Proof that Bin Laden is a Conservative

As any reader of my blog knows, I'm a strong opponent of Islamism. This is not because I want to see the U.S. conquer Muslim countries, or because I believe the religion of Islam to be inferior to other religions. It's because, in the Islamist movement, I see the American conservative movement times 1000.

Now a prominent American conservative agrees with me. Dinesh D'Souza's new book, The Enemy at Home, claims that Islamists struck out at the U.S. (and Europe) because of our permissive culture - a culture, he claims, that is encouraged (or at least allowed) by liberalism. D'Souza writes:

[T]he right is allied with an even larger group of Muslims [which includes radical Muslims] in their opposition to American social and cultural depravity. This is the essential new framework I propose for understanding American foreign policy and American social issues.

Instead of reading the book, just check out Timothy Noah's review at Slate. You'll quickly get the gist. And the gist is exactly what I've been saying since I started this blog: both American conservatives and radical Islamists are angry about sex.

Consider the elements of America's "permissive" culture that D'Souza focuses on:

D'Souza makes no bones about believing, along with Islamic fundamentalists, that the following things are an affront to civilization: equality for homosexuals ("[W]hy would a sane people jeopardize an indispensable and already fragile institution such as marriage by redefining it away from its central purpose? Is the point of marriage to ensure that children have a father and mother, or is it to make Edgar and Austin feel more accepted by society?"); working motherhood ("[M]any mothers choose to have a career because it is more self-fulfilling than the life of a full-time mom"); divorce ("Now you hear people say things like, 'I feel called to leave my marriage. My life would be wasted if I stayed' "); and contraception ("Rather than call for non-Western women to have fewer children, the left speaks of a woman's right to determine the number and spacing of her pregnancies").

Every one of those issues is about sex. Every single one. There is nothing about the Pledge of Allegiance, or the teaching of evolution, or prayer in schools. And that's because, as I've always said, those issues are just means to an end for conservatives, who mainly want people to be religious and nationalistic so they'll stop having casual sex.

Osama bin Laden and his sympathizers really do hate us because of our freedoms. But the freedom they hate isn't the freedom to buy iPods in shopping malls or the freedom to own stocks. It's the freedom to have sex for fun.

Of course, Dinesh D'Souza is just offering a window into the conservative psyche. He shouldn't be taken as the authority on all things conservative; witness his crazy suggestion of an alliance between conservatives and al-Qaeda:

Instead of trying to unify America and the West, the right should highlight the division between red America and blue America, and also between traditional America and decadent Europe. By resisting the depravity of the left and the Europeans, conservatives can win friends among Muslims and other traditional people around the world.

Obviously, that kind of alliance will never happen, and with good reason. Conservatives in the West may be angry about our sex culture, but they aren't prepared to start slaughtering people to suppress it. They may grumble about working women, but they aren't prepared to make them stay at home covered in veils.

But D'Souza's book hits on an important truth - conservative anger and Islamist anger have a lot in common. That's why I dislike the former and loathe the latter.

And it's time for us liberals to recognize that, if we really want to weaken conservatism here at home, we need to address the fundamental underlying issue of sex. We need to find a way to allay people's fears that their families will be weakened by strip clubs, explicit lyrics, and anything-goes mores, without relying on nationalism or theocracy. And if we find that compromise, it will serve as an example to the Muslim world, and to other societies that find themselves convulsed by the advent of modernity. But if we ignore sex culture, we're just condemning ourselves to feel century upon century of conservative anger.


PS - For yet more proof that the Muslim world is undergoing a sexual upheaval, glance over this fascinationg collection of articles. Hopefully the Internet will give young Muslims a way to experiment with sex, and eventually diffuse their anger.