TY - JOUR
AU - Stieb, Joseph
AB - In trying to understand the post-9/11 historical moment, historians such as Beverly Gage and Melani McAlister have argued that despite the popular notion that “everything changed” on September 11, 2001, historical continuities shaped the way Americans understood, debated, and responded to this event.1 Historical actors integrate their interpretations of terrorism intro pre-existing ideas, identities, and political goals, fashioning narratives that transform terrorism into a resource for advancing other priorities. Gage describes this dynamic as the “external story” of terrorism, or “the response of the state and society to such challenges, whether in cultural, political, or social terms.”2 Historicizing the U.S. experience with terrorism after September 11, 2001 requires acknowledging, as Gage writes, that “both the institutions and ideas that govern our current war on terror have deep historical roots.”3 Following this approach, this article combines foreign policy, political, cultural, and intellectual history to illuminate an unexplored avenue in this budding historiography: how conservative politicians and thinkers connected the War on Terror to the “culture wars” of the 1990s, particularly in historical education, and how this fusion shaped both U.S. counterterrorism efforts and conservatism. This article examines conservative activists, thinkers, and organizations who reignited culture war conflicts in order to culturally and intellectually mobilize the citizenry to support the War on Terror. Conservative educational activists like Lynne Cheney and William Bennett believed their role was to help U.S. President George W. Bush explain the ideological stakes of this conflict in the public square and prepare the citizenry for a long and difficult struggle. To sustain support for this war, conservatives insisted, the United States needed “moral clarity” on a number of issues: the severity of the radical Islamist threat, the essential innocence of the United States, the need to reform Arab and Islamic cultures, and the importance of universal ethical standards. They believed that students must learn that groups like Al Qaeda wanted to strike the United States not because of its foreign policies but because they hated U.S. values, including individual liberties, gender equality, democracy, and popular culture. The logic of this conservative intellectual mobilization required re-igniting the culture wars, especially in education, and fusing them with the War on Terror. Conservatives viewed historical education as essential for inculcating a unified cultural and political heritage in young people, instilling confidence in the moral rectitude of the nation, and fostering a willingness to defend its values.4 Bennett argued that history classes should communicate “the good that America has done around the world and the unparalleled freedoms, opportunities, and blessings for those who live here today.”5 Liberals and leftists, however, now dominated historical education at all levels, and conservatives believed that their teaching sapped national willpower. By focusing on the country’s flaws rather than its strengths, they undermined young citizens’ willingness to see their country as worth defending. By teaching political correctness and multiculturalism, they inhibited students from seeing the reality of the radical Islamist threat and threatened the coherence of the national identity at a perilous time. Conservative activists portrayed these problems in education as reflections of the broader decline of U.S. culture since the 1960s, including the fragmenting of national identity, the coarsening of culture, and the worsening of social problems like abortion, drugs, and out-of-wedlock births.6 Figures like Bennett and Cheney promoted conservative counter-ideas in education and the public discourse in order to foster the “remoralization” of the people for the War on Terror.7 If political correctness, multiculturalism, and other liberal sanctities prevented the United States from recognizing the true stakes of this conflict, then defeating these ideas in a renewed culture war became a precondition for victory. The rebuilding of resolve and moral clarity was particularly important because of the conservative belief that terrorists had attacked the United States because it had signaled weakness and vacillation in previous decades. To reconstruct their conception of the War on Terror and the culture wars, this article mines prominent conservative books, magazines, and newspapers as well as virtual archives of these figures’ educational advocacy organizations and companies, which include reports, articles, newsletters, speeches, and sample curricula. These sources permit examination of both public-facing conservative activism as well as conversations within conservative circles, offering an unfiltered look at their views on cultural politics and foreign policy. Bennett, Cheney, and other major figures in this article represented mainstream conservative and neoconservative thought and politics on culture, education, and foreign policy between the 1980s and 2000s. Cheney, for instance, served in several high-ranking educational and cultural posts in Republican administrations and was married to U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney. Conservatives in this era unified around traditional social values, free market economics, high defense spending, and a hegemonic U.S. global role.8 This article concludes that the radicalization and growing illiberal authoritarianism on the right in the twenty-first century, what scholars call “asymmetrical polarization,” is linked to the conservative fusion of the War on Terror and the culture wars.9 This fusion, combined with the amorphous nature of the War on Terror, sustained the culture wars into the twenty-first century and raised their stakes to existential levels. This fusion encouraged conservatives to view political opponents as threats to national security and a way of life who must be defeated at any cost, a dynamic which has fed authoritarianism, xenophobia, and the erosion of democratic norms in the United States. Culture Wars and Historical Education in the 1990s As historian Andrew Hartman argues, the roots of the 1990s culture wars lie in the protest movements of the 1960s, which subjected “seemingly timeless truths, including truths about America, to a lens of suspicion.” Those who Hartman calls “normative Americans” viewed the United States as an essentially good and exceptional nation whose success was founded upon hard work, personal responsibility, Christianity, patriotism, and traditional gender roles and family structure.10 The conservative movement that coalesced in the 1960s and 1970s believed that this vision of the nation was in jeopardy. To paraphrase Daniel Patrick Moynihan, deviant behaviors like abortion, divorce, obscenity, and premarital sex were being defined down, leading to a cascading collapse of moral standards and civic participation.11 For racial minorities, feminists, gay and lesbian activists, and other reformers of the 1960s, this rigid and oppressive conception of the nation needed to be overturned, not defended. They questioned the nation’s claims to innocence, pointing to foreign aggression, racism, capitalist exploitation, and other ills as intimate features of its history. The United States needed fundamental reforms on the basis of inclusion, equality, and recognition of past harms.12 The concept of a culture war around issues of morality and identity as the primary demarcation of U.S. politics became popular in the 1990s as conservatives and liberals struggled over issues of identity, lifestyle, and morality, especially regarding race and sex.13 Conservatives believed that the United States once possessed a unified, homogenous culture that undergirded national prosperity, power, and morality. Their culture war was about reversing the nation’s decline since the 1960s by restoring traditional values and hierarchies.14 For liberals, leftists, and other reformers, the culture wars were about trying to realize the dream of a more egalitarian, self-critical, and diverse nation that had hatched in the 1960s but faced conservative blowback ever since. The sociologist James Davison Hunter summarized the culture wars as a struggle between “different systems of moral understanding” over “the meaning of America” and who gets to define that meaning.15 Historical education became one culture war front because so much of any nation’s identity and the values it hopes to pass down to succeeding generations depends on its presentation of the national past in schools.16 One team of historians explained why history became a culture war dueling ground: “Study of the past, after all, embodies many of the most fundamental messages we, as a nation, wish to send to young citizens. The past we choose to remember defines in large measure our national character, transmits the values and self-images we hold dear, and preserves the events . . . that constitute our legacy from the past and inspire our hopes for the future.”17 One of the most salient culture clashes in historical education occurred over the National History Standards (NHS), a project launched in the early 1990s to create rigorous voluntary standards for historical education at the state level in response to declining historical literacy among students.18 The 1994 NHS report reflected the diversification of the nation and the historical discipline since mid-century. While maintaining a significant focus on traditional figures and events as well as “a common civic identity,” the report stressed the histories of a variety of groups, an understanding of history as an interpretive craft, and the need to teach issues like slavery and segregation as integral parts of the national story.19 Lynne Cheney, serving as National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) chair from 1986–1993, provided an initial grant for this project, but she and other conservatives blasted the finished product for its “gloomy, politically driven revisionism” and emphasis on negatives in U.S. history.20 Cheney believed that heroes like George Washington received little attention other than the highlighting of their flaws.21 The focus on identity issues like “race, ethnicity, and gender,” moreover, distorted the country’s “unique insistence on the individual that has characterized us from the beginning.”22 Conservative critics saw the NHS as dividing society into competing identities and failing to inculcate patriotism and appreciation of U.S. strengths. Many politicians turned on the NHS, and in 1995 the Senate voted 99–1 to condemn the standards.23 The NHS controversy brought Cheney to the heart of the culture wars, a position she adopted with relish. Cheney, who had a PhD in English, believed that higher education was being taken over by academics who made scholarship “the servant of social and political transformation,” especially for the ideologies of “multiculturalism and feminism.” She