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The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11
Doubleday
January 2007
On Sale: January 16, 2007
352 pages
ISBN: 0385510128
EAN: 9780385510127
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction Political
“In this book I make a claim that will seem startling at the
outset. The cultural left in this country is responsible for
causing 9/11. … In faulting the cultural left, I am not
making the absurd accusation that this group blew up the
World Trade Center and the Pentagon. I am saying that the
cultural left and its allies in Congress, the media,
Hollywood, the nonprofit sector, and the universities are
the primary cause of the volcano of anger toward America
that is erupting from the Islamic world. The Muslims who
carried out the 9/11 attacks were the product of this
visceral rage—some of it based on legitimate concerns, some
of it based on wrongful prejudice, but all of it fueled and
encouraged by the cultural left. Thus without the cultural
left, 9/11 would not have happened. “I realize that this is a strong charge, one that no one has
made before. But it is a neglected aspect of the 9/11
debate, and it is critical to understanding the current
controversy over the ‘war against terrorism.’ … I intend to
show that the left has actively fostered the intense hatred
of America that has led to numerous attacks such as 9/11. If
I am right, then no war against terrorism can be effectively
fought using the left-wing premises that are now accepted
doctrine among mainstream liberals and Democrats.” Whenever Muslims charge that the war on terror is really a
war against Islam, Americans hasten to assure them they are
wrong. Yet as Dinesh D’Souza argues in this powerful and
timely polemic, there really is a war against Islam. Only
this war is not being waged by Christian conservatives bent
on a moral crusade to impose democracy abroad but by the
American cultural left, which for years has been vigorously
exporting its domestic war against religion and traditional
morality to the rest of the world. D’Souza contends that the cultural left is responsible for
9/11 in two ways: by fostering a decadent and depraved
American culture that angers and repulses other
societies—especially traditional and religious ones— and by
promoting, at home and abroad, an anti-American attitude
that blames America for all the problems of the world. Islamic anti-Americanism is not merely a reaction to U.S.
foreign policy but is also rooted in a revulsion against
what Muslims perceive to be the atheism and moral depravity
of American popular culture. Muslims and other traditional
people around the world allege that secular American values
are being imposed on their societies and that these values
undermine religious belief, weaken the traditional family,
and corrupt the innocence of children. But it is not
“America” that is doing this to them, it is the American
cultural left. What traditional societies consider repulsive
and immoral, the cultural left considers progressive and
liberating. Taking issue with those on the right who speak of a “clash
of civilizations,” D’Souza argues that the war on terror is
really a war for the hearts and minds of traditional
Muslims—and traditional peoples everywhere. The only way to
win the struggle with radical Islam is to convince
traditional Muslims that America is on their side. We are accustomed to thinking of the war on terror and the
culture war as two distinct and separate struggles. D’Souza
shows that they are really one and the same. Conservatives
must recognize that the left is now allied with the Islamic
radicals in a combined effort to defeat Bush’s war on
terror. A whole new strategy is therefore needed to fight
both wars. “In order to defeat the Islamic radicals
abroad,” D’Souza writes, “we must defeat the enemy at home.”
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