Dinesh D’Souza’s execrable new book, The Enemy at Home: The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11, has gotten the trashing it deserves in various articles and reviews—though perhaps not as many as the author would like, since controversy is essential to sell a book this meretricious.
Most of the reviews have focused, understandably, on D’Souza’s risible claim that Islamists attack us because of our popular culture, and that if only we would adopt the buttoned-down lifestyle of the “Greatest Generation,” the jihadists would leave us alone. As several reviewers have noted, Sayyid Qutb, the godfather of Islamist ideology, actually visited the U.S. in the late 1940’s and was thoroughly repulsed by our culture even in those “Ozzie and Harriet” days.
I have little to add to the many well-deserved criticisms except to focus on one point that, to my mind, hasn’t gotten enough attention: D’Souza’s contention that, as he puts it in his introduction, “The Left has produced a moral shift in American society that has resulted in a deluge of gross depravity and immorality.” Personally, I don’t think “gross depravity and immorality” are the defining characteristics of America today. I’m not unduly bothered by most of the examples D’Souza cites—everything from “reality shows where contestants eat maggots” to “talk shows where guests reveal the humiliating details of their sex lives” to The Vagina Monologues.
But let’s say you are bothered by them, or by the more serious issues of abortion and divorce that D’Souza also raises. Is it really tenable to blame all these trends on “the Left?” Are Andrea Dworkin, Noam Chomsky, and Tom Hayden responsible for the prevalence of pornography, trash TV, violent videogames, and raunchy music? Are they corrupting upstanding citizens who would otherwise never think of aborting a fetus or divorcing a spouse?
Hardly. In fact, leftist ideologues tend to be pretty prudish. (D’Souza should admire the efficiency with which Soviet censors kept sex out of the public domain.) The reason we have so many “degenerate” movies, books, TV shows, and songs is that the public wants them. The purveyors of these products are seldom motivated by ideology. They are pure profit-maximizers.
Perhaps liberals did help open the door by, for example, overturning obscenity laws. But just as important has been the great increase in leisure time and disposable income available to the average American since World War II. Ordinary people now devote far more energy and resources to being entertained—and, not surprisingly, the stuff they want does not meet favor with the guardians of high culture and morality.
Another important trend that has changed America is the entry of women into the workforce. This too had an ideological component, but it was driven primarily by the desire for greater income and a more comfortable lifestyle. As women have acquired independent means of support, they have been more willing to delay marriage, leave a spouse, or have an abortion in their pursuit of happiness.
It’s simply untenable to blame a handful of “sixties radicals” for the tectonic shifts in American society over the past several decades. But it’s hard for many conservatives to acknowledge that the villains responsible for the trends they deplore might also be the heroes they celebrate as “entrepreneurs.” For a more sophisticated view of this question, readers should take a pass on D’Souza’s tome and pick up David Frum’s How We Got Here: The ‘70s: The Decade That Brought You Modern Life—for Better or Worse.