frequently blocked funding for research that emphasized social conflict or minority experiences as well as artistic projects that she considered profane.24 In 1996, Cheney co-founded and became chair of the National Alumni Forum, which was renamed the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) in 1998. ACTA was a non-partisan, conservative-leaning group that sought to mobilize university trustees and alumni to combat leftist influence in higher education.25 Founding board members included William Bennett, education professor and activist Chester Finn Jr., and the neoconservative Irving Kristol. ACTA received most of its funding from conservative foundations such as Olin, Bradley, and Scaife.26 ACTA’s foundational assumption was that leftist control of higher education required conservatives to appeal to alumni and trustees, who were more likely to be conservative, to use their power to monitor politicized teaching and promote “intellectual diversity.” Anne Neal, who became ACTA president in 2003 and had worked under Cheney at the NEH, later compared ACTA to a Leninist vanguard “revolutionary movement” designed to infiltrate the leftist university and combat “declining educational standards, political agendas driving academic decisions, and continued troubling threats to academic freedom.”27 ACTA lobbied for rigorous core curricula that required Western civilization and U.S. history courses that emphasized the continuity of U.S. political ideals. It published frequent reports on the ignorance of young citizens on U.S. history, usually defined as traditional figures and events.28 ACTA built a mailing list of 12,000 trustees and alumni by 2002, to whom it mailed a quarterly newsletter called Inside Academe that praised or censured colleges for their curricula, highlighted ludicrous statements by leftist professors or the silencing of conservative voices, and issued an annual “Campus Outrage” award for prominent episodes of political correctness.29 ACTA also worked to affect alumni donations and state educational policy. Why, ACTA materials asked, give money to a college but allow leftist administrators to spend it on trendy, politicized programs like gender studies? Instead, alumni donors should follow ACTA’s Intelligent Donor’s Guide to College Giving, first issued in 1998, which advised alumni on which colleges supported “classic education values” rather than the “latest nuances of political correctness.”30 ACTA personnel were also involved in state-level curricular reform, working in Virginia, New York, and Florida with Republican governors to promote traditional core curricula as well as Western civilization and U.S. history courses.31 Another conservative who played a major role in politicizing post-9/11 historical education is William J. Bennett, a PhD in political philosophy who served as NEH chair from 1981–1985 and then Secretary of Education from 1985–1988. He became a prolific writer and activist in the 1990s from positions at conservative think tanks.32 At the Department of Education and NEH, he lamented the decline of Western civilization curricula and the liberal takeover of academia. He contended that the United States was “a part and a product of Western civilization,” and that its core principles of justice, liberty, equality, and constitutionalism had “descended directly from the great epochs of . . . Enlightenment England and France, Renaissance Florence, and Periclean Athens.” Without core curricula that passed down this heritage, students could not understand or love their society and would become “strangers in their own land.”33 Bennett saw the culture wars as Cheney did, writing in 1991: “During the last 25 years, many of America’s intellectual elite have perpetrated a doctrine of nihilism and moral relativism whose purpose has been to undermine traditional American values and beliefs,” leading to “cultural breakdown.”34 In the 1990s, Bennett focused his activism on reviving clear moral standards in society and education. He founded several organizations, including the political advocacy group Empower America in 1993.35 Empower paired with the Heritage Foundation to publish the Index of Leading Cultural Indicators, an annual report on “social pathologies” like crime, out-of-wedlock births, drug use, single-parent households, and falling standardized test scores.36 In 1999, he, Chester Finn, and the conservative economist George Gilder founded K12 Inc., which targeted home-school parents and Christian schools with a “world-class, traditional program in education” for purchase, ultimately serving about 50,000 students.37 The NHS controversy and Cheney and Bennett’s cultural critiques illustrate that conservatives viewed historical education as a way to provide cohesion, pride, and a common set of reference points for a unified national identity. Cheney summarized good education as “transmitting culture,” and Bennett defined the university’s role as “conveyor of the accumulated wisdom of civilization.” Culture or civilization, in this view, were a mostly fixed litany of facts, canonical texts, and heroic stories with clear didactic purposes.38 Cheney, Bennett, and other culture warriors viewed universities as directly contradicting the true purpose of historical education. Through concepts like political correctness and multiculturalism, they argued, left-wing professors disparaged the national past, undermined traditional values, and even blurred the lines between right and wrong, real and unreal. Conservatives viewed political correctness as hyper-sensitivity to the feelings and identities of marginalized groups as well as the policing of language in discussing those groups.39 Politically correct history, they argued, focused on the “contributions” of these groups at the expense of the more important actors like presidents and generals.40 Conservatives understood multiculturalism as excessive emphasis on and celebration of ethnic and cultural differences at the expense of common national heritage. They held that multiculturalists advocated a society of disparate ethno-cultural groups that would eventually evolve into parallel societies, lacking common symbols, responsibilities, and language. They feared that histories that emphasized diversity and social conflict would encourage these divisions in the present, preventing immigrants from assimilating into the essentially Western national culture and further eroding a unified national identity.41 Cheney, Bennett, and others on the right interpreted political correctness and multiculturalism as products of a postmodern assault on objectivity in favor of the belief that all knowledge and values are mere social constructs.42 Postmodernism would lead to moral relativism, or the belief that all cultures, lifestyles, and ethical systems are essentially equal and cannot not be judged. Cheney deplored postmodernism as the idea that “there is no truth to tell: what we think of as truth is merely a cultural construct, serving to empower some and oppress others.”43 Given that conservatives believed moral standards had eroded across society since the 1960s, defeating these ideas in education was necessary for restoring national unity and morality. Republican Party rhetoric reflected these critiques, with the 1992 party platform accusing academics of “waging a guerrilla war against American values.”44 Culture war partisans on all sides saw the educational culture war as consequential, but they rarely connected these disputes to national security. Conservatives hinted that a post-truth, ethnically fragmented, value-free society would decline like decadent empires of old. Cheney, for instance, suggested in 1995 that students receiving postmodern educations “will not respond to calls to use American force” because of their disillusionment with the nation.45 Still, in a post-Cold War world defined by U.S. unipolarity and an absence of major conflicts, culture warriors seldom linked their feuds to global threats. This dramatically changed after September 11, 2001. The Search for Moral Clarity: Conservative Culture Wars after 9/11 In the months after September 11, 2001, commentators from across the political spectrum praised the unity, civic-mindedness, and overt patriotism of Americans—a “kinship of grief,” in President Bush’s words.46 Nevertheless, the culture wars did not recede for long, in spite of many Americans’ hopes that the country would transcend such disputes in the face of this horror. Historians and other scholars have found that cultural antagonism and negative partisanship, or political behavior that is motivated primarily by antipathy for the opposing side, have actually worsened in the twenty-first century. Under the phenomenon of asymmetrical polarization, partisan hatred and ideological extremism have become more intense on the right than the left, leading to greater obstructionism, norm violations, and tolerance for authoritarianism.47 This return to partisan anger and ideological conflict resulted in part from the natural fading of the post-9/11 mood and from the desire of politicians to tarnish opponents as “soft on terrorism.”48 However, to provide historical context for the right’s radicalization and the broader issue of why the culture wars persisted into and changed in the post-9/11 era, we have to understand how culture war partisans interpreted the attacks, conceived of the War on Terror, and integrated these visions into culture war frameworks. Liberal thinkers, like the journalists George Packer, Thomas Friedman, and Peter Beinart, and the scholar Michael Ignatieff, linked the War on Terror to their own political and ideological ends. They believed that September 11, 2001 offered an opportunity to reverse decades of conservative ascendency and reassert an internationalist liberalism that would champion human rights, democracy, and multilateralism. They sought to unite this global agenda with bold domestic reform on issues like environmentalism and economic inequality. In contrast with conservatives, liberals did not obsess over the nation’s moral innocence. Instead, they contended that the War on Terror offered a chance to change policies that had contributed, however indirectly, to the rise of extremism, such as foreign oil dependency and support for Arab dictators.49 Friedman, for instance, contended that this could be a “transforming moment” in which the nation “really deals with our political and economic vulnerabilities . . . and convinces the world that we have a positive vision and are responsible global citizens.”50 Liberal conceptions of the War on Terror overlapped with conservatives in some ways, including a shared commitment to U.S. global leadership, ethical universalism, and the need for some kind of militarized response to 9/11. Liberals, however, separated themselves from conservatives by promoting multilateralism and international law as core elements of U.S. foreign policy, touting a more critical attitude toward the national past, and pairing the War on Terror with liberal reforms at home.51 William Bennett summarized the conservative conception of the War on Terror by fusing it with the culture wars in 2002: “The threats we face today are both external and internal; external in that there are groups and states that want to attack the United States; internal in that there are those who are attempting to use this opportunity to promulgate their agenda of ‘blame America first.’ Both threats stem from either a hatred for the American ideas of freedom and equality or a misunderstanding of those ideals.”52 For conservative activists, ensuring the support of the people, especially students, for the War on Terror required doubling down on the culture wars by stressing patriotic historical education, clear lines of right and wrong, and the need to demonstrate U.S. resolve and power to the world. Furthermore, they sought to discredit concepts like political correctness and multiculturalism that they believed undermined national identity and inhibited a bold response to terrorism. This fusion made the stakes of the culture wars existential, as a divided and decadent society that did not counter terrorism might someday face more mass casualty attacks. This view of the War on Terror as an interwoven domestic and foreign struggle was embraced by both mainstream conservatives and neoconservatives, two groups within the modern right that had increasingly aligned in the late twentieth century. Modern mainstream conservatism was rooted in the “fusionism” of William F. Buckley’s National Review, which attracted traditionalist conservatives, economic libertarians, anti-Civil Rights activists, and anti-Communists. This coalition sought a return to traditional social values and hierarchies, a prominent role for Christianity in public life, reduction of the size of government, and vigorous prosecution of the Cold War.53 Neoconservatives, in contrast, were mostly former liberals or leftists who were repelled by the radicalism of 1960s social movements, disillusioned with liberal reformism, and concerned with the country’s ostensible post-Vietnam War loss of willpower in the Cold War. Neoconservatives were more secular, open to cultural changes, and tolerant of government social programs than mainstream conservatives.54 Bennett was a classic neoconservative because he had been a Democrat in the 1960s and 1970s but turned rightward because of perceptions of weakness in foreign affairs and moral degeneration at home.55 Conservatives and neoconservatives drifted into alignment in the 1980s under the influence of U.S. President Ronald Reagan, who offered them a mix of Cold War hawkishness, cuts to social programs, and the rhetoric of traditional values and national greatness. In the 1990s, as historian John Ehrman states, “the neoconservatives merged with the larger conservative movement,” forging a consensus on U.S. military hegemony, free trade, opposition to liberal governance, and reversing cultural decay.56 This alliance on the right persisted into the War on Terror. For conservatives, the scale of this conflict necessitated the intellectual and cultural mobilization of the citizenry, especially students, by stressing patriotic historical education, clear lines of right and wrong, and the need to demonstrate U.S. power to the world. They sought to legitimize and clarify the ideological stakes of the Bush administration’s approach to counterterrorism. Bush envisioned the War on Terror not only as a limited effort to neutralize the direct perpetrators of 9/11, but as a broader campaign to compel state sponsors of terrorism to stop their behavior or face regime change. He and his top advisers believed that terrorists and state sponsors like Iraq sought weapons of mass destruction and might use these weapons on the United States or its allies. They thus asserted a right to preventive wars to eliminate these threats. Bush and most of his advisers believed that the Middle East would have to be democratized and opened to the free market to address the despair, poverty, and anger that fueled extremism.57 The Bush administration recognized a need to use historical education to mobilize the people behind this expansive conflict. One prominent effort in this regard was the $100 million “We the People” program conducted by the NEH. This program offered grants for teacher education, enrichment activities, local history projects, and essay contests, all with an emphasis on heroism and civic ideals.58 Bush connected this program to the War on Terror in a 2002 speech: “The humanities tell us who we are as a people and why our country is worth fighting for.”59 Many conservative thinkers believed that Bush needed help with public mobilization through historical education. Bennett argued that during the Cold War, “outside scholars” in groups like the Committee on the Present Danger provided the “intellectual firepower” to “fortify public opinion” for a perilous struggle. This intellectual campaign was necessary because “in the long run, fortitude or hesitation about our principles will determine victory or defeat.”60 Bennett formed a new advocacy group, Americans for Victory Over Terrorism (AVOT), that would play this role in the War on Terror by countering anti-war sentiment on college campuses, “the institutions that have typically been the first to oppose war efforts” since Vietnam.61 Bennett’s co-founder was 1996 Republican vice-presidential candidate Jack Kemp, and advisors to AVOT included William Barr, James Woolsey, and Frank Gaffney. AVOT hosted “teach-ins” to support the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, conducted polls to demonstrate how relativistic and unpatriotic college students had become, and promoted intellectuals who supported the War on Terror and patriotic interpretations of U.S. history.62 Bennett also expanded the emphasis on patriotism in his K–12 educational company, stressing that “now, more than ever, we’re focused on America—on what makes this nation great, what unites us all.”63 ACTA also linked the War on Terror to the educational culture wars by stressing the need for common values that would bolster the country for this conflict. ACTA formed a project in late 2001 called “The Defense of Civilization Fund” to “support and defend the study of American history and civics and of Western civilization.”64 Anne Neal identified academia as “the weak link in America’s response to the attack,” accusing the professoriate of blaming the United States for the attack. Neal concluded: “We believe that the West will fight for its own survival. But only if we know what we are fighting for. It has never been more urgent for education at all levels to pass on to the next generation the legacy of freedom and democracy.”65 Following September 11, 2001, ACTA increased lobbying efforts for Western civilization, civics, and U.S. history courses, as well as funding for independent speakers and programs, to defend these values and combat the demoralization they believed postmodernist professors were spreading.66 U.S. history classes that stressed principles, heroes, and achievements would provide the bonding agents this diverse nation needed for the struggle against terrorism. Bennett stressed in a didactic sense that through the right approach to historical education “young people can arrive at the judgment that this is, indeed, a great land.”67 A 2001 ACTA newsletter contended that the nation’s “first line of defense” was a “confident understanding of when and why this nation was founded, and of the continuing relevance … of its first principles.”68 Cultivating a commitment to the “national project,” in Cheney’s words, required that each generation know the “great events and great figures of the past” that had inspired previous Americans to be “better citizens and better people.” The terrorist threat, she argued, made this task especially urgent.69 Achieving this change, however, required seizing control of education from whom Bennett labelled the “sophisticates” who taught “right and wrong as matters of opinion” and brought their “hostility to America” to the classroom.70 Neal contended that the responses of most professors and major educational organizations to the attacks were “short on patriotism and long on self-flagellation. Indeed, the message of much of academe was clear: BLAME AMERICA FIRST.”71 According to Chester Finn, the hyper-critical and multicultural history dominant in education was “not some harmless crumbling wreck of a curricular empire” but “a force within our very own schools that would, unchecked, prevent the rising generation from learning our nation’s history and thus erode America’s future.”72 As the conservative historian Victor Davis Hanson asked, “If one is taught, instead, that the United States has been the prime historical nexus of gender, race, and class pathology, then why should one feel any loyalty to it in the here and now?”73 Not only was U.S. history being taught poorly, ACTA reports lamented, but universities were also increasingly devaluing it, with only ten per cent of the nation’s top 500 colleges requiring any U.S. history courses by 2002.74 Both historical illiteracy and politicized teaching inhibited public support for the War on Terror. Bennett, Cheney, and other conservatives sought to establish a specific set of interpretations and principles as the foundations of public support for the U.S. response to the September 11 attacks. These ideas amounted to a conservative vision of the War on Terror, and they hoped that a reformed educational system would promote this vision. The first principle they believed historical education should promote was what Bennett called “moral clarity.” This meant a belief in the essential innocence of the United States, especially regarding foreign terrorist attacks like 9/11, as well as the moral rectitude of the War on Terror itself and sharp distinctions between right and wrong. In the post-9/11 world, educators had to bring “moral absolutes” into the classroom because an imperiled nation could no longer afford moral equivocation, a trait the enemy clearly lacked.75 Bush himself promoted “moral clarity” as a key reason why the United States had triumphed in previous conflicts. He asserted a single, universal morality in a June 2002 speech: “Moral truth is the same in every culture, in every time, in every place.”76 Indeed, the moral outrage of September 11, 2001, in which civilian airliners were weaponized to inflict mass slaughter on unsuspecting office workers, seemed the perfect opportunity to bury relativistic postmodern pedagogy. As columnist George Will argued, the idea that it was “ethnocentric arrogance to say one culture is superior to any other . . . was incinerated by burning jet fuel.”77 Bennett contended that September 11, 2001 was “a moment of moral clarity . . . when we began to rediscover ourselves as one people even as we began to gird for battle.”78 Asserting moral clarity as the foundation of public support for the War on Terror required conservatives to establish the dominant answer to two key questions in the post-9/11 public discourse: