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I'm probably going to trade in my liberal bona fides, here, but I'm serious: The CIA needs to return to the good old days of paying liberal artsy types to take their message abroad, just like it did during the Cold War.

Now, this might be happening right now. But I doubt it. Why?

* The liberal artsy types found out about it and got mad.

* The government under President Bush has been famously unwilling to let anybody but the truest believers participate in American foreign policy.

I don't know what to do about the second issue. But as for the first: We need to get over ourselves.

A look back at the 1950s:

Far from being pawns, the intellectuals on the C.I.A. payroll were willing participants in what they understood as the legitimate cause of opposing Soviet tyranny. They took money for what they would have done anyway; the C.I.A. simply allowed them to be more effective at doing it. Who was using whom?

It's probably more complicated than that, of course. But it's worth noting that Gloria Steinem was sponsored under the old program, and indeed praised it.

So why should we do this?

As I've said again and again, jihadism is an idea, and we should compete on that front, instead of thinking we can kill everybody who doesn't like us.

And as I've been reading "Infidel," the memoir of Ayaan Hirsi Ali, I've been struck by a key catalyst in her transformation from oppressed Somali Muslim to a truly free woman: Trashy romance novels. Seriously. They helped her understand that life in the outside world offered freedoms that were unavailable to her.

This is the kind of stuff that Dinesh D'Souza probably hates hearing. And maybe it's better if the liberal artsy types don't know that they're getting the CIA funding.

But if we're confident in our culture, it might be one of the best weapons we have in the war on terror.