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

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

Documentaries 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.

I was rivetted by every minute of Dinesh D’Souza’s second film: AMERICA.

I wish this film could have gone on for another two hours.

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 better off if America had never existed.

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

D’Souza skillfully deals with all these 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 were 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.

Abraham Lincoln completed the American Revolution.

He fulfilled the original American Proposition that “all men are created equal” — meaning equal under the law.

Obviously, not everyone is created with equal talents and abilities.

Not everyone is created with equal drive and motivation.

But in America, everyone is supposed to be equal under the law.

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 Civil War 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.

Slavery still exists throughout much of the world today.

By the way, there were many white slaves in colonial America — indentured servants.

The American Idea ultimately ended all that.

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 General Custer got what he deserved at the hands of Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse?

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?

The production value in the movie is superb. It’s very well made. I loved the soundtrack.

Don’t believe the leftist film critics who are trashing the film.

Dinesh’s movie is receiving a 90% thumbs up rating from the audience on Rotten Tomatoes.

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 I 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 wants you to feel bad about America (which they love to spell AMERIKA). They want 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.

Is it any wonder that Barack Obama’s Justice Department has found a way to put Dinesh D’Souza in prison? . . . for a hyper-technical violation of federal campaign finance law that happens all the time and that no one else has ever been jailed for.

Not that I’m condoning. We should all try to avoid breaking laws, even laws that contradict the First Amendment of the Constitution — as campaign finance laws do.

Still, you’re better off not breaking even these unconstitutional laws. Or you risk having a heap of trouble pour down on your head. Fighting the federal government in federal court will cost you a minimum of $300,000 — if you want to go bargain basement.

Few of us can afford this. Most of us will just cry uncle and try to get the best deal we can from the prosecutor.

But don’t worry too much for Dinesh.

He’ll be fine.

He might go to jail for 10 months or so.

Then maybe he will create another documentary on how any and every American commits on average three felonies a day.

That’s actually true by the way. That’s the average.

Here’s the book on that topic — titled Three Felonies a Day. 

The Federal Register of regulations is now more than 80,000 pages.

These regulations are not laws duly passed by Congress — as the Constitution requires. Congress is supposed to be the law-making body. These reams of regulations are enacted by bureaucrats, acting on their own, who not accountable to voters.

These regulations carry the force of law.

The U.S. tax code today is 73,954 pages.

Who can possibly follow all these laws and rules without a team of lawyers and accountants?

Most Americans just try to keep their head down and do their best to avoid getting in the cross-hairs of some government bureaucrat who might have an axe to grind.

But if you happen to have the misfortune of having an aggressive federal prosecutor rummaging through every area of your life, he’s going to find violations of federal law — felonies.

Almost every violation of federal law — no matter how technical — is a potential felony these days.

That’s how screwed up our laws have become. You are committing three felonies a day without even knowing it.

But that’s another topic — that I hope might be the subject of Dinesh’s next film.

But here’s the takeaway point of this post.

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.

Tears were welling up in my eyes by the end of the film.

Why tears?

Because it’s hard to imagine anyone hating the most magnificent, the most generous, and most gentle superpower in world history.

But, for some reason, the Left truly does hate America — which is why I have always thought Leftism is a mental illness.

By the way, I do distinguish liberalism from Leftism.

JFK was a liberal. He loved America.

He hated Communism. JFK was a patriot.

He and I might not have agreed on every issue. His biggest mistake was to allow government employees to unionize — which FDR opposed (also a liberal, but a patriot).

Fine. Everyone’s entitled to screw-ups. JFK was a patriot. So was Martin Luther King.

Thomas Jefferson was also a liberal for his day — the author of America’s Declaration of Independence. He was a classical liberal.

He believed “All” are endowed with unalienable rights. And that these rights are unalienable because they come from God. These rights are “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

Obama opposes at least two out of three of these rights.

Barack Obama is not a liberal. He’s a Leftist.

He doesn’t seem to be a fan at all of America — at least not the original American proposition.

He might like the territory of America, the land, the scenery. He would probably agree that America is a beautiful place.

But Obama seems to have a real problem with the original American idea — of the first nation in human history to be “conceived in liberty.”

Obama believes in big government — the more government, the better for Obama.

He loves the Nanny State idea. He wants to micromanage your life. He loves government bureaucracy. His Soviet-style ObamaCare law is 2,700 pages long. Another 20,000 pages of regulations have been added, with new regulations being added every day.

This is the opposite of liberty. All this government bureaucracy is crushing liberty.

Barack Obama has spent his entire political life trashing capitalism, trashing America’s history — constantly pointing out all he thinks is wrong with America.

He calls America’s Constitution “flawed,” attacks it as a “charter of negative liberties,” and promised to “fundamentally transform” America.

How can you love something you say you want to “fundamentally transform”?

If I were to tell my wife that I am out to “fundamentally transform” her, I am quite sure she would not take that as a compliment. We’d likely be headed for divorce court.

Barack Obama is an existential threat to the original American idea.

D’Souza is an existential threat to Obama and the anti-America Left.

No wonder Obama wants Dinesh D’Souza in jail.