A tip of the hat to a TNR contributor, Alan Wolfe, who presents in devastating manner a central reality of today's extreme Right Wing Republican Party, exemplified by Dinesh D'Souza:
D’Souza . . . finds bin Laden to be "a quiet, well-mannered, thoughtful, eloquent and deeply religious person." Despite being considered a friend of the Palestinians, he "has not launched a single attack against Israel." We denounce him as a terrorist, but he uses "a different compass to assess America than Americans use to assess him." Bin Laden killed only 3,000 of us, with "every victim counted, every death mourned, every victim’s family generously compensated." But look what we did in return: many thousands of Muslims dead in Afghanistan and Iraq, "and few Americans seem distressed over these numbers."
According to D'Souza, bin Laden is like the extreme Right Wing, only reacting to the extreme provocation of the secular Left. But of course, never fear, the "secular Left" are still the traitors, even though it is D'Souza who wants to make friends with bin Laden. More.
Unlike Ward Churchill, who nobody ever heard of before the extreme Right Wing Republican Party decided that he was Mr. Democrat, Dinesh D'Souza is in the mainstream of the extremist Right Wing Republican Party:
D’Souza is the Robert and Karen Rishwain Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.
D'Souza has been called one of the "top young public-policy makers in the country" by Investor’s Business Daily. The New York Times Magazine named him one of America's most influential conservative thinkers. The World Affairs Council lists him as one of the nation's 500 leading authorities on international issues. Newsweek cited him as one of the country's most prominent Asian Americans.
Before joining the Hoover Institution, Mr. D'Souza was the John M. Olin Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. In 1987-88 he served as senior policy analyst at the Reagan White House. From 1985 to 1987 he was managing editor of Policy Review. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Dartmouth College in 1983.
Mr. D'Souza's books have had a major influence on public opinion and public policy. In 2002 he published the New York Times bestseller What’s So Great About America (Penguin Books) and in 2003 he published Letters to a Young Conservative (Basic Books). His 1991 book Illiberal Education was the first study to publicize the phenomenon of political correctness. The book was widely acclaimed and became a New York Times bestseller for 15 weeks. It has been listed as one of the most influential books of the 1990's.
In 1995 D'Souza published The End of Racism, which became one of the most controversial books of the time and a national bestseller. D"Souza's 1997 book Ronald Reagan: How an Ordinary Man Became an Extraordinary Leader was the first book to make the case for Reagan's intellectual and political importance. In 2000, D'Souza published The Virtue of Prosperity: Finding Values in an Age of Techno Affluence, which explores the social and moral implications of wealth.
D'Souza's articles have appeared in virtually every major magazine and newspaper, including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic Monthly, Vanity Fair, New Republic, and National Review. He has appeared on numerous television programs, including the Today Show, Nightline, The News Hour, O'Reilly Factor, Moneyline, and Hannity and Colmes.
D'Souza is at the very pinnacle of Right Wing Republican "thinking." He is an apt representative. This is the extreme Right Wing Republican Party:
D’Souza, the aging enfant terrible of American conservatism . . ., like the Stalinist apologetics of the popular front period, [has] . . . a soft spot for radical evil. But in "The Enemy at Home," D’Souza’s cultural relativism hardly stops with bin Laden. He finds Ayatollah Khomeini still to be "highly regarded for his modest demeanor, frugal lifestyle and soft-spoken manner." Islamic punishment tends to be harsh — flogging adulterers and that sort of thing — but this, D’Souza says "with only a hint of irony," simply puts Muslims "in the Old Testament tradition." Polygamy exists under Islamic law, but the sexual freedom produced by feminism in this country is, at least for men, "even better than polygamy." And the Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s statement that the West has a taboo against questioning the existence of the Holocaust, while "pooh-poohed by Western commentators," was "undoubtedly accurate." Unlike President Bush, who once said he could not understand how anyone could hate America, D’Souza knows why Islamic radicals attack us. "Painful though it may be to admit," he admits, "some of what the critics or even enemies say about America and the West ... may be true." Susan Sontag never said we brought Sept. 11 on ourselves. Dinesh D’Souza does say it.
Why does Dinesh D'Souza and the Extreme Right Wing Republican Party Love the Terrorists and Hate America? You see D'Souza's theory is that the terrorists are just old fashioned traditionalists. They love America as it once was you see. Like the extreme Right Wing Republican Party, bin Laden and the terrorists want America to return to it old fashion values, that is why they attacked us. D'Souza and his Party have seen the enemy -it is America. But, have no fear, the "secular Left" are still the traitors:
The "domestic insurgents" who, in D’Souza’s view, constitute the cultural left want "America to be a shining beacon of global depravity, a kind of Gomorrah on a Hill." "I intend to name the enemy at home," D’Souza proclaims, and so he does. Twenty recent members of Congress, including Hillary Rodham Clinton and Ted Kennedy, are on one of his lists, and 17 intellectuals (one dead, one British) are on another, with similar numbers of Hollywood figures, activists, foreign policy experts, cultural leaders and organizations. Some of those he identifies — Noam Chomsky, Ramsey Clark, Ward Churchill — might not be surprised to find themselves here. Others — the sociologist Paul Starr, the historian Sean Wilentz, the clergyman Jim Wallis, the philosopher Martha Nussbaum — are less obvious candidates for inclusion. (One person, Thomas Frank, is mentioned on two different lists.) All these people might charge D’Souza with "McCarthyism" for supposedly exposing them, but he accepts the challenge. McCarthy, after all, was "largely right."
Wolfe ends with a great observation:
At one point in "The Enemy at Home," D’Souza appeals to "decent liberals and Democrats" to join him in rejecting the American left. . . . So let this "decent" liberal make perfectly clear how thoroughly indecent Dinesh D’Souza is. Like his hero Joe McCarthy, he has no sense of shame. He is a childish thinker and writer tackling subjects about which he knows little to make arguments that reek of political extremism. His book is a national disgrace, a sorry example of a publishing culture more concerned with the sensational than the sensible. . . . I look forward to the reaction from decent conservatives and Republicans who will, if they have any sense of honor, distance themselves, quickly and cleanly, from the Rishwain research scholar at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.
Hear, hear Mr. Wolfe.