Controversial conservative author Dinesh D'Souza touted—among other views—his opinion that leftist culture and foreign policy incited the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks at the Wisconsin Union Theater Tuesday night as part of the Distinguished Lecture Series.
""My forte is the liberal campus,"" said D'Souza, citing one of his reasons for coming to UW-Madison. ""I feel that is where my ideas are most needed.""
He also said he hopes to challenge assumptions and force people to defend their views. His speech also touched on the Iraq War and his views on why certain assumptions about radical Muslims are wrong.
""These guys are not against science, and they are not against capitalism either,"" D'Souza said.
Radical Muslims do not oppose democracy either, according to D'Souza. He said the recent electoral victories of Hamas and the Shia Muslims in Iraq are evidence of this. He also said the opposition to the United States is instigated by U.S. support of ""secular tyrannies,"" like Saudia Arabia, and not ""religious tyrannies,"" like Iran's theocratic government.
""The objection is not so much, in my opinion, to despotism as it is to secularism,"" D'Souza said.
He said the reason the Shah of Iran was expelled was because he was a secular dictator and thus was opposed by the likes of Ayatollah Khomeini.
He wrote a new book recently called ""The Enemy At Home: The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11,"" in which he said liberal foreign policy and the projection of liberal values abroad were the reasons al-Qaida attacked the United States.
""I'm not saying the liberals did it, but that they put the radical Muslims in a position where they were empowered and able to strike, and emboldened to strike,"" D'Souza said.
D'Souza is a fellow at the Stanford University Hoover Institution and formally worked on policy issues in the Reagan administration. Along with his recent book D'Souza has written other works on issues such as affirmative action, education and feminism.
""I didn't know anything about him before I got here,"" said UW-Madison graduate student Dave Bjork, of D'Souza. ""In general, I didn't agree with what he said, but he did bring up some interesting points about our interests over there.""
UW-Madison sophomore Vidhya Ragu said the lecture was ""very enlightening."" She said it was good to hear a conservative point of view on what she viewed as a left-leaning campus.
Usually, according to Ragu, ""you don't get to hear the other side at all.""