Who was the enemy in this conflict, and why did they attack the United States? Conservatives defined the enemy not just as Al Qaeda, but as the broader force of radical Islamism. Terminology varied, but conservatives agreed that radical Islamism was a political ideology that sought to seize power in Muslim countries and purge them of Western influences.79 In U.S. political discourse, the term “Islamism” meant that radical Muslims had transformed their faith into a totalitarian political ideology designed to govern all aspects of life. Columnist Charles Krauthammer defined “radical Islam” as “a specific fringe political movement, dedicated to imposing its fanatical ideology on its own societies and destroying the society of its enemies, the greatest of which is the United States.”80 This movement included groups like Al Qaeda, Hamas, and Hezbollah that used terrorist violence to achieve these ends as well as organizations like the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood that used political processes to establish theocracy. Radical Islamists opposed U.S. foreign policy, but on a deeper level they detested the politics, culture, and values of the United States. Changing foreign policies, conservatives maintained, would not alleviate this hatred, which was rooted in fanatical ideology.81 Defining the enemy allowed conservatives to explain why the attacks had happened, which boiled down to the ubiquitous question: “Why do they hate us?” George Bush established a clear answer in September 2001: “They hate our freedoms—our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree.”82 Bennett echoed this assessment: “We are a target not because of anything we have done, but because of who we are, what we stand for, what we believe, and what our nation was founded upon: the twin principles of liberty and equality.” Radical Islamists viewed the things that Americans considered virtues or accomplishments, such as democracy or women’s liberation, as signs of depravity and defiance of God’s law.83 This explanation of the enemy and its motives undergirded the concept of moral clarity, establishing the United States as the innocent party in this conflict and absolving any policies that might have contributed to the rise of modern terrorism, such as support for Arab dictators. This fit a historical pattern of Americans’ using ideologies and cultural forms such as captivity/rescue narratives to assert their innocence and justify retaliatory violence in foreign conflicts.84 As Melani McAlister and others have argued, media and popular culture have reinforced a narrative of innocence by portraying terrorism as divorced from political objectives and stemming instead from religious, cultural, or psychological pathologies.85 Moral clarity did similar work on an ideological level, establishing the nation’s virtuous victimhood as a bedrock principle of the War on Terror. This essential victimhood then provided pre-emptive moral sanction for controversial counterterrorism policies, from “preventive wars” and torture to the indefinite detention of suspected terrorists.86 In addition, moral clarity enabled conservatives to delegitimize left-of-center explanations of terrorism that focused on poverty, globalization, or U.S. foreign policy. Few commentators on the left suggested that the United States deserved to be attacked in such a horrific manner; they instead argued that U.S. policies and cultural power abroad had created, in historian Howard Zinn’s phrasing, “justified grievances felt by millions of people who would not themselves engage in terrorism but from whose ranks terrorists spring.”87 Conservatives, however, argued that the idea that September 11, 2001 had been motivated primarily by opposition to U.S. policies implied U.S. culpability in the attacks.88 Instead, the concept of moral clarity allowed them to explain the attacks as the result of an amorphous, fanatical movement’s irrational hatred of U.S. values rather than U.S. global power—an interpretation that further legitimized an expansive and violent response. For a deeper explanation of this enemy’s origins, conservatives drew on the work of historian Bernard Lewis. Lewis recognized that Al Qaeda opposed certain U.S. policies, but he explained the larger “Crisis of Islam” as a civilizational emergency.89 He described the sense among Muslims that their civilization, once “the richest, the most powerful, the most creative in every significant field of human endeavor,” had been superseded by its ancient rival, the essentially Christian civilization of the West. The West, led by the United States, not only exerted power over the Middle East, but its depraved culture also tempted Muslims to stray from their faith.90 For Islamists, reversing this humiliating subjugation required purging the Islamic world of Western power and culture and returning to a pure, original form of Islam.91 Lewis summarized the crisis of Islam as a failure to adapt to modernity and an ensuing hatred of modernity’s greatest representative—the United States.92 ACTA and Bennett’s organizations promoted Lewis’ interpretation, and conservative writers reviewed his books favorably. Lewis also advised Bush, Cheney, and U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on Middle Eastern affairs following September 11, 2001.93 Lewis’ arguments reinforced the conservative commitment to moral clarity as foundational to the War on Terror: if radical Islamist violence emerged from a civilizational crisis rather than U.S. foreign policies, then the United States remained a faultless victim.94 Civilizational crisis and ideological opposition to U.S. values, however, were not the only reasons that terrorists had struck the United States. Since the Vietnam War, conservatives had argued that the United States had projected weakness to the world, inviting terrorists to believe a few blows would force a retreat from the Middle East.95 The United States had withdrawn from Beirut after the 1983 barracks bombing, failed to topple Saddam Hussein after the 1991 Persian Gulf War, and pulled out of Somalia after the 1993 Mogadishu fiasco. When Al Qaeda struck the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, U.S. President Bill Clinton had retaliated with ineffectual missile strikes. Radical Islamists hated the United States but held it in contempt for its failure to retaliate decisively. Conservatives concluded that Al Qaeda had expected the “soft and pampered” United States to slink out of the Middle East after the devastating blow of the September 11 attacks.96 In a crucial link between the culture war and terrorism, conservatives argued that the cultural and moral regression of U.S. society was an underlying source of this weakness in foreign affairs. Lewis argued that Islamist extremists saw the United States as “morally corrupt” and “socially degenerate,” and consequently “politically and militarily enfeebled.”97 Bennett described September 11, 2001 as a cultural wake-up call from the “holiday from history” of the 1990s, a decade of dissipation in which the nation’s failure to teach their “great moral and intellectual inheritance” had moved it toward cultural “decomposition” and “suicide.”98 The attacks were an opportunity to reorient society toward unity, sacrifice, and “a new culture of responsibility,” in Bush’s words.99 In the 1990s, conservatives viewed the nation’s moral decay as a hindrance to a functioning, ethical society, but after September 11, 2001, this weakness transformed into an existential threat under the belief that a decadent society could not defeat terrorism. If the September 11 attacks occurred in part because of a perception of U.S. weakness, conservatives reasoned, then the U.S. response must involve demonstrations of resolve and strength. Under the idea of what some scholars call a “demonstration effect,” the crushing of a state sponsor of terrorism would frighten other states into abandoning support for terrorism.100 As U.S. Senator John McCain (R-AZ) argued in October 2001, “We must change permanently the mindset of terrorists and those parts of Islamic populations who believe the terrorist conceit that they will prevail because America has not the stomach to wage a relentless, long-term, and, at times, ruthless war to destroy them.”101 Bennett and others argued that invading Iraq and Afghanistan would restore respect for U.S. power. Citing Lewis, he stated “This is a part of the world that respects force, firmness, resolve.”102 Osama bin Laden did see the United States as a paper tiger, telling one interviewer in 1998 that it was “ready to wage cold wars and unprepared to fight long wars,” citing the retreat from Somalia.103 So while the idea that Al Qaeda struck the United States because of its perceived weakness has some credence, the conservative discourse about demonstration effects had other functions in the War on Terror. As political scientist Ahsan Butt has argued, it provided a rationale for striking back at nations like Iraq whose connections to the September 11 attacks were dubious. Adopting this logic, Rumsfeld contended that “weakness can invite aggression” and argued on September 11, 2001 that “We need to bomb something else [other than Afghanistan] to prove that we’re, you know, big and strong and not going to be pushed around by these kinds of attacks.”104 The United States, Butt argues, sought to re-establish “generalized deterrence” by smashing Saddam’s regime, sending a warning to other state sponsors of extremism.105 The demonstration effect concept also influenced conservative ideas about the meaning of victory in the War on Terror. The Bush administration defined victory as breaking up terrorist groups that threatened the United States, toppling or deterring state sponsors, and, in the long run, cultivating political reforms to address the causes of terrorism.106 The discourse around demonstration effects, however, created a different rationale for the conflict when justifications like Iraqi weapons of mass destruction collapsed. Liberal supporters of the War on Terror and the Iraq War mostly backtracked as the rationale for the war collapsed after 2003, admitting to hubris about the ability of U.S. power to spread democracy and regret about trusting the Bush administration.107 Most conservatives, by contrast, doubled down at this point and shifted rationales. The writers David Frum and Richard Perle claimed that persisting in the Iraq War was really “a test of American seriousness about the war on terror,” and Victor Davis Hanson portrayed the conflict as a way to “demonstrate to extremists and fanatics that they are in a war that they can only lose.”108 To keep fighting, regardless of where, demonstrated resolve and dispelled the image of decadence and weakness, justifying a long, sprawling conflict. For example, as the Iraq War descended into chaos, the Bush administration suggested that an early exit would, in Vice President Cheney’s words, “validate the terrorists’ strategy that says the Americans will not stay to complete the task, that we don’t