D’Souza on Abu Ghraib:” debauched liberalism run amok”
By Mona
Clown Town Hall continues to showcase penetrating political and sociological insight, most recently from columnist Dinesh D’Souza whose recent book explores how the sexual depravity of a liberal-influenced America is the root cause of “why they hate us” and hence of 9/11, to wit: Muslims are rightly aggrieved by the left’s “aggressive global campaign to undermine the traditional patriarchal family.” In his TH column today D’Souza decries the “liberal” fixation on the simulated torture (and I guess those attack dogs were simulated, too) at Abu Ghraib, and points to the true nature of the heinous activities that went on there, which of course is that so many of the Abu Ghraib prison staff were violating their marital vows, which outrages the Muslim world. But:
In one crucial respect, however, the Muslim critics were wrong. Contrary to their assertions, Abu Ghraib did not reflect the shared values of America, it reflected the sexual immodesty of liberal America. Lynndie England and Charles Graner were two wretched individuals from Red America who were trying to act out the fantasies of Blue America. Casting aside all traditional notions of decency, propriety and morality, they simply lived by the code of self-fulfillment. If it feels good, it must be right. This was bohemianism, West Virginia-style.
At some level, the cultural left recognized this, which is why most of its comments about Abu Ghraib assiduously avoided the issue of sexual deviancy.
The “left” had to carry on this way about the Abu Graib scandal, you see, to protect its brethren at librul universities and among cosmopolitans:
For some liberals, soldiers like Graner and England were poor white trash getting into trouble again. Of course if Graner and England were professors at an elite liberal arts college, their videotaped orgies might easily have become the envy of academia. If they were artists staging these pictures in a loft in Soho they could have been hailed as pioneers and encouraged by leftist admirers to apply for a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts….
To his credit, President Bush made no attempt to defend Abu Ghraib, firmly asserting that it didn’t represent America. What he should have said is that it didn’t represent the values of conservative America. In reality Abu Ghraib did reflect the values of a debauched liberalism run amok.
Dinesh D’Souza is the Rishwain Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. He is given platforms at National Review’s The Corner and Town Hall, and is frequently invited to opine on TeeVee. Why?
Even if not all soi-disant conservatives agree with him, there are few if any calls for D’Souza’s being expelled from the ranks. He is still writing columns for Town Hall, and his vile book is selling quite well.
Because in today’s right-wing culture, Dinesh D’Souza is not extreme.
Comment by Tillman Fan —
February 26, 2007 @ 3:24 pm
D’Souza thinks that Muslims were “scandalized” by England’s and Graner’s infidelity? That comment, and his continual efforts to try to shoehorn his observations into facile “Red America” / “Blue America” compartments, reveal that he simply isn’t someone worthy of any serious attention. Seriously, I wonder if he’s mentally and emotionally healthy.
Comment by norbizness —
February 26, 2007 @ 3:26 pm
He didn’t say ‘fuck’ or ’spooge,’ so it’s all good in the hood!
Comment by Mona —
February 26, 2007 @ 3:30 pm
Yes, and yet he holds the status that he does, and his inane book was, at least for a time, well up on the NYT bestseller list. Why — seriously, why do the media and academic elites not recognize that he is a deranged nutcase? (Not that he’s the only one, that which has come to be considered “mainstream” by the right-dominated cultural enclaves is pretty scary.)
Comment by Aaron —
February 26, 2007 @ 7:26 pm
Dont these people have any concept of “CONSENT”
a–holes.
Comment by Mona —
February 26, 2007 @ 9:12 pm
Well, I think D’Souza in that passage is actually referring to the consensual videos Graner and England made of each other and with other consenting Americans. They engaged in this homemade video pr0n because of left-wing cultural degradation which has reached into Red West Virginia, and which in turn is a moral turpitude toxin they carried with them to Iraq.
But whatever, it is always the libruls at fault.
Comment by Jackmormon —
February 26, 2007 @ 10:20 pm
I think you’re giving him entirely too much credit there, Mona; the reference to the consensual videos is brief and on the first page. This is a line of minimalization that Rush Limbaugh tried out: “liberals just love dressing up in funny costumes and having bondage-group-sex parties!” I paraphrase.
No, what D’Souza has done here is completely obliterate the Iraqi men involved. They’re props in the American soldiers’ adulterous affaire, not vulnerable human beings being, effectively, raped.
Comment by Thoreau —
February 26, 2007 @ 10:46 pm
Wait, I’m confused. I thought that Abu Ghraib was no big deal, just some frat pranks, really. Now it’s a symbol of how immoral the coastal elites are?
Can we at least get our talking points straight, Mr. D’Souza?
Comment by Mark —
February 26, 2007 @ 10:55 pm
It’s a floor wax and a dessert topping.
Comment by matty —
February 26, 2007 @ 11:19 pm
as a west virginian now living in decadent new york: fuck you, d’nesh. i’d be interested to see the track record of conservative dartmouth grads, national review nepotist welfare assholes, and keyboard kommandos if they enlisted at half the rate west virginians do.
prick.
Comment by Alex —
February 27, 2007 @ 6:16 am
Let us all remember John B. Israel, Titan, Inc. employed contract interrogator who, according to Major-General Antonio Taguba, U.S. Army, raped a teenage boy in custody at Abu Ghraibh and could not be prosecuted under either US or Iraqi law.
Comment by John Spragge —
February 27, 2007 @ 6:53 am
It seems to me that D’Souza has achieved the difficult feat of shoehorning at least three major errors into one (very) minor meme.
1) bin Laden didn’t attack New York City out of disgust at Girls Gone Wild; he did it to undermine the existing social order the US propped up in the Middle East.
2) Even if Muslims do find the morals of the “leftist” portion of American society outrageous, the interests of the Salafist Jihad and Christian social conservatives do not, to put it mildly coincide. Each group badly wants to convert the other (and everyone else). To true believers, the way people live matters much less than the way they worship.
3) The culture of indulgence D’Souza deplores does not, in any case, come in any meaningful sense from the “left”.
Comment by michael holloway —
February 27, 2007 @ 9:09 am
I thought Bay Watch caused 9/11!
Comment by Avram —
February 27, 2007 @ 3:07 pm
John, D’Souza is well aware that his interests don’t coincide with those of the Salafists. He just finds them a convenient rhetorical club to use to beat up on American liberals.
Adam Lieberman’s 1997 essay “Why I Left” contains a passage that explains D’Souza concisely. Lieberman had been a writer and editor at the Dartmouth Review: