Free The Enemy At Home by Dinesh D'Souza Page A

Liberals are not bashful in fighting for causes in which they believe.
    Nor is the campaign against the war on terrorism a form of anti-Americanism. Liberals are understandably outraged when conservatives make this charge. “Liberals like me love America,” says liberal radio host Al Franken. “We just love America in a different way.” Michael Moore fumes, “I am the most patriotic American. I’m the person who…believes in the actual real principles of this country.” 2 Putting aside for a moment what these “actual real principles” might be, I think that Franken and Moore are sincere. They aren’t against America, they are simply against the Bush administration’s foreign policy. Opposing a president’s foreign policy—or even American foreign policy in general—doesn’t make you anti-American.
    Liberals aren’t anti-American for fighting against conservative foreign policy any more than conservatives are anti-American for fighting against liberal social policy. Robert Bork thinks America is “slouching towards Gomorrah,” but this view doesn’t make him anti-American. Right-wing pundit Pat Buchanan thinks America has become a “cultural wasteland and a moral sewer that are not worth living in and not worth fighting for.” 3 He may be wrong, but his patriotism is not in doubt. The right-wing accusation of anti-Americanism is invalid because it confuses liberal opposition to specific government policies and specific features of America with opposition to the country.
    True, liberals sometimes sound anti-American because they use a generalized America-bashing rhetoric that you won’t hear on the right. One liberal professor, Robert Jensen, said on the day after 9/11, “We must say goodbye to patriotism because the world cannot survive indefinitely the patriotism of Americans.” Even after the collapse of the World Trade Center, a prominent liberal columinist, Katha Pollitt, refused to let her daughter fly the American flag outside their New York apartment window. Her reason? “The flag stands for jingoism and vengeance and war.” 4 Don’t these sentiments qualify as anti-American? Actually, no. What liberals are condemning is conservative values and the way that they have traditionally been marshaled to advance goals that liberals abhor. When liberals speak loosely and condemn “America” they always intend their condemnation to apply to
conservative
America. They are not condemning the abolitionist Frederick Douglass, the slave rebel Nat Turner, the suffragette movement, the New Deal, the welfare state, rallies against the Vietnam War, the Stonewall riots, the “nuclear freeze” movement, the sexual revolution, separation of church and state, the Supreme Court’s decision in
Roe v. Wade,
or the Massachusetts high court’s decision to legalize homosexual marriage.
    Comedian Janeane Garofalo recently said, “When I see the American flag, I go: Oh, my God, you’re insulting me. When I see a gay parade on Christopher Street in New York, with naked men and women on a float cheering, ‘We’re here, we’re queer!’ that’s what makes my heart swell. Not the flag, but a gay naked man or woman burning the flag. I get choked up with pride.” Behind Garofalo’s over-the-top rhetoric there is a serious point. Liberals may reject one America, but they support the other America. This other America represents the “American way” that TV producer Norman Lear had in mind when he founded the activist group People for the American Way. This other America represents what Michael Moore considers “the actual real principles” of the country.
    Let us now turn to the liberal understanding of the war against terrorism as it has developed since 9/11. My purpose here is not to rehearse every argument, canvass every recommendation. Rather, it is to capture the general contours of liberal thought. I recognize, of course, that liberalism is a spectrum. There is a fairly wide range from moderate Democrats