In the conservative world, the oft-repeated belief is that liberals hate and fear us more than Islamic terrorists. After a careful study of how the world "evil" is used on liberal websites, I'd have to agree. Where conservatives are concerned about terrorism, liberals are concerned about us. We're a huge threat. George Bush is a terrorist, Dick Cheney is the soul of evil, etc.

So I'm frankly pleased to see so many prominent conservativing piling on the bandwagon against Dinesh D'Souza's new book. Scott Johnson at Powerline expresses "revulsion". Even while calling for less censure, Weekly Standard's Peter Berkowitz admits it "slides all too easily from the provocative to the polemical to the incendiary." The reaction has been so strong that the debate is now about the reaction, not the original thesis.

From what little I've heard, I don't actually dispute some of the elements D'Souza brings up: that liberals encourage hated of the US abroad (which I also noticed), that American culture offends many conservative Muslims (noted here).

But of he's out of his mind for asserting liberalism is a bigger problem than terrorism, and is the "root problem" behind it.

Whereas liberals only vote for policies I feel are harmful and misguided, terrorists actually murder innocent people for political gain.

Me, I see a big distinction there.

My point? While I see a huge conservative backlash against D'Souza's thesis, I've yet to see any liberal backlash against those of their camp who insist George Bush caused 9/11, orchestrated it for political gain, or claims that Republicans are the "root cause" behind terrorism -- that our critics and enemies would love us if we could vote the other party of out of power. Those themes are utterly common to the left.

The left and right are not mirror images of each other.

Where the left doesn't mind (or even promotes) the suggestion that politicans on the other side of the aisle are a bigger threat than terrorists, the right is busy piling on D'Souza for doing exactly that.

Intelligent disagreements are welcomed, as always.