Review: What's So Great About America
Published August 31, 2002
One of the primary premises I start every blogging session with is that many Americans, even well-informed Americans, even those charged with bringing us the news and putting it into context, do not clearly understand the threats we face.
Even today, eight months after 9/11, as I listen the pundits on TV and read letters in newspapers and magazines, I find there is still this underlying sense that our enemies are not much different from us. Their worldview is our worldview. Therefore, if we could just get to the root cause of their hate for us, maybe we could make them stop hating us.
But the root cause of terrorism is not any specific foreign policy action, nor is it merely the rise of international corporate power. It certainly isn't poverty, hunger or a sense of oppression (Osama bin Laden is a very wealthy man and most of his soldiers come from middle class families). It isn't even really our culture, in a specific sense.
Our enemies hate us because we are free.
When that sentiment was first expressed on 9/11 it was ridiculed by some on the left. They called that sort of thinking "simplistic" and "hyper patriotic." Even today, the liberal-left scoffs at the notion that our enemies have attacked us because of our freedom.
But sometimes the simplest of statements and most obvious of reasons are the correct answers.
I think one reason the left has trouble with this answer is because they see it as an attempt to marginalize the status of our enemies, to reduce our enemy's arguments to child-like statements. In short, they suspect we wish to engage in the logical fallacy known as the straw man.
The left simply doesn't understand our enemies. Our enemies hate us because we are free. When a conservative says that, the left need not fear - we know exactly what we are saying. Our enemies hate us because we are free.
Dinesh D'souza is a man who knows how to articulate this simple truth and he has the knowledge, experience, background, research and even the aptitude to present this argument as fact: Our enemies hate us because we are free.
I first heard D'Souza make his case on MSNBC's Hardball with Chris Matthews. I've tried to obtain a transcript of that show, but without luck. On it D'Souza made the point that our freedom, our ability to engage in self-determination, to make our own decisions and guide our own lives - especially because we allow our women the same freedom - is a direct contradiction of the theology practiced by our enemies.
- Review: What's So Great About America
- Published: August 31, 2002
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- Writer: Walter Enderby
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Comments on this articleComments
Personal insults to little credit to your case. Surely someone from Canada should show a little more respect to the country that enables you to dwell in a socialist fantasyland but still live more prosperously than your cultural relations across the Atlantic. I'm married to a Canadian, and hasten to assure American readers that not all Canadians are as ungrateful as Chad Collins.
As it happens, D'Souza defends Western Culture as a whole, not just the United States in particular. I can only assume from your vitriol that you haven't read the book, or you would surely recognize and appreciate your very ability to spout such ignorance in a public forum without fear of midnight reprisals by religious squads ready to cut out your tongue for insolence.
Nobody is saying that the US is perfect and unblemished. I probably have a longer list of complaints than you do. What people are saying is that this world is a much better place for our existence, and listening to Islamist extremists' so-called "reasons" for hating us is like listening to a convicted serial killer's reasons for why he had to kill his victims. They simply don't make sense, they're usually not true, and it doesn't matter anyway.
It's a book review, folks, read the book if you're going to comment!
I enjoyed the book, but it really wasn't all that eye-opening or insightful. A lot of it was hashed out in one way or another in the blogsphere over the past year.
Having said that, the bits on Imperialism/colonialism and the differences between African-American and other immigrant perceptions of the USA were worth the price of the book. I wish they were longer.
re: chad's post.
this may well be true, but you should be careful throwing around loaded terms like that, especially when you're not providing any warrants at all to your claims. without them, people like me will dismiss your argument as a baseless emotional outburst. maybe it is, maybe it isn't, but there should be reasons why.
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(Or ping: http://blogcritics.org/mt/tb/334)
this article is a complete load of CRAP. the world (i'm from canada, mofo) does NOT hate you because you are free. on the contrary, they hate you because your leaders are terrorist, criminal scum, on par with your enemies. look around you, is it as FREE as you really think it is in the good ol' USSA. we're all wondering. i know good people come from your country.