societies. And, D'Souza argues, they're right. Working mothers! Will & Grace! Child pornography! Our vulgar, hedonistic, gender-egalitarian, virally expanding NGO-promoted values so offend "traditional Muslims" that they have thrown in their lot with Osama and other America-haters.
You may consider D'Souza to be slightly loopy but he isn't alone, even on this side of the pond. Only a few months ago the writer Melanie Phillips published Londonistan, making a similar claim that Britain's moral and cultural decay contributed to the growth of Islamism, and blamed an unholy trinity of "militant gays, feminists or ‘antiracists’".
Coming back to D'Souza's book, a review in the New York Times wasn't so favourable either. Alan Wolfe says:
D’Souza has fallen on hard times lately. Political correctness and affirmative action — the issues he has addressed in inflammatory ways in the past — no longer inspire the same passion. “The Enemy at Home” is clearly designed to restore his reputation as the man who will say anything to call attention to his views; charging prominent senators and presidential candidates with treason can do that.
Ouch! If you want a more amusing and simplified put-down, you could watch him being interviewed by Comedy Central's rising star Stephen Colbert.
But at least D'Souza is consistent when he says, "American conservatives should join Muslims and others in condemning the global moral degeneracy that is produced by liberal values."
It has always been a great source of amusement to me that British and American conservatives, for reasons of political expediency rather than rational consistency, have constantly scare-mongered about Muslim values even when they so closely mirror their own (a point Sarfraz Manzoor alluded to earlier in January). I wonder how long it will take for the Daily Mail to come to its senses. Paul Dacre could always read Dinesh D'Souza's book.
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