Dinesh D'Sousa is a 'national disgrace'

Quite a blast in the NYT Book Review this weekend at Neocon Dinesh D'Sousa, who is to Desis what Ann Coulter is to women -- a lightweight neocon polemicist who would like to be taken seriously enough to be called a crypto-fascist, but is too much of a twit. Reviewing D'Sousa's book "The Enemy at Home: The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11," Alan Wolfe minces no words in a concluding paragraph I hope gets stuck to D'Sousa like flypaper:

At one point in "The Enemy at Home," D'Souza appeals to "decent liberals and Democrats" to join him in rejecting the American left. Although he does not name me as one of them, I sense he is appealing to people like me because I write for The New Republic, a liberal magazine that distances itself from leftism. So let this "decent" liberal make perfectly clear how thoroughly indecent Dinesh D'Souza is. Like his hero Joe McCarthy, he has no sense of shame. He is a childish thinker and writer tackling subjects about which he knows little to make arguments that reek of political extremism. His book is a national disgrace, a sorry example of a publishing culture more concerned with the sensational than the sensible. People on the left, especially those who have been subjects of D'Souza's previous books, will shrug their shoulders at his latest screed. I look forward to the reaction from decent conservatives and Republicans who will, if they have any sense of honor, distance themselves, quickly and cleanly, from the Rishwain research scholar at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.

This from a teacher of political science at Boston College -- I think I detect a certain disdain for the Hoover Institution there.

If you missed D'Sousa's appearance on the Colbert Report last week, it's definitely worth seeing.

Colbert: It's worse than just politics, right? It's worse than just international relations that does it. Isn't our culture itself corrosive, and invites this kind of attack?

D'Sousa: Well, that's what the radical Muslims say. They say America is the fount of global depravity... We in America know there's a big difference between some of the excesses of our popular culture and the way that Americans actually live. But abroad they don't know that... There are a lot of traditional Muslims who have traditional values not very different from traditional Jewish or Christian values.

Colbert: And can we just hold hands in brotherhood -- and use our free hands to stone gay people? Is that possible?

D'Sousa: Look, homosexuality exists all over the world... but there's a difference between something that is allowed or tolerated and something that is given social sanction. That's what I think makes a lot of traditional Muslims uneasy. Here's all I'm saying: Why don't we show them a little more of the traditional America? That will undermine Bin Laden's argument that we're all a bunch of atheists.

Colbert: So what other cultural editing notes should we take from the terrorists?