Enemy At Home The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11

TH: Why is the cultural left so reluctant to fight the terrorists and export “a more liberal set of values, such as self-government, minority rights, and religious tolerance?” How have cultural relativism and multiculturalism affected this reluctance?

DSOUZA: It might seem at first glance that the cultural left should be in the forefront to fight radical Islam. The reason is that Bin Laden and the Islamic radicals are so illiberal. They despise women’s rights and gay rights. I think we all know what they would do with Hillary Clinton or Barney Frank. Even so, the cultural left has shown itself extremely reluctant to support Bush’s war on terror. They aren’t just against the Iraq war, they are against the Patriot Act, and the telephone surveillance program, and the invasion of Afghanistan, and the sanctions proposals against Iran’s nuclear program. In short, they want Bush’s war on terror to fail. And this means that they want the Islamic radicals to succeed.

Why? The reason actually has nothing to do with cultural relativism or multiculturalism. It has everything to do with domestic politics. Basically the left hates Bush more than it hates Bin Laden. Bin Laden is a foreign threat, but Bush is a domestic threat. In the last couple of decades the left-wing agenda has become increasingly dominated by social and sexual concerns. So who threatens abortion rights in America? Not Bin Laden, Bush. Who is blocking gay marriage? Not Al Qaeda, Bush’s court appointees. While Bin Laden wants sharia in Baghdad, Bush and the religious right are, in the leftist view, trying to impose sharia in Boston. Consequently the left is quite willing to ally with the lesser evil, the Islamic radicals, in order to defeat the greater evil, Bush and the conservatives.

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