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May 22, 2007
This review of Dinesh D'Souza's The Enemy at Home: The Cultural Left by Andrew Sullivan is interesting about the movement of conservatism in postmodernity. In the text D'Souza argues that the cultural left in the US is responsible for causing 9/11, in the sense that the cultural left and its allies in Congress, the media, Hollywood, the nonprofit sector, and the universities are the primary cause of the volcano of anger toward America that is erupting from the Islamic world.
On this account the cultural left---D'Souza names Richard Rorty, Martha Nussbaum, Sean Wilentz, Sharon Stone, Rosie O'Donnell, Paul Begala, Arianna Huffington, many other cultural and political figures, and all the members and employees of the ACLU, Amnesty International, the Ford Foundation--- fosters a decadent and depraved American culture that angers and repulses other societies—especially traditional and religious ones— and by promoting, at home and abroad, an anti-American attitude that blames America for all the problems of the world
The Muslims who carried out the 9/11 attacks were the product of this visceral rage—some of it based on legitimate concerns, some of it based on wrongful prejudice, but all of it fueled and encouraged by the cultural left. Thus without the cultural left, 9/11 would not have happened. American cultural left has been vigorously exporting its domestic war against religion and traditional morality to the rest of the world.The American cultural left stands for the decadence of the West---an old theme of the Right, as is the view that secular pop culture threatens traditional morality.
Sullivan says that on D'Souza's account conservatism is in a death struggle with liberal modernity (modern individualism and autonomy), with the conservative movement out to demonize "the left" and enrage the liberals:
At its core is a deepening rejection of cultural and philosophical modernity. D'Souza believes that the defining new distinction in American politics is no longer between the economic right and the economic left. The size of government and its role as a guardian of the public welfare are increasingly dead issues, or issues where no vital energy crackles. D'Souza rightly holds that the real divide in the new century is between authority and autonomy, between faith-based politics and individual freedom. And in this struggle at the level of first principles, D'Souza chooses his own side. He is at war with the modern West. If forced to choose between a theocratic order that upheld traditional morality and a secular order that saw such morality marginalized, D'Souza is with the former.
Sullivan says that traditional morality, in D'Souza's view:
"is based on the notion that there is a moral order in the universe, which establishes an enduring standard of right and wrong. All the major religions of the world agree on the existence of this moral order. There is also a surprising degree of unanimity about the content of this moral order." Liberal morality, by contrast, consists first of all in the right of the individual to choose for him- or herself what morality is. It is about "autonomy, individuality, and self-fulfillment as moral ideals." Its essence is the notion that "each person must decide for himself or herself what is right in a particular situation." D'Souza argues that the shift in America over the past few decades from traditional morality to liberal morality is "the most important fact of the past half-century."
Secularism is the primary enemy whilst a neutral public square is a pernicious illusion, that faith of any kind is always and everywhere preferable to no faith or sincere doubt. The shift is towards an enmeshment of church and state. Conservatism roots are in an older, premodern vision of mankind and religion, not in a post Enlightenment.
What I see are the familiar fault lines within the conservative movement -- libertarians versus social conservatives, neo-conservatives versus realists, economic internationalists versus populists -- that are tension filled under the weight of massive spending increases, evangelical overreach, abuse of executive power, conventional corruption, and a mismanaged war. Does the sense of cohesion on the right still manage to keep the rickety coalition together?
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The politics of binary exclusions and collective scape-goating. Everything will be hunky dory ---if only we can cleanse the body politic of the toxifying effects of liberalism.
And then we can get on with our "god" given mandate to create AmeriKa (and the rest of the world) in our own self-righteous image. One capitalist market under the genocidal war "god" of the Old Testament.