...is taken to school by Jamie Glazov, who by far has the best of the argument.

D'Souza comes off, to me as either extremely naive, or disingenuous, or both.

The premise of the book (from the amazon.com description):

Conservative pundit D'Souza (Illiberal Education) roots the blame for the 9/11 attacks in the left wing's "aggressive global campaign to undermine the traditional patriarchal family" in this mostly lucid but unconvincing argument.

Heh!

The femi-Nazis and gay rights activists caused 9/11. Yeah, right.

I am in the unusual position of being in full agreement with Rand's post.

And I, having been fully pre-disposed to shrug D'Souza off with scorn, found myself agreeing with him at least partially. Of course I absolutely do not buy into the statement that the cultural left "caused" 9-11. The reasons for that are far more complex. Yet, a careful read of the debate doesn't convince me that Glazov really won.

Of course D'Souza has an ax to grind against the Hollywod-MTV-Porn culture, and in that respect I do think the founders would have likewise been shocked at the filth that is out there by virtue of freedom. This is an unfortunate image of our nation that is all to common in other parts of the world. On the other hand, I hope D'Souza isn't advocating censorship as a solution.

I've heard that Omar the founder of the Taliban was raped as a young boy by a Warlord, and that the shock and humiliation of that experience drove him to radical fundamentalist Islam. Formative experiences can shape terrorists; formative observations, where the picture seen of this nation is Borat masturbating to a picture of Pamela Anderson may have a similar effect in defining how one in another culture sees us. The problem is that it is very easy to view a piece of American Porn wherever one is in the world. It is much harder to read the thoughts and writings of the founding fathers. Today's media works against the best values of this nation.

Let's see if I understand this.

Young Mohammad sees that America has Pamela Anderson, naked even, and his reaction is "kill the Americans"?

Unless he's thinking "then I can have PA, naked, naked, naked", where does the "kill" come from?

Offside;

Read the article. If the raw sexuality of a 1940 church social is too much, what is left?

The problem is not that railing about Hollywood depravity is bad or wrong, but treating it as a cause of the Long War completely divorced from reality.

I know virtually nothing about the book, but I know three things are true:

1) The elements of Western culture that Islamists deem the most outrageous tend to originate from the left.

2) Islamists also hate the culture of the right. The staunchest conservatives are less prudish, more culturally tolerant, and more supportive of representative government.

3) If the Left had never existed, the Islamists would still be at war with us, if for no other reason because the West is rich and powerful and the Islamic world isn't - and because certain portions of the West used to be part of the Islamic world. They want Spain, Israel Southern Italy and Eastern Europe back. And they want to take over the rest of the world.

If the Left had never existed, the Islamists would still be at war with us

Spot on.

D'sousa clear does not understand what freedom is about.

We all know that in a completely free environment, that 98% of human beings will jus screw off party and do nothing at all productive. However 2% of people will engage in productive accomplishments and great human endevours. Examples of this 2% include the many entreprenuers of the 90's who are know using their money to develop commercial space transportation. Other examples include all of the people involved an anti-aging life extension research, bio-nanotechnology, and any other pioneering human endevour. More mundane examples include anyone involved in business start-ups, artistic and athletic endevours, or even great chess players.

As long as the people who pursue the great dreams and goals, the great accomplishments are free to do so and are not fettered with bureaucracy or any other kind of social control, what the other 98% of humanity does is completely irrelevant. I mean, what of it if the other 98% just want to party and screw all of the time. It is the productive results of the achieving minority of the human population that drives all progress and benefits the rest of humanity.

I have no patients for either the liberal-left who create excessive bureaucracy and regulation, nor anal-rentive conservatives such as D'souza. These people are all facistic-scum parasites as far as I'm concerned.