Andrew Sullivan, who warned that "[t]he decadent Left ... may well mount what amounts to a fifth column" after 9/11, approvingly quotes Bruce Bawer in The Stranger calling Dinesh D'Souza's new book treasonous:
For those who cherish freedom, 9/11 was intensely clarifying. Presumably it, and its aftermath, have been just as clarifying for D'Souza, whose book leaves no doubt whatsoever that he now unequivocally despises freedom—that open homosexuality and female "immodesty" are, in his estimation, so disgusting as to warrant throwing one's lot in with religious totalitarians. Shortly after The Enemy at Home came out, a blogger recalled that in 2003, commenting in the National Review on the fact that "influential figures" in America's conservative movement felt "that America has become so decadent that we are 'slouching towards Gomorrah,'" D'Souza wrote: "If these critics are right, then America should be destroyed." Well, D'Souza has now made it perfectly clear that he's one of those critics; and the book he's written is nothing less than a call for America's destruction. He is the enemy at home. Treason is the only word for it.
By almost all accounts, D'Souza's book is loathsome (I haven't read it), but free speech is not treasonous.
I concur. And I wish people would quit throwing that term around. It means quite a bit more than just making some half-ass comment like this one.
Posted by: Xanthippas | February 14, 2007 at 08:38 PM