Give Them Just Enough Freedom to Hang Themselves

zuzu, over at Feministe, has an excellent analysis of how batshit crazy Dinesh D'Souza's argument against the American left is in his new book, The Enemy at Home: The Cultural Left and It's Responsibility for 9/11. According to Random House:

D’Souza shows that liberals—people like Hillary Clinton, Ted Kennedy, Barney Frank, Bill Moyers, and Michael Moore—are responsible for fostering a culture that angers and repulses not just Muslim countries but also traditional and religious societies around the world. Their outspoken opposition to American foreign policy—including the way the Bush administration is conducting the war on terror—contributes to the growing hostility, encouraging people both at home and abroad to blame America for the problems of the world. He argues that it is not our exercise of freedom that enrages our enemies, but our abuse of that freedom—from the sexual liberty of women to the support of gay marriage, birth control, and no-fault divorce, to the aggressive exportation of our vulgar, licentious popular culture. (my emphasis)

zuzu masterfully shows how disturbing this claim is, especially in light of rhetoric the Bush Administration adopted to bolster support for our intervention in Iraq, i.e. that we are concern ed with protecing women's rights from fundamentalism. But, I guess we are less interested in protecting our own women from home grown fundamentalist crap.

I am going to take an optimistic tack on this one and say that broader reach that D'Souza gets for making such arguments only emphasizes his affinity for the Ahmadinejad school.

God bless free speech! It gives neo-cons like D'Souza just enough rope to hang themselves.

See also Amanda, Scott and Lindsay on this.