Souza: F.D.R. “Indirectly Responsible” For September 11
Eyeing the Enemy: Dinesh D’Souza looks left
D’Souza in the sky with diamonds
Prominent conservative intellectual Dinesh D’Souza has released a book titled “The Enemy at Home: The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11.”….[O]n The Colbert Report, D’Souza repeated the right-wing attack that President Bill Clinton “did absolutely nothing” to fight global terrorists. Stephen Colbert jokingly asked, “Doesn’t some of it lie at FDR’s doorstep? Doesn’t things like Social Security and Medicare and LBJ’s Great Society, doesn’t some of that send the wrong message to our enemies?”….D’Souza answered, “Indirectly, yes,” explaining that “FDR gave away Eastern Europe through Yalta, and then the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, the Muslims had to fight back and that’s where bin Laden got his start.
Man, I do not possess the vocabulary to express the depths of my disgust with the latest TPRS DUMB@$$ AWARD wiener. There are few things more reprehensible than stooping so low as to place the “blame” for 9.11 on a segment of the population whose ideology and political philosophy you happen to disagree with.
Dinesh D’Souza is one of the (not so) new breed of Conservative intellectuals (think Ann Coulter, Michelle Malkin, Laura Ingraham, etc., ad nauseum, ad infinitum) who not only see themselves as intellectually superior to Liberals, they’re also completely convinced of their own moral superiority. In D’Souza’s mind, Liberals are responsible for the ills of the world, and only Conservatives have the moral and intellectual wherewithal to clean up the mess. This is just about the worst sort of self-righteous egotism imaginable.
When last I checked, 9.11 was carried out by 19 Islamofascist thugs determined to strike a blow against the Great Satan. As far as I can tell, no Liberals were involved. Ted Kennedy, Hillary Clinton and Barney Frank weren’t involved, and I was also otherwise engaged. Yet D’Souza sees no hypocrisy in blaming what he calls “cultural Liberals” for 9.11…as if support for gay marriage, abortion rights, and a fair, workable Medicare drug plan for senior citizens means we deserved what we got.
Kathryn Jean Lopez: Is the mess in Iraq the fault of Michael Moore?
Dinesh D’Souza: No, of course not. But if America loses the Iraq war we are less likely to lose it over there in Baghdad and more likely to lose it over here in the corridors of Congress. Michael Moore’s radical ideology ‚Äö√Ñ√Æ the insurgents are the Minutemen, they are the freedom fighters, and they will prevail! ‚Äö√Ñ√Æ has now come to center stage, where it is guiding the actions of the Democratic leadership. Look how the so-called centrist Democrats are caving in one by one to the Left. A huge enemy at home has emerged that seems determined to stop Bush’s war on terror, not because they like Bin Laden or Saddam, but because they hate and fear Bush more. It is Bush and his conservative allies, not Bin Laden and his radical allies, who threaten the Left’s most cherished values. And now suddenly the Democrats, as a group, find it in their interest to inflict a horrendous foreign-policy defeat on Bush and thus ensure that they walk into the White House in 2008.
Aughhh…where to start?
Those are so many on the far Right who, like D’Souza, are willing to countenance our government’s gradual and continuing curtailment of our civil rights in order to prosecute the War on Terror © . The thought process seems to be that we must kill the patient in order to save it- we must sacrifice our civil rights in order to save them. And we must unnthinking and unquestioningly support Our Glorious and Benevolent Leader © as he lies and propagandizes his way through a war in Iraq that has NOTHING to do with the glorious War on Terror © . That Liberals like myself thoroughly and loudly reject this anti-American, anti-democratic line of thinking only serves to anger and embolden the Rabid Right. (How DARE they oppose Our Glorious and Benevolent Leader © and his glorious and certain-to-be-(eventually)-victorious War on Terror © ??)
Yes, 9.11 was a terrible, horrible event. Some of us lost friends, family members, or other loved ones. And the War on Terror © is a reality certain to be with us for a long, long time. Does that mean the we need allow Our Glorious and Benevolent Leader © and his band of neoCon thugs to gradually and inevitably roll back our civil rights in order to protect those same rights and cement their grip on power? Of course not. History amply demonstrates that rights, once surrendered, are not easily restored. Our current situation is no different.
Regardless of what Dinesh D’Souza thinks, people like myself are NOT the enemy. Diversity of thought and opinion are one of the things that make this country great. Good people can and will disagree on matters of great import. That’s not an indictment of those who think differently, merely a reflection of the pluralistic nature of American society. All Dinesh D’Souza has done is to demonstrate how richly he deserves his DUMB@$$ AWARD…not that it will actually make a difference.
