HBO’s Homegrown Takes a Clear-Eyed Look at Terrorism: New at Reason

In a talk-radio, Facebook-meme world, it’s difficult to identify any one public-policy debate that’s more intellectually empty and morally debased than all the rest. But the argument over treatment of Muslims in America is certainly a strong candidate. On one side you have the Trumpkins wanting to register them like toxic substances; on the other, the rainbows-and-teddy-bears crowd that acts as if the fact that all 19 of the September 11 hijackers were Muslims is no more significant than if they’d all had the same color socks.

HBO’s clear-eyed documentary Homegrown: The Counter-Terror Dilemma, produced in conjunction with CNN national security analyst Peter Bergen’s new book, United States of Jihad: Investigating America’s Homegrown Terrorists, tries to imbue the discussion with some intelligence and nuance. The most likely reaction, writes Glenn Garvin, will be contemptuous abuse from all quarters, but Homegrown is a perceptive work that’s well worth watching.

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