The American Temptation

I've gone back and forth on Dinesh D'Souza -- sometimes I like him,  other times I don't.

I vaguely remember seeing him on The Daily Show years back. He was  unassuming -- a little Indian guy with glasses, a soft voice, and calmly conservative (contrasted against Bill O’Reilly and Glenn Beck). I can't remember why he was on the show, but he  was laid back and funny. I found him pretty charismatic. He also  seemed to be the next poster child for Republicans: educated, conservative,  intellectual, Christian and...well...not old and white.

A few years passed and I watched him debate Christianity at Oregon State. The question in the debate was "Is Christianity Good for  the World." D'Souza was everything I remember: articulate, laid-back, poignant, intelligent. He presented Christianity from a unique viewpoint – his family was converted to Christianity by “The Portuguese Inquisition”, as he said it. He discovered that Christianity literally came to his family “at the point of a bayonet.

What struck me most about his debate was that he became a seeming voice to what I call "Christian-Secular Apologism." He was defending Christianity without quoting the Bible in every sentence, if at all. His opponent, Michael Shermer, taking the position that Christianity was bad for the world, seemed awestruck during question and answer time and how many audience members asked how he could be for gay rights when the Bible says it's wrong. D'Souza stepped in to silence the persistent and wasteful inquiries by basically saying "For people that don't take the Bible as an authority, it doesn't matter if it says homosexuality is wrong one time or a hundred." If I remember right, that comment seemed to quell further questions about homosexuality.

I can't recall if I heard about his book before or after the debate, but in 2007 he released the horribly titled "The Enemy At Home: The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11." The alarmist subtext seemed misplaced. It seemed like a stretch. At first, I couldn't believe someone so articulate would clumsily try to tie together liberals and terrorism (it seemed almost like a South Park episode, or more aptly, the storyline of Team America). I remember my perception changing with this book especially because some of his previous titles were "What's So Great About America" in 2002, "The Virtue of Prosperity" in 2001 and "Ronald Reagan: How An Ordinary Man Became an Extraordinary Leader" in 1997. Even his 1995 "The End of Racism" thesis didn't seem too much beyond Fukuyama's "The End of History" in 1992.

I finally decided to read the book before finishing school. Ignoring the alarmist subtext, he presents a compelling argument. D’Souze says the America is a cultural exporter to the Middle East (pretty much everywhere in the world, but his focus was primarily Muslim nations in the Middle East): we send movies, music, fashion, food, ideals, books, government and everything else considered part of our culture to other parts of the world. The problem is that many of our cultural exports reflect perceived ‘immorality’, ‘debauchery’ and ‘secularism’. He argues that the Middle East, and implicitly the rest of the world, does not want their societies to become like the United States they see reflected in our culture (in music: Ke$ha, Britney Spears, Adam Lambert, Marilyn Manson). Many countries don't want sexual advertising, 24 hour bars, 7 day work weeks, fast food, widespread divorce and a separation of Church and State. I could understand the perception that many social problems in Western Society could be seen as an outgrowth of the culture itself (violence in movies causing violence in schools, for example).

He doesn’t necessarily argue this point as far as I take it, but it seems he suggests that American society is a tempting society. That everything we do is a persistent temptation -- sexier, trendier, stronger, better, richer. When Ayatollah Khomeini calls America “The Great Satan,” D’Souza suggests that Khomeini uses Satan as The Great Tempter, not The Great Evil. For instance, it isn’t so much that wanting to sleep with women is evil, but advertising twenty and asking “which one?” is, troublingly, a corrupting temptation . And American culture presents this temptation to the world on a billboard big enough for six billion people. He further exemplifies this problem by mentioning that many (all?) of the 9/11 terrorists had gone to Las Vegas and visited strippers. Odd behavior for men claiming to be so devoted to their religion that they would die for it. Yet unsurprising – for a few years they lived in a society selling sex all the time – of course they would eventually act on it.

I’ve kept these arguments in my mind. When I read articles about terrorism, the Middle East, Iran or Islam, I wonder what face they see of America; if there is any validity to America as the world tempter; terrorists as perceived righteous resisters. D’Souza certainly didn’t need my voice to relay his argument, but recently I started probing if we could apply a similar perspective to ourselves.

So what I’ve been wondering in my mind is if the American Dream is also an American Temptation: a temptation to be better and achieve more – to be dissatisfied with anything less than the whole…the temptation to find the American Dream. Maybe believing that the American Dream is attainable is the actual temptation. What do you all think?

The Enemy At Home: The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11