Hobgoblin Overload
by digby
Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson said it right after 9/11:
JERRY FALWELL: The ACLU's got to take a lot of blame for this.
PAT ROBERTSON: Well, yes.
JERRY FALWELL: And, I know that I'll hear from them for this. But, throwing God out successfully with the help of the federal court system, throwing God out of the public square, out of the schools. The abortionists have got to bear some burden for this because God will not be mocked. And when we destroy 40 million little innocent babies, we make God mad. I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For the American Way, all of them who have tried to secularize America. I point the finger in their face and say 'you helped this happen'.
PAT ROBERTSON: Well, I totally concur, and the problem is we have adopted that agenda at the highest levels of our government. And so we're responsible as a free society for what the top people do. And, the top people, of course, is the court system.
It took a while, but Dinesh D'Souza finally came out and agreed with this thesis in his book The Enemy at Home: The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11:
The cultural left in this country is responsible for causing 9/11 ... the cultural left and its allies in Congress, the media, Hollywood, the non-profit sector and the universities are the primary cause of the volcano of anger toward America that is erupting from the Islamic world.
Now the great men of the conservative movement are finally coming out of the closet too:
To the Editor:
The issue of interest regarding Dinesh D’Souza’s incendiary book is surely not whether your reviewer, Alan Wolfe, likes its point of view but whether the incisive arguments it makes are true. Although Wolfe implies that D’Souza is against Israel, nowhere does D’Souza express the slightest hostility toward this precious beacon of our civilization.
Rather, D’Souza raises the alarm that the anti-religious, sexual liberationist, anti-natalist and feminist thrust of American foreign, cultural, and free-speech global Internet policies threaten and estrange all the traditional cultures of the third world, whether Muslim or Christian, Hindu or Buddhist. Poor people cannot afford the epidemics, abortions and divorces of Hollywood liberalism, and uphold a monotheist God as the foundation of their moral codes and worthy of respect.
The American global cultural campaign pushes a billion non-militant Muslims to condone the jihad and thus threatens the existence of Israel and the survival of vulnerable American cities like New York. Perhaps your readers would be intrigued with a discussion of the argument rather than anathemas against its expression. To call the book McCarthyite and a “national scandal” will neither stop the jihad nor save Israel in a nuclear age.
George Gilder
Great Barrington, Mass.
Ann Coulter and others on the right have spent the last few years saying that liberals are a fifth column consciously working on the side of the terrorists. She wrote a book called "Treason" on just that subject. Michele Malkin and her little friends went completely nuts over those Danish cartoons, screeching to high heaven about free speech and the inalienable right to criticize religion to matter how offensive the believers found it. It has been an article of faith that the left is in cahoots with the terrorists from the beginning.
Now, they've decided that the terrorists attacked America because it hates the American left --- its alleged supporters for lo these many years. And the finest minds of the right seem to be saying that America should appease these terrorists by succumbing to their demands that America stop tolerating liberalism at all.
When in the company of conservatives these days, be sure to carry an umbrella. You can never be sure when one of their heads is going to explode.
Update: Elton Beard noted an even earlier foray into the "Blame Americans first" meme: Newtie was making common cause with the Jihadists back in 2003.
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