Arts American Treason
posted by on February 5 at 16:19 PM
Bruce Bawer’s review of Dinesh D’Souza’s book The Enemy at Home is up and worth the read. A taste of the critic’s fire:
As for “virtue”—well, D’Souza fumes for pages at length about the moral corruption of everything from Pulp Fiction and Jerry Springer to Britney Spears and Will and Grace, ardently contrasting all this vice and filth to the glorious uprightness of Muslim family values. Forget the sky-high rates of wife-beating and intrafamily rape in Muslim households; forget the stoning to death of gays and rape victims—D’Souza offers only scattered, rote, and understated acknowledgments that Muslim domestic culture might not be 100 percent morally pure (“There is, of course, no excuse for the abuses of patriarchy”). He ignores the Muslim schoolbooks and media that routinely depict Jews as subhumans who merit extinction; he winks at the current persecution of “traditional, family oriented” Christians (and Hindus) across the Muslim world; and he pretends that “most traditional Muslims” condemn honor killings. (On the contrary, when European Muslims slaughter their daughters, journalists struggle to find coreligionists who’ll criticize them for doing so.)
Does Bawer have any evidence that journalists find it difficult to track down European Muslims who disagree with honor killings? Half of the time I agree with Bawer, the problem is, the other half of the time, he's a foaming-at-the-mouth bigot. The only difference between him and Michelle Malkin is that he does seem to have genuine concern for women's and gay rights, whereas Malkin only cares long enough to stick it to the Muslims.
I don't normally pay much attention to Bawer, but he's absolutely right about Dinesh. The Dartmouth Review's token has gone too far this time. His bogus "conservatism" starts with the usual boilerplate about the Founding Fathers but when you get down to it, as he as in his new book, it's really about fear and the resultant craving for fascism. D'Souza is a twisted fuck; basically his argument boils down to "bin Laden is right". The West is corrupt and decadent, just like the Taliban says, and we deserve everything bad that happens to us. He is explicitly calling for an alliance between the Christian Right and the Muslim Fundamentalists. But his arguments are so badly made that even his conservative buddies are having trouble defending him. He ultimately sounds like he thinks 9/11 was a good thing.
He also reportedly dated Ann Coulter. And yet he claims to be against bestiality. Enough said.
"(On the contrary, when European Muslims slaughter their daughters, journalists struggle to find coreligionists who’ll criticize them for doing so.)"
I'd really like to see a source on that.
Here is the introduction of D'Souza's mangled book. The best part is where he quotes some leftist who commented about how bin Laden hit the wrong target by attacking Blue States, and D'Souza implies that bin Laden did hit the right target, and gives him justification
ttp://catholiceducation.org/articles/civilization/cc0226.htm
"(On the contrary, when European Muslims slaughter their daughters, journalists struggle to find coreligionists who’ll criticize them for doing so.)"
Even if true, . . . "Hi, I'm from the Daily Yelp, you're the only Muslim I could find. Would you be willing to piss off some crazy murderers? On the record? Can I use your name?"
You know, I'm all for opposing D'Souza's fascism, but the whole "You're evil" - "No, you're evil" dialectic of the excerpt highly disturbing. Could we paint in any broader strokes? Are the readers of the Slog so stupid that we can't allow any room for nuance in responding to an argument? It doesn't seem very productive to respond to D'Souza's "All liberals are responsible for terrorism, immorality and the destruction of whatever we hold dearest" argument with "All, of even most, Muslims are responsible for rape, anti-Semitism and patriarchy." It's extremely off-putting.
I'm a teacher in New York and many of my students, either zero or first generation immigrants, are Muslim and would in no way support the culture Bawer describes. Indeed, many are more progressive than their Americanized counterparts. Indeed, there's nothing like seeing a fourteen year old girl in a hijab beginning a presentation by stating "If I had a hammer, I'd smash patriarchy" to make you appreciate the nuances of Muslim culture.
Yes, traditional, reactionary Muslim culture is pretty much as bad as any traditional, reactionary culture (especially one based on religious fundamentalism) anywhere. But - must I really point this out? - not all Muslims advocate anti-Semitism or the ridiculously termed honor killings. I'm sure we can find a few more progressive, less Manichean view points to advocate here.
This is a good example of the full of shit leading the full of shit. I don't know all that much about D'Souza, but here in Denmark, Bawer is known as the wingnut who honestly believes that the 2% of the population that is muslim has the burning desire (and, hell, the ability) to conquer Europe from within. Not to defend D'Souza at all, but it sounds like Bawer's argument comes down to 'watch out for them muslims; they're crafty!'
Who takes D’ Souza seriously? What happens in Muslim countries should not be our problem, especially when America usually solves its problems with depleted uranium shells and 19 year old dudes with M-16's. Iraq under America is worse then under Saddam. I am disgusted by the right the left the what the fuck ever trying to use 9/11 to kill for their own, personal, grips, while at the same time ignoring why 9/11 happened, which has a lot to do with Palesteine. “Islamo Fascists” are not going to conquer America, so we should not worry about their backwards fucking customs. What is going to kill America though, is our deficit, and the Democrats playing the Weimar Republic to Bush’s Hitler schick.
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