The geopolitical "If I Did It..."

Dinesh D'Souza has a new book out, in which he suggests that American cultural conservatives make common cause with "traditional Muslims" based on their mutual desire for theocracy and profound distaste for individual liberty (e.g., gay marriage making the baby Jesus cry and that sort of thing.)

Let's let Mark Steyn have the final word on Dinesh, a once-promising conservative theorist and writer who, it must be said, appears to have completely lost his mind:

The Enemy At Home: The Cultural Left And Its Responsibility For 9/11 is the geopolitical If I Did It. As you may recall, that was the title of the artful OJ Simpson tome no sooner announced than yanked from the warehouses and pulped by its publisher: OJ isn’t saying he did do it but if he had done it he’d have done it like this. Likewise, Dinesh D’Souza’s new book: he’s not the jihad’s marketing consultant but, if he were, this is pretty much the critique of America he’d have offered to buck up the lads in the cave on September 10th 2001.

It’s impressive stuff. He’s rounded up a ton of denunciations of the Great Satan’s appetite for “fornication, homosexuality, intoxicants, gambling, and trading with interest” (to cite Osama bin Laden himself). Quote after quote about America’s godless sodomites jostle on the page like eye-catching young lads in a San Francisco bathhouse on a Saturday night in 1978: Human rights for homosexuals? “What human? What rights?” scoffs a columnist for the Egyptian newspaper Al Akhbar. After a couple of pages of such zingers, D’Souza usually feels obliged to distance himself:

However uncharitable these sentiments…

And occasionally one can almost hear his editor at Doubleday urging the author to make the distancing a little less perfunctory:

However uncharitable these sentiments – and I find them appallingly so…

Much better! Distance-wise, that’s a good foot and a half.

SteynOnline: The Home Front