Dinesh D'Souza's always been a right-wing troll

A couple of you have just posted about Dinesh D’Souza’s new book blaming “the cultural left” for 9/11. You (and everyone else reading this) might be interested in this 1997 article in Mother Jones magazine, by Adam Lieberman, about why he left movement conservatism. Here, his experiences with D’Souza, while writing for the Dartmouth Review:

The following year, when I applied to be editor-in-chief of the paper, I was rejected in favor of a staffer a grade younger; D’Souza told me that while I was clearly the most intelligent candidate, the point of the Review was not to be a vehicle for expressing ideas, or even to gain the greatest public support through persuasion, but rather to mobilize the small hard-core of students and alumni who naturally shared its views, through tactics of shock and ad hominem attacks.

Go read the rest. It’s pretty short, and chock-full of quotable bits.