have the stomach for the fight.”109 Conservatives made similar arguments about U.S. President Barack Obama’s drawdown of troops in Afghanistan in the early 2010s. Wall Street Journal columnist Bret Stephens, for instance, wrote that Obama’s “retreat” would “confirm what our enemies suspected all along: We don’t have the stomach for the long haul.”110 The demonstration effect concept ultimately led conservatives to conflate simply continuing to fight a war with winning it, a logical feedback loop that helped sustain support for the War on Terror and defined the political limits of acceptable counterterrorism strategies. Finally, the demonstration effect concept linked the culture wars to the War on Terror. If the relativism and anti-Americanism of the nation’s elites inhibited an overwhelming response to terrorism, then those elites were jeopardizing national security by allowing the image of an irresolute nation to return.111 Moreover, achieving demonstration effects was not just about defeating terrorists—it was also about demonstrating that the United States as a society had the capacity to reverse its decline and unite around common goals. As Bennett put it, a successful struggle against terrorism would “accelerate the great relearning, restoring moral clarity and deepening our confidence in our civilization.”112 Hanson described the conflict in similar terms: “Our willingness to use unremitting force to eliminate vast cadres of proven killers, in Iraq and elsewhere, is a referendum on modern democracy itself.”113 In short, the demonstration effect concept became a key element of counterterrorism strategy not just for strategic reasons, but because it could prove to Americans themselves that they could still achieve moral revival, national greatness, and military triumph. Conservatives further linked culture war battles to the War on Terror by arguing that political correctness and multiculturalism hindered the fight against terrorism. They portrayed political correctness as a threat to the nation’s ability to discuss terrorism and radical Islamism frankly and accurately. Most conservatives, especially in the educational world, differentiated between radical Muslims and the moderate majority. Bush himself after September 11, 2001 praised Islam as a peaceful, ethical faith, stating: “the terrorists are traitors to their own faith, trying, in effect, to hijack Islam itself.”114 They contended that lumping all Muslims with the extremists helped the jihadists by ratifying their portrayal of the United States as a Muslim-hating society. However, conservatives also believed that the Islamic world, which they usually associated with the Middle East, was deeply dysfunctional, autocratic, violent, oppressive to women, and economically stagnant. The stream of terrorist attacks stemming from Islamist groups meant that, as the American Enterprise Institute fellow Reuel Marc Gerecht contended, “there is something wrong with Islam’s global house, something which cannot be blamed exclusively on Western prejudice, bigotry, military actions, or colonialism.”115 The influential scholar of Arab politics Fouad Ajami assessed that “a deep rot has settled on Arab lands while a ‘freedom deficit’ leaves their inhabitants in the throes of authoritarian rule and their children prey to the recruiters of terror.”116 They further noted that Islamic leaders and organizations in the West often failed to unequivocally condemn terrorist attacks and that polls suggested wide support for Islamist extremism in both Western and Middle Eastern countries.117 Conservatives held that the connections between terrorism and the crisis of modern Islam must be explored without fear of censure, but politically correct educators clouded this discussion in euphemism and sensitivity. This chilled atmosphere, they argued, had pressured Bush into avoiding declaring radical Islamism as the enemy and issuing bland statements like “Islam is peace.”118 Conservatives particularly criticized the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and the Middle Eastern Studies Association (MESA) for portraying any connection between terrorism and Islam as offensive, thus impeding honest public discussion. They lamented that CAIR had become influential after 9/11, including public appearances of CAIR leaders with Bush. They viewed it as a dishonest body that presented a moderate façade while promoting extremist views to U.S. Muslims and harboring connections to groups like Hamas.119 MESA, the primary professional organization for Middle Eastern studies, came under fire from the right for portraying the United States as aggressive imperialists, blaming terrorism on Western colonialism or Islamophobia, and whitewashing radical Islamism.120 The scholar Martin Kramer held that MESA’s politically correct portrayals of Islam “helped anesthetize America to the dangers of radical Islam.”121 A report of the American Textbook Council, a right-leaning educational advocacy group, faulted MESA for promoting texts that obscured radical traditions in Islam and “omit, flatter, embellish, and resort to happy talk, suspending criticism or harsh judgments that would raise provocative or even alarming questions.”122 Another consequence of political correctness for the War on Terror was that U.S. leaders rejected common-sense counterterrorism policies like racial profiling to avoid insensitivity. Thinkers like Manhattan Institute analyst Heather MacDonald contended that profiling Arab or Muslim-looking men at airports for heightened security was necessary and practical given the demographics of most terrorists. The government’s avoidance of racial profiling for fear of lawsuits reflected a collective failure to name the enemy as radical Islamism. MacDonald reasoned: “When the threat at issue is Islamic terrorism, it is reckless to ask officials to disregard the sole ironclad prerequisite for being an Islamic terrorist: Muslim identity or its proxies—national origin or ethnic heritage.”123 That the United States allowed political correctness to preclude practical counterterrorism tools, conservatives concluded, exemplified its moral decay and loss of willpower. For example, National Review columnist Andrew McCarthy wrote: “One cannot listen to this debate without wondering whether three decades of political correctness have undermined not only the common sense necessary for survival, but our will to survive itself.”124 Multiculturalism, in turn, threatened a different but equally important foundation for a successful War on Terror: the coherence of U.S. national identity and a strong public grounding in the nation’s ideals. Multiculturalism fragmented society into what Lynne Cheney called “different groups with different interests,” lacking a common fate and shared values.125 Educators had a responsibility to teach unifying civic values rather than cultural and racial differences. Hanson identified these values as “freedom, open markets, constitutional government, and the rule of law.”126 He recalled that his public school teachers emphasized unity and patriotism and never mentioned race, class, and gender divides. Patriotism based on shared civic values must be a central educational goal because “on a variety of levels patriotism is the only glue that holds a diverse people together, especially during a war.”127 The real purpose of multicultural education, Hanson and other conservatives argued, was to convince students that core Western values are racist and sexist and to create “the Balkan idea of a racial, cultural, and ideological mosaic rather than a confident American melting pot of shared values.” U.S. citizens would not sacrifice for their common security, nor recognize the dire threat of radical Islamism, if they believed multiculturalism’s teaching that all cultures were essentially equal.128 Conservatives hoped that a revived culture war would purge the nation of divisive, harmful ideas and mobilize it behind a long, difficult struggle against terrorism. The type of mobilization they advocated, however, was mainly passive and symbolic, befitting the rise of an inert consumer model of citizenship since the mid-twentieth century.129 Bush cut taxes shortly after September 11, 2001 and did not revive the draft as he plunged into two wars. He called the citizenry to “live your lives and hug your children” and for its “continued participation and confidence in the American economy.”130 The Wall Street Journal editors downgraded “sacrifice” in similar terms: “Getting on a plane or opening the mail have become daily acts of courage, yet people are still getting on planes and opening their mail. Bravely pursuing our daily lives is also a contribution to the war against terrorism.”131 This lowering of the bar of citizenship mirrored the conservative discourse about culture wars and the War on Terror. For conservatives, the confidence of Americans in the essential goodness, unity, and exceptionalism of their nation had been assaulted by culture war concepts like multiculturalism and political correctness. The purpose of terrorism was, as George Will argued, to further “demoralize” the country.132 So to perform defiance by continuing to do what one did before September 11, 2001 defied both the terrorists and one’s culture war foes at home—twin agents of demoralization. U.S. conservatives after 9/11 contended that only a country united by an unequivocal conception of right and wrong, an unshaking faith in the superiority of its way of life, and an unvarnished view of the enemy could sustain itself in the War on Terror. Winning this war required winning the culture wars, and the post-9/11 moment provided a window of opportunity to rally the nation to the traditional, the objective, and the patriotic. The fusion of the War on Terror and the culture wars envisioned by Bennett, Cheney, and others has shifted conservative politics since 2001 toward authoritarianism and radicalization. It has made concepts like political correctness and multiculturalism, as well as their purveyors, into threats to national security as well as national unity and willpower. Promoters of these ideas were cast as enemies who sapped the nation’s resolve, divided it into identity-based fragments, and subverted its ability to tell right from wrong and true from false.133 If culture war foes were not mere political opponents but abettors of foreign enemies and dire threats to a way of life, then political competition assumed existential stakes. Indeed, many conservatives by the mid-2000s started to argue that there was a de facto “Islamist-Leftist” alliance, accusing these parties of seeing the United States as morally irredeemable while undermining its traditional values and global standing. Andrew McCarthy, for instance, claimed that when President Obama bowed slightly to the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia in 2009, he was “bowing to a shared dream” of “supplanting Western political, economic, and cultural values.”134 The early period of the War on Terror witnessed the fusion of national security with