Dear Colleague:

If we want to win the war on terror, we'd better stop making enemies in
this way.

Steven W. Mosher
President

PRI Weekly Briefing
15 March 2007
Vol. 9, No. 11


How Not to Win the War on Terror: Keep Exporting Abortion and Sex
Education
By Steven W. Mosher

Dinesh D'Souza's new book, The Enemy at Home: The Cultural Left and Its
Responsibility for 9/11, has Michael Moore frothing at the mouth.  For
D'Souza's thesis is that Moore and others of his ilk have "fostered a
decadent American culture that angers and repulses traditional societies,
especially those in the Islamic world, that are being overwhelmed with
this culture."  Moreover, they are "waging an aggressive global campaign
to undermine the traditional patriarchal family and to promote secular
values in non-Western cultures."  Thus they are--in part--responsible for
the rise of Islamic terrorism against the West.

The Cultural Left, without apology for its relentless promotion of
abortion, sexual promiscuity, homosexuality, divorce and other "rights" at
home and abroad, has dismissed his book out of hand.  If you want to talk
culpability for terrorist attacks, Moore and others say, it was America's
"lust for oil" and "neo-colonialism" that were responsible.  These
ridiculous assertions--America doesn't import its oil from colonies, but
buys it on the open market--have nonetheless hardened into Leftist dogma.

The Right, which might have been expected to embrace D'Souza's thesis, has
reacted coolly as well.  Libertarians, who in general have little time for
tradition, are unlikely candidates for cross-national coalitions in
support of the natural family or life.  Even cultural conservatives, who
may be just as angered and repulsed by what they see issuing from
Hollywood and their television sets as a devout Muslim, are skeptical.
Many, such as Robert Spencer, believe that terrorism is latent within
Islam.  Spencer argues that statements made by Mohammed about Christians
and Jews, the whole notion of jihad that he set in motion, and the
historic relegation of non-Muslims to dhimmi, or second-class, status, all
contain the seed of violence, which can sprout at any time.  Islamic
aggression, which several times took it into the very heart of Europe,
occurred many centuries before America, much less the cultural Left, even
existed.

But it is possible to agree that radical Muslims hate us based on their
reading of the Koran, and at the same time acknowledge that the recent and
widespread antipathy towards America among Muslims in general gains
strength from other currents as well.  In pointing out that the Cultural
Left's unceasing advocacy of abortion, sexual promiscuity, homosexuality
and divorce at home and abroad has raised hackles in the Muslim world,
D'Souza has illuminated an important truth

Most Americans don't understand that this advocacy is not merely an
incidental byproduct of the private sector, but is part and parcel of our
foreign aid program.  If Egyptians, for example, chose to patronize trashy
Hollywood productions noteworthy primarily for their sex, violence, and
bad language, then they have no grounds for complaint.  But when Iraqi
youths turn on their radios and listen to the vulgar lyrics of rap songs
broadcast into their country by Radio Sawa, paid for by U.S. taxpayers,
then we as a people can rightly be blamed.

The worst abuses are found in government-funded population control
programs. The United States, both directly and through international
institutions like the World Bank, has been exporting various social
pathologies into relatively innocent and untouched corners of the world
for going on 40 years now under the guise of "family planning" and
"reproductive health." Billions of dollars a year are being poured into
programs that promote abortion, fund coercive sterilization and
contraceptive campaigns, reach into the schools with pornographic sex
education programs, fund anti-family and anti-child radio and television
programs, undermine primary health care, and encourage governments to
intrude into the private lives of their citizens.  Such programs create
bitter resentment in Muslim and non-Muslim countries alike, as we at PRI
have documented over and over again.

Let me be clear:  It is not because women in the West have abortions and
premarital sex that bin Laden and his pals attacked us.  They were bent on
violence in any case.

But the promotion by the U.S. and other "modern democracies" of abortion,
divorce, adultery, and premarital sex in Muslim countries cannot help but
generate sympathy and new recruits for those who would attack the "Great
Satan."  One can understand the resentment of even moderate Muslims when
Western-funded population controllers come knocking at the door of their
houses, bearing their human pesticides and insisting that their wives be
rendered sterile.  Or their righteous anger when their young child arrive
home from school with a pornographic sex ed booklet, funded by a grant
from USAID.

If our foreign aid programs have been hijacked by the Cultural Left, what
is to be done?  D'Souza writes that, "As conservatives, we should export
our America.   That means introducing in places in Iraq the principles of
self-government, majority rule, minority rights, free enterprise, and
religious toleration.  But we must stop exporting the cultural left's
America.  That means we should stop insisting on radical secularism, stop
promoting the feminist conception of the family, stop trying to promote
abortion and "sex education," and we should try and halt the export of the
vulgar and corrupting elements of our popular culture."

One can deplore the burka and at the same time recognize that we as a
nation are doing deliberate violence to the values and family structure of
developing countries.  If we want to win the war on terror, we'd better
stop making enemies in this way.


Steven Mosher is President of the Population Research Institute.

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