January 23, 2007

I want to distance myself from this one...

I agree with Dean Barnett, here, that the thesis of Dinesh D'Souza's new book is NOT what most conservatives think, and that we ought to be distancing ourselves from it because, sure as anything, lefty-bloggers and our vile news media will be pointing at it and saying "that's what conservatives think!" They will all be playing their little gotcha games, instead of debating the real issues...

Here are Dean's actual criticisms of the book. And here is some blurb material from the book:

  • Muslims are right: the West is waging a war against Islam.
  • What has really enraged the fundamentalists is not America's freedom, but our abuse of that freedom, specifically the sexual liberty we grant to women and the corruption of childhood innocence by our vulgar and licentious popular culture.
  • By attacking the depravity of the left, conservatives can win friends among Muslims and other traditional people around the world.

SO. to make myself clear. I DO partly blame the Left for 9/11, but this has NOTHING to do with our sexual depravity or "licentious popular culture," bad though those things are. D'Souza is full of baloney. We are in a war now because the West failed to slap the terrorists down hard when they surfaced a few decades ago. And that is due mainly to our loss of civilizational morale, and our Western guilt and self-loathing. And also to a loss of the Christian and Jewish moral strength and conviction that required us—then and now—to use deadly force to protect the weak and preserve the rule of law without which there can be no freedom.

(And I would emphasize that "the weak" in this context are mostly Muslims, and other groups living in Muslim countries. They are the main victims of the terrorists. For every westerner killed by Islamic terrorists, scores of Muslims die. It was a failure of Christian Charity for us to fail to decisively crush these monsters early on. Plus also a failure of simple good sense, since our irresolution has caused the death-toll to be far greater. Pacifism kills.)

And these failures can mostly be attributed to the realm of leftist thought. Or rather, lack of thought. But not all of them; there has been too much irresolution on the Right as well.

Posted by John Weidner at January 23, 2007 10:12 AM
Weblog by John Weidner