what the political scientist Ole Waever calls “societal security,” or the “ability of a society to persist in its essential character under changing conditions and possible or actual threats.” This “essential character” included “traditional patterns of language, culture, association, and religious and national identity.”135 In the culture wars, conservatives hoped to preserve a form of societal security by arresting cultural and moral decline and reconstructing national identity on traditional values and a patriotic interpretation of the nation’s history. The need for unity, willpower, and patriotism to wage the struggle against terrorism only heightened the importance of societal security. This early fusion of the War on Terror and the culture wars, or of national and societal security, has contributed to the radicalization and authoritarian turn of conservatism in the early twenty-first century, helping implant what might be called the “Flight 93 Mindset.” This term comes from an influential 2016 article by Michael Anton, a speechwriter for U.S. President Donald Trump and a Claremont Institute Fellow. Anton asserted that conservatives were justified in voting for Trump because the 2016 election was the last chance to halt a catastrophic national decline. Like the culture warriors of the 1990s, Anton argued that “We’ve been losing ground for at least a century” as the problems of crime, unassimilated immigrants, illegitimate births, political correctness, and terrorism worsened. A victory for the multicultural, politically correct Democrats would hasten the fall of U.S. civilization because the Democrats represented “a party, a country, a people, a civilization that wants to die.”136 In a metaphor that exemplifies the conservative link between the culture war and terrorism, Anton likened the 2016 election to the hijacked United Flight 93 on September 11, 2001, which crashed in rural Pennsylvania after passengers tried to wrest control of the plane from the hijackers. He concluded: “2016 is the Flight 93 election: charge the cockpit or you die. You may die anyway . . . If you don’t try, death is certain.” A Trump victory, he hoped, would give the traditional United States a chance at survival despite Trump’s questionable character and grasp of conservative ideas. William Bennett and many other conservatives who did not love Trump’s personal character supported him on similar grounds.137 As historians develop their understanding of the post-9/11 era of U.S. history, they should consider how the War on Terror’s amorphous nature has lent itself to political and cultural actors stamping it with their own meanings and interpretations. Of course, political and intellectual leaders in the United States have long used wars to silence dissent, tout a traditional view of the nation, and pursue a vision of unity that often excludes marginalized groups. However, unlike in more temporally bounded conflicts like the Civil War or the World Wars, the War on Terror is potentially unbounded in both time and space. It could be cast as narrowly as hunting down a small network of terrorists and as broadly as transforming an entire region’s politics, and no party has clearly defined its end points. Like the threat of communism, terrorism has served as an emotional and rhetorical resource that politicians and thinkers can repeatedly draw on, often with little consideration of how the threat has changed or how severe it actually is.138 This protean and yet permanent quality facilitated the fusion of the War on Terror with the domestic culture wars, producing the ultimate effect of making political competition appear existential and catastrophic. Joseph Stieb is an Assistant Professor of National Security Affairs at the U.S. Naval War College in Newport, RI, United States. From 2020 to 2022, he was a postdoctoral fellow at the Mershon Center for International Security Studies at the Ohio State University in Columbus, OH, United States. He received his PhD in U.S. History at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, United States. His first book is The Regime Change Consensus: Iraq in American Politics, 1990–2003 (New York, 2021). He is currently writing a second book about U.S. conservatism and terrorism from the 1960s through the Global War on Terrorism. Footnotes * Thanks to the Mershon Center for International Security Studies at the Ohio State University for their support during the writing of this article. Thanks also to Josh Tait, Andrew Hartman, Lisa Ibarra, Jeffrey Stieb, and Diplomatic History’s Keith Riley for their valuable input. 1 Melani McAlister, “A Cultural History of War without End,” Journal of American History 89, no. 2 (2002): 440–455; Beverly Gage, “Terrorism and the American Experience: A State of the Field,” Journal of American History 98, no. 1 (2011): 73–94; Joanne Meyerowitz, “Introduction,” in History and September 11th, ed. Joanne Meyerowitz (Philadelphia, PA, 2003), 1–7. Gage and McAlister explore these dynamics in their scholarship: Beverly Gage, The Day Wall Street Exploded: A Story of America in its First Age of Terror (New York, 2009); Melani McAlister, Epic Encounters: Culture, Media, and U.S. Interests in the Middle East since 1945, 2nd ed. (Berkeley, CA, 2005). 2 Gage, “American Experience,” 85. 3 Ibid., 93. 4 Gary Nash, Charlotte Crabtree, and Ross Dunn, History on Trial: Culture Wars and the Teaching of the Past (New York, 1997), 7–17. 5 William Bennett, “Seizing This Teachable Moment,” in Fordham Institute, “September 11: What Our Children Need to Know,” September 1, 2002, last accessed April 26, 2022, fordhaminstitute.org, https://fordhaminstitute.org/national/research/september-11-what-our-children-need-know, 15. 6 William Bennett, The Index of Leading Culture Indicators: American Society at the End of the Twentieth Century (Washington, D.C., 1993); Lynne Cheney, Telling the Truth: Why Our Culture and Our Country Have Stopped Making Sense, and What We Can Do About It (New York, 1995), 195–205. 7 John Fonte, “Why There is a Culture War,” Policy Review (December 2000), 15. 8 Colin Dueck, Hard Line: The Republican Party and U.S. Foreign Policy since World War II (Princeton, NJ, 2010), 6–8, 19–31; Jacob Heilbrunn, They Knew They Were Right: The Rise of the Neocons (New York, 2008), 165–170. 9 Matt Grossman and David Hopkins, Asymmetric Politics: Ideological Republicans and Group Interest Democrats (New York, 2016), 1–20; Nolan McCarty, Polarization: What Everyone Needs to Know (New York, 2009), 3, 42–49; Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein, It’s Even Worse Than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided with the New Politics of Extremism, 2nd ed. (New York, 2016). 10 Andrew Hartman, The War for the Soul of America: A History of the Culture Wars (Chicago, IL, 2015); 2–5; James Patterson, Restless Giant: The United States from Watergate to Bush v. Gore (New York, 2005), 255–258. 11 Daniel Patrick Moynihan, “Defining Deviancy Down,” The American Scholar 62, no. 1 (1993): 17–30; Gregory Schneider, The Conservative Century: From Reaction to Revolution (New York, 2009), 187–192; Irving Kristol, “Pornography, Obscenity, and the Case for Censorship,” March 28, 1971, The New York Times Magazine, last accessed August 24, 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/1971/03/28/archives/pornography-obscenity-and-the-case-for-censorship-pornography.html. 12 Hartman, Soul of America, 2–5. 13 James Davison Hunter, Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define America (New York, 1991). 14 Patrick Buchanan, “Address to the Republican National Convention,” August 17, 1992, Voices of Democracy: The U.S. Oratory Project, last accessed November 30, 2020, https://voicesofdemocracy.umd.edu/buchanan-culture-war-speech-speech-text/; Samuel Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (New York, 1996), 304–305; Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind (New York, 1987), 38–40, 56–57. 15 Hunter, Culture Wars, 42, 50; Daniel Rodgers, Age of Fracture (Cambridge, MA, 2012), 144–150. 16 On the contested nature of history education in modern U.S. history, see: Jonathan Zimmerman, Whose America? Culture Wars in the Public Schools (Cambridge, MA, 2002); Natalia Petrzela, Classroom Wars: Language, Sex, and the Making of Modern Political Culture (New York, 2015); Andrew Hartman, Education and the Cold War: The Battle for the American School (New York, 2008). 17 Nash, Crabtree, and Dunn, History on Trial, ix. 18 Mike Wallace, “Culture War, History Front,” in History Wars: The Enola Gay and Other Battles for the American Past, eds. Edward Linenthal and Tom Engelhardt (New York, 1996), 182–183. 19 Nash, Crabtree, and Dunn, History on Trial, 160–165; Hartman Soul of America, 268–270; Edward Linenthal, “Anatomy of a Controversy,” in History Wars, eds. Linenthal and Engelhardt, 131. 20 Cheney, Telling the Truth, 114. 21 Lynne Cheney, “The End of History,” Wall Street Journal, October 20, 1994, A22. 22 Lynne Cheney, “The National History (Sub) Standards,” Wall Street Journal, October 23, 1995, A18. See also: Charles Krauthammer, “History Hijacked,” Washington Post, November 4, 1994, A19. 23 Wallace, “Culture War,” 185. 24 Cheney, Telling the Truth, 14, 114. For Cheney’s background, see: Nash, Crabtree, and Dunn, History on Trial, 103–104; Susan Schmidt, “An Outspoken Spouse,” Washington Post, July 27, 2000, A1; Stephen Burd, “Chairman of NEH is Criticized,” The Chronicle of Higher Education, April 22, 1992, 10. 25 Stephen Selden, “Sponsored Neoconservative Challenges to Diversity and Intercultural Competence in the U.S. Undergraduate Curriculum,” Policy Futures in Education 11, no. 6 (2013): 695; Robin Wilson, “A Not-So-Professorial Watchdog,” Chronicle of Higher Education, November 10, 2006, 10–13. 26 Selden, “Neoconservative Challenges,” 696; Jack Stripling, “A Higher-Ed Needier Finds Its Moment,” Chronicle of Higher Education, April 15, 2016, 24–27. 27 Anne Neal, “What is To Be Done?” November 14, 2007, Presentation at American Enterprise Institute, last accessed January 15, 2021, https://www.goacta.org/wp-content/uploads/ee/download/reforming_the_politically_correct_university.pdf. See also: Inside Academe 5, no. 3, (2000): 1; National Endowment for the Humanities, Text of Report, “50 Hours: A Core Curriculum for College Students,” Chronicle of Higher Education, October 11, 1989: 12–15. 28 Inside Academe 6, no. 1 (2000): 1–2; Anne Neal and Jerry Martin, “Losing America’s Memory: Historical Illiteracy in the 21st Century,” February 1, 2000, goacta.org, last accessed April 13, 2021, https://www.goacta.org/wp-content/uploads/ee/download/losing_americas_memory.pdf. 29 Inside Academe 4, no. 1 (1998): 1–8; ACTA, “Our Mission,” goacta.org, 2002, last accessed November 13, 2020, https://web.archive.org/web/20021017085528/http://goacta.org/whatsnewframeset.htm. 30 Joshua Rolnick, “New Book Suggests Ways for College Donors to Control How Their Gifts are Spent,” Chronicle of Higher Education, November 10, 1998, 8; ACTA, “New Guide is First to Show Donors How to Avoid Pitfalls in Their College Giving,” November 9, 1998, goacta.org, last accessed November 13, 2020, https://www.goacta.org/1998/11/new_guide_is_first_to_show_donors_how_to_avoid_pitfalls_in_their_college_gi/. 