19 September 2001
Dinesh D'Souza, Dan Patrick, and Bill Maher
I blogged this article earlier today with the caption "Dan Patrick, Houston's 'conservative' idiot, often drops context and misses the point"
I noticed later that Sean (and then other regular reads) had started lambasting Bill Maher.
I will preface what follows with this: I have long thought that Bill Maher is snide, condescending, and dishonest (dishonest in that he claims to be libertarian, when in fact he has more in common with the American Left than with most mainstream libertarians, small or big L variety; there have even been a few articles to this effect recently, one in particular that I blogged in August). For those reasons alone, I do not watch Maher.
I have no problem, either, with viewers who are offended by a program contacting that program's advertisers, nor with those advertisers pulling their ads. I don't view that as censorship, for governments engage in censorship. I consider it to be the fair working of the marketplace, and I have no real sympathy for Maher's predicament.
Dan Patrick, on the other hand, is a local Maher-like personality of the culturally conservative variety, someone whose comment in the article is very telling: "When you call our men in the (armed forces) cowards and our military policy cowardly, and when you call these hijackers 'warriors,' that should not be tolerated." Patrick, for those who don't know, isn't a very tolerant man at all! And he's proven in the past not to be very good at critical reading or thought.
I am concerned in this instance that Patrick -- and others (since this article was publicized on Drudge) -- have equated Bill Maher's unpatriotic (and dumb) statement with the point being made by Dinesh D'Souza. I've met Dinesh once, and have long read his writings, and know him as neither ignorant nor unpatriotic. Indeed, a former Claremont Publius fellow, Dinesh has long been an advocate for the principles of the American Founding. He's a careful and thoughtful intellectual, and his point on the Maher show has been lost amidst Dan Patrick's intolerance.
That point is this: Although those terrorists ARE cowards under any Western conception of justice, THEY themselves reject that conception of "justice" in its entirety! Those people thought of themselves as warriors dying for their cause. In their minds, there was nothing cowardly about their act. Dinesh actually took the time to understand the terrorists as they understood themselves, and make that point on television. Of course, Maher (not nearly as brilliant as he thinks he is) took Dinesh to be saying something else entirely, and had to throw in one of his usual glib comments. But Dinesh's point, in CONTEXT, was right on, and important to understanding the enemy we have declared war upon.
I hope Dinesh doesn't suffer as a result. He doesn't deserve it.
[Posted @ 09:06 PM CST]
