Wednesday, March 14, 2007

Goldberg on D'Souza and Liberals

I don't know how Goldberg gets this so wrong. Here's an email I just sent him:
Jonah,

You say:

"As O'Donnell succinctly puts it, "radical Christianity is just as threatening as radical Islam in a country like America." A spate of new books touting atheism, well received on the left, gild the same lily.

Anyway, along comes Dinesh's book, which makes a similar comparison, only this time it's the left which is the real Taliban wing in American politics. In response, Alan Wolfe famously insisted in The New York Times that D'Souza be shunned like an Amish tart for his anti-American..."


D'Souza isn't comparing the American left to the Taliban. He's saying that the Taliban (and international jihadis in general) are right to loathe the American left, that American liberals have brought terror upon themselves by a supposedly decadent and corrupt culture we espouse. So...the opposite of what you are saying. Rather than accusing liberals of being like the Taliban, he's saying that the Taliban is justly opposed to liberal America. Thus, Dinesh's book is evidence of what Sullivan and O'Donnell and others mention in your first paragraph, i.e. that Dinesh is finding common cause with the Taliban. In what way do you think that D'Souza's accusation is similar to liberals pointing out that some Christians find common cause with Islamists? If liberals were saying that conservatives brought 9/11 upon themselves and somehow deserved it, then you'd have a point and liberals should be apologizing for something. As it is, D'Souza is simply providing proof of the liberal accusation that some conservatives have a Talib
viewpoint.

Gabriel

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