31 ACTA, “The Governor’s Project: Reforming Higher Education,” 2002, goacta.org, last accessed November 13, 2020, https://www.goacta.org/1998/11/new_guide_is_first_to_show_donors_how_to_avoid_pitfalls_in_their_college_gi/; George Leef, “Becoming an Educated Person: Toward a Core Curriculum for College Students,” July 1, 2003, goacta.org, last accessed November 17, 2020, https://www.goacta.org/resource/becoming_an_educated_person/. 32 Stephen Burd, “Bennett: ‘I Mean, It’s a Disaster,’” Chronicle of Higher Education, October 23, 1991, 7–9. 33 William Bennett, National Endowment for the Humanities, “To Reclaim a Legacy: A Report on the Humanities in Higher Education,” November 1984, eric.ed.gov, last accessed December 8, 2020, https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED247880, 38–39. 34 William Bennett, “Battle for U.S. Culture Looms,” Washington Times, September 8, 1991, D4. 35 William Bennett, “Empower America,” 2001, empower.org, last accessed November 19, 2020, https://web.archive.org/web/20011121233115/http://www.empower.org/. 36 William Bennett, “Quantifying America’s Decline,” Wall Street Journal, March 15, 1993, A12; William Bennett, The Death of Outrage: Bill Clinton and the Assault on American Ideals (New York, 1998), 13–53. 37 William Bennett, “Home Page: K12 Patriotism Program,” 2002, patriot.k12.com, last accessed November 19, 2020, https://web.archive.org/web/20020326021756/http://patriot.k12.com/; Andrea Billups, “Bennett Offers Virtual School as Parents’ Public Alternative,” Washington Times, May 29, 2001, A5. 38 For Cheney quote, see: Nash, Crabtree, and Dunn, History on Trial, 107. For Bennett quote, see: Bennett, “Reclaim a Legacy,” 38. See also: Lynne Cheney, National Endowment for the Humanities, “Humanities in America: A Report to the President, the Congress, and the American People,” September 1988, eric.ed.gov, last accessed April 26, 2022, https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED303408, 12. For background, see Linenthal, “Anatomy of a Controversy,” 62. 39 Hartman, Soul of America, 242–243. 40 Cheney, Telling the Truth, 17–20; Roger Kimball, Tenured Radicals: How Politics Has Corrupted Our Higher Education (Chicago, IL, 1990); Dinesh D’Souza, Illiberal Education: The Politics of Race and Sex on Campus (New York, 1991). 41 Jack Citrin and David Sears, American Identity and the Politics of Multiculturalism (New York, 2014), xx-xxi; Diane Ravitch, “Multiculturalism: E Pluribus Plures,” The American Scholar 59, no. 3 (1990): 337–354; Huntington, Clash of Civilizations, 306–309. 42 William Bennett, Why We Fight: Moral Clarity and the War on Terrorism (Washington, D.C., 2002), 55–70; Bloom, American Mind, 38-45; Cheney, Telling the Truth, 16–20. 43 Lynne Cheney, “Telling the Truth: A Report on the State of the Humanities in Higher Education,” September 1992, National Endowment for the Humanities, eric.ed.gov, last accessed August 25, 2021, https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED350936.pdf, 7; Lynne Cheney, “Kill My Old Agency, Please,” Wall Street Journal, January 24, 1995, A22. 44 “Republican Party Platform of 1992,” August 17, 1992, The American Presidency Project, last accessed April 9, 2021, https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/republican-party-platform-1992. 45 Cheney, Telling the Truth, 29 46 Rodgers, Age of Fracture, 257. 47 Alan Abramowitz, “Negative Partisanship: Why Americans Dislike Parties but Behave like Rabid Partisans,” Advances in Political Psychology 39, suppl. 1 (2018): 119–135; Sam Rosenfeld, The Polarizers: Postwar Architects of Our Partisan Era (Chicago, IL, 2018), 1–7, 281–287; Nolan McCarty, “What We Know and Don’t Know About Our Polarized Politics,” Washington Post, January 8, 2014, last accessed August 28, 2021, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2014/01/08/what-we-know-and-dont-know-about-our-polarized-politics/. 48 Chester Pach, “Top Gun, Toughness, and Terrorism: Some Reflections on the Elections of 1980 and 2004,” Diplomatic History 28, no. 4 (2004): 549–562. 49 George Packer, “Introduction: Living Up to It,” in The Fight is for Democracy: Winning the War of Ideas in America and the World, ed. George Packer (New York, 2003); Peter Beinart, “A Fighting Faith,” The New Republic, December 13, 2004, 17–29; Michael Ignatieff, “The American Empire: The Burden,” January 5, 2003 The New York Times Magazine, last accessed July 26, 2001, https://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/05/magazine/the-american-empire-the-burden.html. 50 Thomas Friedman, “Bush, Iraq, and Sister Souljah,” New York Times, December 8, 2002, A15. 51 Joseph Stieb, “The Vital Center Reborn: Redefining Liberalism between 9/11 and the Iraq War,” Modern American History 4, no. 3 (2021): 285–304. 52 William Bennett, “William Bennett Announces Americans for Victory over Terrorism,” March 12, 2002, Americans for Victory Over Terrorism, last accessed November 22, 2020, https://web.archive.org/web/20020806105440/http://www.avot.org/stories/storyReader$53. See also: Kay Hymnowitz and Harry Stein, “Earth to Ivory Tower: Get Real!” City Journal (2001), last accessed November 10, 2020, https://web.archive.org/web/20020806105440/http://www.avot.org/stories/storyReader$53. 53 George Nash, The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America since 1945, 2nd ed. (New York, 1979), 131–185; Edmund Fawcett, Conservatism: The Fight for a Tradition (Princeton, NJ, 2020), 315–320. 54 Fawcett, Conservatism, 14–18, 320–324. Gary Dorrien, Imperial Designs: Neoconservatism and the New Pax Americana (New York, 2004), 14–18. 55 Rowland Evans and Robert Novak, “Bill Bennett Finally Turns Republican,” Washington Post, June 27, 1986, A19; William Bennett, “Battle for the U.S. Culture Looms,” Washington Times, September 8, 1991, D4. 56 John Ehrman, The Rise of Neoconservatism: Intellectuals and Foreign Affairs: 1945–1994 (New Haven, CT, 1995) 173–174; Heilbrunn, They Knew, 165–170. On conservatives who dissented from this consensus, such as the “paleo-conservatives,” see: Dueck, Hard Line, 6–8; Fawcett, Conservatism, 338–339. 57 Ivo Daalder and James Lindsay, America Unbound: The Bush Revolution in Foreign Policy (Hoboken, NJ, 2005), 46–47; Hal Brands, From Berlin to Baghdad: America’s Search for Purpose in the Post-Cold War World (Lexington, KY, 2008), 272–292. 58 Press Release, “President Seeks $100 Million for NEH’s We the People Initiative,” May 1, 2003, National Endowment for the Humanities, last accessed August 24, 2021, https://www.neh.gov/news/press-release/2003-05-01; Lauren Erin Brown, “Cold War, Culture Wars, War on Terror: The NEA and the Art of Public Diplomacy,” Cold War History 20, no. 4 (2019): 390–391. 59 National Endowment for the Humanities, “President Bush Announces NEH American History Initiative,” September 17, 2002, neh.gov, last accessed April 3, 2021, https://www.neh.gov/news/press-release/2002-09-17. 60 William Bennett, “An Open Letter from William J. Bennett, Re: American for Victory Over Terrorism,” March 12, 2002, avot.org, last accessed November 11, 2020, https://web.archive.org/web/20021010141625/http://www.avot.org/stories/storyreader$26. See also: Chester Finn, “Foreword,” in Kathleen Porter-Magee, James Leming, Lucien Ellington, “Where Did Social Studies Go Wrong?” January 2003, fordhaminstitute.org, last accessed October 27, 2020, https://fordhaminstitute.org/national/research/where-did-social-studies-go-wrong, i-vi. 61 Bennett, “Open Letter,” March 12, 2002. 62 “Transcript: America, Iraq, and the War on Terrorism, Teach-In at UCLA,” April 2, 2003, cspan.org, last accessed November 13, 2020, https://www.c-span.org/video/?175909-1/america-iraq-war-terrorism; Americans for Victory Over Terrorism, “College Students Speak Out: Telephone Survey,” May 2–12, 2002, avot.org, last accessed November 13, 2020, https://web.archive.org/web/20030206075513/http://www.avot.org/stories/storyReader$72. 63 Bennett, “K12 Patriotism Program,” 2002; Ellen Sorokin, “Bennett Leads Group Speaking Up for Anti-Terror War, Washington Times, March 13, 2002, A4. 64 Anne Neal and Jerry Martin, “Defending Civilization: How Our Universities are Failing America and What Can Be Done About It,” November 2001, goacta.org, last accessed November 11, 2020, http://www.mafhoum.com/press2/71P5.pdf. 65 Neal and Martin, “Defending Civilization.” See also: Lynne Cheney, “Mrs. Cheney’s Remarks at the Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture,” October 5, 2001, whitehouse.archives.gov, last accessed November 11, 2020, https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/mrscheney/news/text/20011005.html. 66 Inside Academe 7, no. 4, (2002): 1–2. 67 William Bennett, “Teaching September 11,” Wall Street Journal, September 10, 2002, A12. 68 Inside Academe 6, no. 4 (2001): 2. See also: Anne Neal and Jerry Martin, “Restoring America’s Legacy,” September 2002, goacta.org, last accessed November 14, 2020, https://www.goacta.org/resource/restoring_americas_legacy/, 1–2. 69 Lynne Cheney, “Mrs. Cheney’s Remarks at Chapman University,” February 20, 2002, whitehouse.archives.gov, last accessed November 11, 2020, https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2002/02/text/20020220-7.html. 70 Bennett, “Teachable Moment,” 15. 71 Neal and Martin, “Defending Civilization,” 3. See also: Bennett, Why We Fight, 3–7; Cheney, “Remarks at Dallas Institute;” Hanson, “Preserving America, Man’s Greatest Hope,” in Fordham Institute, “September 11: What Our Children Need to Know,” September 1, 2002, last accessed April 26, 2022, fordhaminstitute.org, https://fordhaminstitute.org/national/research/september-11-what-our-children-need-know, 43. 72 Finn, “Foreword,” iii. 73 Victor Davis Hanson, “Loyalty, How Quaint,” National Review, November 24, 2003, 29. See also: William Bennett, “The War on Terror and the Forces of Decomposition,” August 31, 2005, avot.org, last accessed November 13, 2020, https://web.archive.org/web/20051225005458/http://www.avot.org/article/20050831132200.html. 74 Neal and Martin, “Restoring America’s Legacy,” 1–3; American Council of Trustees and Alumni, “We the People: A Resource Guide to Promoting Historical Literacy for Governors, Legislators, Teachers, and Citizens,” July 2003, 1–42. 75 Bennett, “Teaching September 11.” 76 George W. Bush, “Graduation Speech at West Point,” June 1, 2002, in The Iraq Papers, eds. John Ehrenberg, J. Patrice McSherrey, Jose Sanchez, and Caroleen Sayej (New York, 2010), 66 77 George Will, “The Great Refutation,” Washington Post, September 11, 2002, A17. See also: Hanson, “Preserving America,” 26; Brian Anderson, “We’re Not Losing the Culture Wars Anymore,” City Journal (October 2003): 14–30. 78 Bennett, Why We Fight, 10. 79 Richard Shorten, “The Failure of Political Argument: The Languages of Anti-Fascism and Anti-Totalitarianism in Post-September 11th Discourse,” British Journal of Politics and International Relations 11, no. 3 (2009): 479–503. 