A+ for Dinesh D’Souz’a ‘AMERICA. It’s Even Better Than His First Film

Honestly, I was not looking forward that much to seeing Dinesh D’Souza’s AMERICA.

Documentary’s are not really my thing. When I go to a movie, I’m looking for an escape, pure entertainment.

But I loved his first film — 2016: Obama’s America.

D’Souza’s new film far surpasses that one.

What’s great about the film is he really allows the Left to make their case against America. The Left’s case is that:

1) We stole the land from the Indians.
2) We stole half of Mexico
3) We stole the labor and lives of Africans
4) We’ve plundered the world for its resources
5) Capitalism is a sophisticated system of theft.
6) The American idea was flawed from the start because the founders of the country owned slaves and our Constitution tolerated slavery.

In summary, the Left’s case is that the world would have been far better off if America had never existed.

We now have a President of the United States who susbscribes to much, if not all of this. He views his mission in life as to correct the injustices wrought by America.

D’Souza skillfully deals with all the precepts. He does not gloss over the inhumanity of slavery. He makes the case, as Abraham Lincoln did, that both America’s Declaration of Independence and America’s Constitution sowed the seeds of slavery’s demise.

The southern states never would have signed onto the Constitution had we insisted on the total and immediate abolition of slavery.

If the South had never signed onto the Constitution and had become its own country or many countries, slavery likely would have lasted much longer.

The South’s economy was dependent on slavery.

D’Souza notes that the economy of the South was far behind the economy and industry of the north. He quotes Alexis de Tocqueille, who attributed the differences in the economies to slavery.

In the South, the slaves had no incentive to work hard because they could not keep the fruits of their labor. So they did the bare minimum of work to avoid the lash. The owners were lazy and unproductive because their slaves were doing the work.

Meanwhile, in the North, the non-slave states, industry and enterprise was booming. This ultimately proved the Confederacy’s undoing. The Confederacy did not have the industrial engine to produce a war machine anywhere near the level of the Union army.

Ultimately, slavery could not stand up to the primary founding idea of America: “That all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.”

The Declaration does not say all “white men.” The Declaration says “all men” — meaning, of course, all people.

America was the first country in the history of the world to fight a civil war to end slavery. At least 300,000 union soldiers died in that war. Upwards of 700,000 Americans lost their lives on the battlefields.

Furthermore, slavery was the norm throughout the world. Slavery was the norm in Africa. It was Africans who sold their own people into slavery. It was the American idea that ended slavery in the British Empire.

Did we mistreat the Indians?

Certainly, we did. They also horrifically mistreated each other.

Did we take land from the Indians? Certainly we did. But they took lands from each other.

Should General Sherman have burned the South to the ground?

Let’s face it. Humans can be brutal. War is brutal. Certainly America has been brutal. Who can admire General Custer?

Don’t most of us think he got what he deserved?

But it is precisely the American idea — as stated in America’s Declaration of Independence and the preamble to the U.S. Constitution, plus the Bill of Rights — that causes us to recoil in horror at what we did to African Americans and the Native Americans.

We’ve done our best to make it up to them.

How many African-Americans want to return to Africa?

I don’t know of any.

Are millions of Americans desperately trying to get over the border into Mexico and become Mexican citizens?

When Mexicans manage to get in here, how many want to return to Mexico?

Would the Mexican-Americans living in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, and Southern California want the American Southwest returned to Mexico so they could be Mexicans again?

Would they like to see America become more like Mexico?

Okay, enough polemics.

This is not really the power of the D’Souza movie.

By the end of the movie, the audience is literally in tears and singing “America the Beautiful.”

The production value in the movie is superb. I loved the soundtrack.

Every high school and college history course should have the students watch “America” and deal with the arguments?

It won’t matter then if the teacher or professor is a Leftist.

That leftist teacher or professor can then stand there for the entire semester telling the students why D’Souza’s movie is wrong.

Some students will be persuaded by the teacher or the professor.

But many will not be persuaded.

The film makes a powerful (frankly irrefutable) argument for America. It also makes a tremendous emotional impact.

My wife Wanda and went to the theater on a Sunday afternoon in Chicago. The theater was packed. Every person in the theater stayed through the entire rolling of the credits at the end, with our national anthem as the soundtrack . . . and sang along with it.

The Left want you to feel bad about America (which they love to spell AMERIKA). They wants you to feel bad about being an American.

We have a President of the United States who subscribes, for the most part, to this view of America. He’s trying to take America down a peg, or two, or three.

Let’s not forget that Barack Obama’s political career was hatched out of the livingroom of anti-American terrorist Bill Ayers and that Barack Obama and his family were faithful parishoners of the church of the America-hating Reverend Jeremiah Wright.

And now we see President Obama opening America’s borders to anyone who wants to walk in. Why?

Because that’s the fastest way to end America — to merge America with Mexico and Latin America — which are such successful countries.

If you want to feel good about being an American, watch Dinesh D’Souza’s AMERICA.

I loved it. You will too. It was a tour d’force.