On the day when practical jokes and foolish behavior run rampant, Dinesh D’Souza, a prominent conservative author, will speak at UMass. The back cover of one of D’Souza’s latest books, “The Enemy at Home,” informs the reader of his radical beliefs concerning the cultural left in America. According to D’Souza, “the cultural left in this country caused 9/11.”

Having forced myself to read his tirade against a major group of Americans, I was quite unaware that there was an audience for this kind of rubbish at our University. In short, the explanation given by D’Souza is that the cultural ideas of the left as he sees them, such as feminism, gay rights, the destruction of the patriarchal family, sex education, abortion and the withdrawal of troops by liberal presidents, are major reasons why the World Trade towers fell and the hijacking of American commercial flights occurred. The horror of the Islamic world at the fact that a vile American culture has bred such unthinkable ideas as feminism and equal rights for gays is the apparent root of the liberal role as instigator in one of the greatest days of murder in American history.

I guess it could have been worse. Criminal Scooter Libby or the future felon Tom Delay could have been invited. Maybe it’s just a matter of time. UMass may just have to wait until their speaking fees come down a notch. While the arguments themselves are destructive and hurtful to a large portion of the population, what I find to be the biggest fault in D’Souza’s argument is that, whether or not he is aware, he is fundamentally attacking the First Amendment of the Constitution. By citing the cultural left and specifically naming individuals such as Hillary Clinton and Ted Kennedy as accomplices to murder, D’Souza is marginalizing free thought and debate. The practical conclusion to be reached, if an individual is to take Dinesh D’Souza’s claims to heart, is frightening. The belief that leftist Americans are causing the violent deaths of the nation’s citizens leads to the thinking that they should no longer be allowed a place in government or even the right to voice their dissent. After all, who would trust the enablers of murderers to hold office? There are two separate arguments that have been made against the behavior and ideals of the left since 9/11. The first point of view held by many Americans is that while in personal disagreement with the cultural left, they do not consider them to be unpatriotic but instead simply in some disparity with conservative thinking about the path in which America should follow. The second and far more radical of the two is held by individuals such as D’Souza, who believe that the evils of the leftist agenda and its immorality is literally killing Americans. This idea proposes that people on the left are not only unpatriotic but enemies of America. The founders that drafted the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution believed instead that not only was educated dissent necessary for the success of the American experiment in democracy to work, but it was entirely essential. Dinesh D’Souza is out of touch with reality and is part of a group that is seeking, as Karl Rove so aptly stated, “a permanent majority.” The idea of a permanent majority however, is destructive to a democracy because it can only be established if the dissenting opinions are stifled and made to appear as dangerous, traitorous or even treasonous. By going about his writing with the aura of scholarship and superior intellect, D’Souza masks his short-sighted knowledge of the fundamental principles of American democracy. In no way is dissent unpatriotic or harmful. On the contrary, dissent is brave and beneficial. For D’souza not to realize this simple, profound fact that has enabled the United States to boast the longest living constitution in the world demonstrates the profound shortcomings of his narrow-minded worldview. Often, to truly understand the fallacy of an argument, the argument must be boiled down to its most fundamental state. To dismiss D’Souza, all that must be asked is whether or not the more-than-three-thousand dead from 9/11 were killed because people in the Islamic world hate people like Michael Moore, who advocate teaching women proper condom use as well as arguing that two men should be able to be in a romantic relationship without fear of harassment and violence. Somehow I do not believe the towers fell because of the liberal embrace of the gay or feminist movements, or for that matter the fundamentalist Christian movement. America owes herself a far better explanation for terrorism than the one offered by D’Souza. Even if an individual’s own political persuasion does not place them in allegiance with the ideas of people like Michael Moore, it should not be difficult to understand that at the very least the opposition is not responsible for murder. The world has a way of presenting ironies that when realized, should at the very least provide some entertainment. Therefore, UMass should be sure to observe this irony. As the Republican Club plays host to an author who accuses a major political group of enabling terrorism, it is fitting that he should arrive on the day of fools. The campus should understand that they have a joker in their midst, to be laughed at one day and forgotten the next. Michael Phillis is a Collegian columnist. He can be reached at [email protected].