I hesitate to write about Dinesh D'Souza's new book because, in our
climate of hyper-consumerist commercialism, excoriating a product
usually serves only to increase its sales. But D'Souza's noxious The
Enemy at Home (un-huh, that's what it's called) is so illustrative of
the poisoning of American politics by preening bigots who pass
themselves off as earnest pundits, I cannot resist a brief comment.
See, 9/11 may have been the work of al-Qaeda, but al-Qaeda is the work
of - the sniveling American left led by its fierce femo-fascist
counter-cultural zealots high on weed and God knows what else.
Well, first, Mr. D'Souza, if you're going to do this sort of thing, Ann
Coulter's got the right idea - one syllable titles for one syllable
brains. "ENEMY!" would have been so much better.
Second, how about a little originality? D'Souza can't do any better than
fall back on the old "outsider agitator" thesis that phony patriots have
used to blame others for the sins they commit from time immemorial.
Remember during the civil rights struggle how those Southern white boys
defending the purity of their Southern white schools stood in front of
school doors with baseball bats in their hands saying "our colored boys
wouldn't want no education if it weren't for these northern liberals
putting ideas in their heads"? Or the Red hunters who well before Joe
McCarthy got started were certain that so-called economic injustice in
the United States was just a contrivance of Moscow Commies trying to
stir up an otherwise wholly content American working class which
wouldn't want a union if it was offered to workers on a platter?
D'Souza is certain that 9/11 and Al-Qaeda and terrorism in general are
the result NOT of deranged fundamentalist minds or misfiring foreign
policy strategies (American troops in the Middle East, the persistence
of the Palestinian problem), but rather of America's cultural left. Yep,
gay hippies and feminist flower children and their post-modern offspring
have left behind a culture so corrupt and depraved that Osama just had
to blow up the whole thing. (At least Pat Robertson blamed the whole
dang-blasted messed-up American society for the calamity, not just
campus pinkos and lusty liberals!)
So just when you thought they were dead, the cultural warriors are back,
venting and fuming and voiding their innards all over Barnes and Nobles
and Amazon. But of course McWorld's corporations and Hollywood's legions
that are ACTUALLY responsible for the violence and salaciousness of
popular culture, and who profit enormously from exploiting it, get a
free pass. Nope, it's all the feminists and the post-structuralists and
academic softies who have done the damage and who need expurgating or
expunging or whatever.
Maybe what we really need is ANOTHER SURGE, maybe several platoons of
the Daughters of the American Revolution bearing down on our liberal
arts campuses and putting an end for once and for all to the cultural
corruption that is the real cause of global terrorism. It will be a lot
cheaper than 20,000 more troops in Iraq, and the only likely casualties
will be truth and honor.
Oh, by the way, if you think I'm exaggerating, do me a favor, take my
word for it. DON'T BUY THE BOOK TO FIND OUT. Putting dollars in
D'Souza's pocket for publishing this sort of oozing excrement is really
a bad idea.
P.S. Yes, I'm mentioned in the book, but I regret to say I am not
treated as a major culprit. Where did I go wrong? As Brecht wrote in his
poem about book-burning in Germany, when he rushed to the fire-side and
found the fascists burning books, he noticed none of his were among
them, and he shouted "Where are MY books? What's wrong with them!? Burn
my books!" It should be the mark of honorable women and men in America
to be among the accused in D'Souza's vicious (if brainless) indictment.