Dinesh D’Souza — VOICES for REASON

[Last time I began discussing conservative responses to D'Souza's book, focusing on the review by Andrew Sullivan; let's see what kind of reception the book got from other conservative intellectuals. ]

In taking the wider perspective on the book, Sullivan was very much an outlier. Many other reviewers missed the fundamental issues. Critical reviews in conservative publications challenged, for the most part politely, the book’s contradictions and fuzziness. They picked apart D’Souza’s factual errors and tendentious, collage-like approach to quotations. Some said that he fell far short of demonstrating his case. Some were even troubled by D’Souza’s soft spot for Islamists — evidenced by passages such as:

Yes, I would rather go to a baseball game or have a drink with Michael Moore than with the grand mufti of Egypt. But when it comes to core beliefs, I’d have to confess that I’m closer to the dignified fellow in the long robe and prayer beads than to the slovenly fellow with the baseball cap.

Read the rest of this entry »

[In part three, I suggested that The Enemy at Home is an ideological trial balloon intended to test the disposition of D'Souza's other target audience: the intellectual gatekeepers and arbiters of mainstream conservatism. First, let's consider what I take to be one of the more penetrating reviews of the book; next time, I'll talk about several other conservative reactions to D'Souza and their broader significance.]

Reflecting on the book, many conservative reviewers displayed a distinct unease, a kind of intellectual heartburn signifying unidentified and troubling issues beneath the surface.

One particularly insightful review, by Andrew Sullivan, appeared in The New Republic. Sullivan indignantly attacks the theocratic, anti-freedom vision for society that D’Souza shares with Islamists. The chief value of Sullivan’s analysis is that he locates the book within a wider perspective. In its assault on secular society, he writes, the book pursues the “logic of Bush-era conservatism all the way to its end.” He sees it as a symptom of a profound intellectual crisis within the conservative movement.

Read the rest of this entry »

In part three, I discussed the domestic agenda that D’Souza hopes to advance by means of his book. I argued that the book is an attempt to advance a particular end: a fully Christianized America, a nation from which individual freedom has been expunged.

But ambitious ideological goals like that take time. And it is unlikely that a single book, particularly this one, could do more than prepare the ground. It is no accident that D’Souza’s subsequent book, What’s So Great About Christianity, is a non-denominational defense of faith. In this respect, The Enemy at Home seeks to reach, and measure the reaction of, two audiences that are instrumental to its long-range purpose: religious conservatives in general, and more particularly the intellectual gatekeepers of American conservatism.

Read the rest of this entry »

In part one and part two, I argued that D’Souza’s book only makes a pretense at dealing with the burning national security issue of Islamic terrorism. This pretense is simply a way of marketing D’Souza’s “solution” — his domestic political agenda. Let’s consider the nature of that agenda.

Read the rest of this entry »

My first post on D’Souza looked at the central claim he puts forward about the enemy that struck us on 9/11. D’Souza would have us believe that Islamic terrorism is some sort of excessive, but at its source justifiable, cultural self-defense by an affronted people. I wrote

This is why D’Souza complains that the Wahhabi strain of Islam, the totalitarian ideology of Saudi Arabia and the wellspring of much Islamist terrorism, has gotten a bad rap. “This may come as news to some conservatives, but Wahhabi Islam is not a breeding ground of Islamic radicalism,” D’Souza writes. “It is a breeding ground of Islamic obedience. The essence of the Wahhabi doctrine is doctrinal and social conservatism.”

It is an analogous lack of “social conservatism” in America today that provokes D’Souza’s disgust — and it is here that the author’s real agenda begins to poke through the flimsy pretense at counseling on national security.

D’Souza rails against secularism as an enemy and a barrier because, in his fantasy, America is inherently a society like that of Muslims — it is rooted, he thinks, in “traditional” values of patriarchy and godly morality. He blames the American cultural left for causing America’s decadence — through secularism.

Read the rest of this entry »

Many answers have been offered to the question: who is the enemy that struck us on 9/11 — and why? You may remember hearing suggestions that the attackers should be regarded as deranged criminals; or, that the terrorists were driven by poverty and frustration; or, that they are a band of “Islamofascists.” The answer you accept will shape your conclusion about what must be done to defend our lives and freedom. For example, if you think the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were criminal acts, one practical implication is to round up the ringleader and his minions and put them on trial before a judge (which is what happened after the first attack on the WTC in 1993). But my view is that nearly eight years after 9/11, Americans still lack a correct picture of what we’re up against, and that this has subverted our security. The problem is not merely that we lack a clear idea of the enemy; we’ve been deluged with a host of bizarre and false explanations.

Into that category I put the account offered by Dinesh D’Souza in his book, The Enemy at Home. It purports to guide thoughtful Americans on protecting their nation from further such outbreaks of Islamist hatred. Reading the book, I could feel my blood boiling. On finishing the book I began making notes for a scathing review, but soon realized that in a crucial respect D’Souza’s book was not really about its ostensible subject.

It’s bad enough that the book purveys falsehoods that will cloud people’s understanding of the threat; but worse still is the fact that the book’s pretense at dealing with this burning national security issue is simply a way of marketing D’Souza’s “solution” — his ominous domestic political agenda. The book, in a sense, is a kind of intellectual trial balloon for an unAmerican political program. D’Souza’s agenda, as it emerges from his pages, is a thinly disguised attempt to establish religion as the central integrating principle of American society.

Far from guiding us on how to combat Islamists such as the Taliban, the book would have us reshape America into a Taliban-esque society. Read the rest of this entry »