80 Charles Krauthammer, “To War, Not to Court,” Washington Post, September 12, 2001, A29; David Frum and Richard Perle, An End to Evil: How to Win the War on Terror (New York, 2003), 35. 81 Krauthammer, “To War,” A29; Bennett, Why We Fight, 86–90. 82 George Bush, “Address to a Joint Session of Congress,” September 20, 2001, in Ideas and American Foreign Policy, ed. Andrew Bacevich (New York, 2018), 439. 83 Bennett, “Open Letter,” March 12, 2002. See also: George Will, “The End of Our Holiday from History,” Washington Post, September 12, 2001, A31; Newt Gingrich, “Principles for Victory,” September 28, 2001, aei.org, last accessed February 7, 2021, https://www.aei.org/articles/principles-for-victory/. 84 Joanna Eagle, “Virtuous Victims, Visceral Violence,” in The Martial Imagination: Cultural Aspects of American Warfare, ed. Jimmy Bryan (College Station, TX, 2013), 148–151, 160–161; Emily S. Rosenberg, “Rescuing Women and Children,” in History and September 11th, ed. Meyerowitz, 81–93; McAlister, Epic Encounters, 280–283. 85 McAlister, Epic Encounters, 198–211; Purnima Bose, Intervention Narratives: Afghanistan, The United States, and the Global War on Terror (New Brunswick, NJ, 2020), 15–20. 86 Spencer Ackerman, Reign of Terror: How the 9/11 Era Destabilized America and Produced Trump (New York, 2021), 22–30. For conservative arguments along these lines, see: Frum and Perle, End to Evil, 125–165; Bennett, Why We Fight, 18–19. 87 Howard Zinn, “A Just Cause, not a Just War,” The Progressive 65, no. 12 (2001): 16–19; Chalmers Johnson, “Blowback,” The Nation, October 15, 2001, 13–14; Not in Our Name, “Statement of Conscience,” 2002, worldcantwait.net, last accessed April 28, 2019, http://www.worldcantwait.net/index.php/about-mainmenu-2/about-world-cant-wait-mainmenu-215/history-of-world-can-t-wait/8232-not-in-our-name-statement-of-conscience. 88 Bennett, Why We Fight, 18–20. 89 Bernard Lewis, The Crisis of Islam: Holy War and Unholy Terror (New York, 2003), xxv–xxvii. 90 Bernard Lewis, “Targeted by a History of Hatred,” Washington Post, September 10, 2002, A15. 91 Lewis, Crisis of Islam, 134; Lewis, “History of Hatred,” A15. 92 Lewis, Crisis of Islam, 113–121. 93 For conservative promotions of Lewis, see: Bennett, Why We Fight, 70; Frum and Perle, End to Evil, 41, 136; Christopher Caldwell, “The Closing of the Muslim Mind,” The Weekly Standard, January 21, 2002, 38. On Lewis’ interactions with Bush administration figures, see: Zachary Lockman, Contending Visions of the Middle East: The History and Politics of Orientalism (New York, 2010), 249–250. 94 Bernard Lewis, “September 11 in Historical Perspective,” Speech at Washington Institute for Near East Policy, October 21, 2001. 95 H. W. Brands, “Neither Munich nor Vietnam: The Gulf War of 1991,” in The Power of the Past: History and Statecraft, eds. Hal Brands and Jeremi Suri (Washington, D.C., 2015), 81–86. 96 Quote is from Lewis, “History of Hatred,” A15. See also: Angelo Codevilla, “Victory: What it Will Take to Win,” Claremont Review of Books 11, no. 1 (2001): 1–17; Norman Podhoretz, “How to Win World War IV,” Commentary Magazine, February 7, 2002, 20; Reuel Marc Gerecht, “Crushing al Qaeda is Only a Start,” Wall Street Journal, December 19, 2001, A18. 97 Lewis, Crisis of Islam, 63; Corey Robin, The Reactionary Mind: Conservatism from Edmund Burke to Donald Trump, 2nd ed. (New York, 2018), 204–205. 98 Bennett, “Forces of Decomposition.” 99 George W. Bush, “State of the Union Address,” January 29, 2002, in The Iraq Papers, eds. Ehrenberg, McSherrey, Sanchez, and Sayej, 60. 100 Ahsan Butt, “Why Did the United States Invade Iraq in 2003?” Security Studies 28, no. 2 (2019): 251–252. 101 John McCain, “There is No Substitute for Victory,” Wall Street Journal, October 26, 2001, A14. See also: Frum and Perle, End to Evil, 27–29; Editorial, “Defining Victory,” National Review, October 15, 2001, 12–13. 102 Bennett, “Teach-In at UCLA,” April 2, 2003. See also: Charles Krauthammer, “Victory Changes Everything,” Washington Post, November 30, 2001, A41; Reuel Marc Gerecht, “A Necessary War,” The Weekly Standard, October 21, 2002, 19. 103 “Osama bin Laden, In His Own Words,” New York Times, August 23, 1998, D5. 104 First Rumsfeld quote is from: Donald Rumsfeld, “Take the Fight to the Terrorists,” Washington Post, October 26, 2003, B7. Second quote is from: Butt, “Invade Iraq,” 271. 105 Butt, “Invade Iraq,” 251. 106 Douglas Little, Us Versus Them: The United States, Radical Islam, and the Rise of the Green Threat (Chapel Hill, NC, 2016), 145–155. 107 George Packer, “The Trouble with Liberal Hawks,” Slate, January 12, 2004, last accessed July 16, 2021, https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2004/01/liberal-hawks-reconsider-the-iraq-war-the-trouble-with-liberal-hawks-1.html; Eric Benson, “Liberal Hubris,” New York Magazine, May 30, 2014, last accessed July 16, 2021, http://nymag.com/news/frank-rich/peter-beinart-iraq-war-2014-6/. 108 Frum and Perle, End to Evil, 29; Victor Davis Hanson, “Iraq’s Future-And Ours,” in The Right War? The Conservative Debate on Iraq, ed. Gary Rosen (New York, 2005), 16. 109 Peter Baker, “Defending Iraq War, Defiant Cheney Cites ‘Enormous Successes,’” Washington Post, January 25, 2007, A1. See also: Bernard Lewis, “Was Osama Right?” Wall Street Journal, May 16, 2007, A21; Fouad Ajami, “Infidel Documents,” Wall Street Journal, September 28, 2006, A16. 110 Bret Stephens, “The Retreat Doctrine,” Wall Street Journal, May 28, 2013, A13. See also: Max Boot, “Afghanistan: The ‘Who Cares?’ War,” Wall Street Journal, August 29, 2012, A15; Michael Rubin, “Were the Wars Worth It?” National Review, September 9, 2011, 19–20. 111 Codevilla, “Victory,” 18. 112 Bennett, Why We Fight, 79. 113 Hanson, “Iraq’s Future,” 17. 114 George W. Bush, “Address to a Joint Session of Congress,” 439. See also: Charles Krauthammer, “Violence and Islam,” Washington Post, December 6, 2002, A45; Editorial, “Defining Victory,” National Review, 12; Daniel Pipes, “The Evil Isn’t Islam,” New York Post, July 30, 2002, A22. 115 Reuel Marc Gerecht, “The Pope’s Divisions,” Wall Street Journal, September 21, 2006, A16. See also: Bennett, Why We Fight, 101–102; Lewis, Crisis of Islam, 113–117. 116 Fouad Ajami, “A Settling of Accounts Past Due,” U.S. News and World Report, March 24, 2002, 34. See also: Bennett, Why We Fight, 95–101. 117 Bennett, Why We Fight, 100–102; Frum and Perle, “End to Evil,” 70. 118 George W. Bush, “Remarks by the President at Islamic Center of Washington D.C.,” September 17, 2001, whitehouse.archives.gov, last accessed April 14, 2021, https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2001/09/20010917-11.html. For conservative critics, see: Daniel Pipes, “Not Profiling at Airports: A Deadly Error,” New York Post, January 21, 2002, A23; Andrew McCarthy, “The Great War on Militant Islam,” The American Spectator, July/August 2004, 36–37. 119 Bennett, Why We Fight, 103–105; Charles Krauthammer, “The Truth About Daniel Pipes,” Washington Post, August 15, 2003, A27; Daniel Pipes, “Fighting Militant Islam: Without Bias,” City Journal (November 2001), last accessed November 11, 2020, https://www.city-journal.org/html/fighting-militant-islam-without-bias-12195.html. 120 Daniel Pipes, “Jihad and the Professors,” Commentary, November 2002, 16–20. 121 Martin Kramer, “Terrorism? What Terrorism?!” Wall Street Journal, November 15, 2001, A16. See also: Martin Kramer, Ivory Towers on Sand: The Failure of Middle Eastern Studies in America (Washington, D.C., 2001), ix, 22–44. 122 American Textbook Council, “Islam and the Textbooks,” Middle East Quarterly 10, no. 3 (2003): 69. 123 Heather MacDonald, “Straighten Up and Fly Right,” Wall Street Journal, December 2, 2004, A12. See also: Charles Krauthammer, “Give Grandma a Pass,” Washington Post, July 29, 2005, A23. 124 Andrew McCarthy, “Unreasonable Searches,” National Review, August 29, 2005, 17; Heather MacDonald, “Too Nice for Our Own Good,” Wall Street Journal, January 6, 2005, A16. 125 Cheney, “Remarks at Chapman University,” February 20, 2002. See also: Bennett, Why We Fight, 152. 126 Hanson, “Preserving America,” 26. 127 Hanson, “How Quaint,” 30. 128 Quote is from Victor Davis Hanson, “The Civic Education America Needs,” City Journal, (Summer 2002), 36; See also: Hymnowitz and Stein, “Ivory Tower,” 2001; Bennett, “Teach-In at UCLA,” April 2, 2003; David Frum, “Who are We?” National Review, September 12, 2005, 39–40. 129 Lizabeth Cohen, A Consumer’s Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America (New York, 2003); Beth Bailey, America’s Army: Making the All-Volunteer Force (Cambridge, MA, 2009). 130 Bush, “Address to a Joint Session of Congress,” 440. 131 Editorial, “Living with Terrorism,” Wall Street Journal, November 13, 2001, A22. 132 Will, “Holiday from History.” 133 Bennett, “Bennett Announces Americans for Victory,” March 12, 2002; Hymnowitz and Stein, “Ivory Tower,” Autumn 2001; Codevilla, “Victory,” 18; Andrew Roberts, “Victory is the Only Option,” The American Spectator, September 2007, 26–34. 134 Andrew McCarthy, The Grand Jihad: How Islam and the Left Sabotage America (New York, 2011), 5–11. See also: Daniel Pipes, “The Islamist-Leftist Allied Menace,” National Review, July 14, 2008, 19–20; Dinesh D’Souza, The Enemy at Home: The Cultural Left and Responsibility for 9/11 (New York, 2007); David Horowitz, Unholy Alliance: Radical Islam and the American Left (Washington, D.C., 2004), 4–5. 135 Ole Waever, Identity, Migration, and the New Security Agenda in Europe (New York, 1993), 23. 136 Michael Anton, “The Flight 93 Election,” Claremont Review of Books, September 5, 2016, last accessed April 5, 2021, https://claremontreviewofbooks.com/digital/the-flight-93-election/. 137 William Bennett, “It’s Not Just Trump, They Hate Western Civilization,” The Bill Bennett Show, podcast audio, February 12, 2021, last accessed April 14, 2021, https://www.stitcher.com/show/the-bill-bennett-show/episode/its-not-just-trump-they-hate-western-civilization-81614765; John Fonte and John O’Sullivan, “The Return of National Sovereignty,” National Review, December 5, 2016, 20–21; Daniel Pipes, “Why I’m Voting for Trump,” Boston Globe, October 20, 2020, A24; Andrew Kreighbaum, “Scholars for Trump,” Insidehighered.com, October 4, 2016, last accessed August 25, 2021, https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/10/04/academics-declare-support-donald-trump. 138 On the consistent U.S. overestimation of foreign threats, see: John Mueller, The Stupidity of War: American Foreign Policy and the Case for Complacency (New York, 2021). © The Author(s) 2022. 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TI - Moral Clarity: Terrorism, the Culture Wars, and Modern U.S. Conservatism*
JO - Diplomatic History
DO - 10.1093/dh/dhac037
DA - 2022-05-20
UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/oxford-university-press/moral-clarity-terrorism-the-culture-wars-and-modern-u-s-conservatism-LDrHCtuVLN
SP - 728
EP - 754
VL - 46
IS - 4
DP - DeepDyve
ER -