Review: "America: Imagine The World Without Her"
Posted by BradHarrington 10 years, 1 month ago to Politics
This piece ran first in the Wyoming Tribune Eagle a few months ago, but I like the Parcbench post better because it has the picture too. <smile>
I sent a copy of this to Mr. D'Souza; never heard back from him, however...
Brad Harrington
brad@bradandbarbie.com
********************
January 5, 2015
“America: Imagine The World Without Her”
By Bradley Harrington
“That’s how we see you around the world, as one of the greatest ideas in human history... This country was the first to claw its way out of darkness, and put that on paper.” - Bono, U2 lead singer, Georgetown University speech, 2012 -
In “America: Imagine the World Without Her,” film producer and noted conservative activist Dinesh D’Souza gets right to the point: “In America,” he states, “you get to write your own script.”
This film, a rousing defense of uniquely American values, catalogues the transgressions of early American society - conquest, theft, murder, land-grabbing and slavery - and answers the charges head-on.
By discussing and sometimes interviewing several of the more influential commentators on the “hate America” scene, such as Howard Zinn, Noam Chomsky, Bill Ayers and Saul Alinsky, Mr. D’Souza then demolishes their claims by placing them in their proper historical and ideological contexts.
Those transgressions, as Mr. D’Souza demonstrates, have been around since the dawn of time - but it was America, not the rest of the world, who fought to abolish such practices.
It was not the caste system of India (which Mr. D’Souza himself escaped from), nor the monarchical follies of Europe, nor the ant-heap collectivisms of the Far East, that America acted to create and glorify, but the Rights of Man instead.
It’s not how we started, Mr. D’Souza is saying, but what we made ourselves into, that tells the true tale. In the same sense that we are still somewhat free to “write our own scripts,” we chose - as a nation - to abandon such transgressions and create a radically different form of political organization instead.
In the United States, in essence, we chose to “write our own script” socially as well as personally. And, although it is, unfortunately, never stated explicitly, the movie’s dramatizations lead the viewer to the obvious conclusion: That it’s the former which makes the latter possible, i.e., that social and political liberties are the absolute prerequisite for pursing one’s own personal dreams of self-realization.
America, in other words, as an originally essentially voluntarist nation, along with all that this has led to, strips bare all the lies of the academic wing-nuts who proclaim her history to be nothing more than institutionalized thuggery.
That is what makes America, both as a country and as the movie, so exceptional: That, here, for the most part, you really do get to still “write your own script.”
And that, precisely, is why the “progressives” hate both: For the Left - and, sadly enough, much of the Right as well - seeks to write your script for you instead. Such enemies of freedom recognize that in order to take America down politically it must first be taken down ideologically.
And that, in its turn, brings us to the major failing of the movie “America” - that it just doesn’t take its own thesis far enough.
Yes, Mr. D’Souza is correct in slamming the point home that it’s the educational institutions that drive the culture and set the leitmotif for American society. He flounders, however, when it comes to properly identifying the source of that educational rot: Philosophy.
If our colleges and universities, today, preach that reason and reality are in contradistinction to one another - that American thought conflicts with the dictates of existence - we have the philosopher Immanuel Kant to thank for that.
And if our students are being taught that “theory” doesn’t matter - that America’s limitations on political power are nothing more than arbitrary social constructs - we have the philosopher William James to thank for that.
And if many of our teachers teach that nothing is provable - that one can’t actually demonstrate that all human beings are entitled to their individual rights - we have the philosopher David Hume to thank for that.
And if our kids’ minds are being swamped with the idea that ethics is nothing more than illusion - that it doesn’t really matter whether you live as a producer or as a thief - we have the philosopher Georg Hegel to thank for that.
Far from being the mere “ivory tower” intellectual gymnastics that most people consider philosophy to be, it is philosophy in its widest, most systemic sense - i.e., the science that studies the fundamental aspects of the nature of existence - that drives ideas, and it is then those ideas that drive the world.
In order to properly reclaim America, therefore, it is the realm of philosophy that must be reclaimed first. It was the philosophies of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment that created the ideas of America to begin with, and it is only with the resurrection of reason, individualism and capitalism that the remaking of America can ever begin again.
In that regard, however, let’s cut Mr. D’Souza a little slack: For that’s going to take more than a two-hour movie to bring about.
I sent a copy of this to Mr. D'Souza; never heard back from him, however...
Brad Harrington
brad@bradandbarbie.com
********************
January 5, 2015
“America: Imagine The World Without Her”
By Bradley Harrington
“That’s how we see you around the world, as one of the greatest ideas in human history... This country was the first to claw its way out of darkness, and put that on paper.” - Bono, U2 lead singer, Georgetown University speech, 2012 -
In “America: Imagine the World Without Her,” film producer and noted conservative activist Dinesh D’Souza gets right to the point: “In America,” he states, “you get to write your own script.”
This film, a rousing defense of uniquely American values, catalogues the transgressions of early American society - conquest, theft, murder, land-grabbing and slavery - and answers the charges head-on.
By discussing and sometimes interviewing several of the more influential commentators on the “hate America” scene, such as Howard Zinn, Noam Chomsky, Bill Ayers and Saul Alinsky, Mr. D’Souza then demolishes their claims by placing them in their proper historical and ideological contexts.
Those transgressions, as Mr. D’Souza demonstrates, have been around since the dawn of time - but it was America, not the rest of the world, who fought to abolish such practices.
It was not the caste system of India (which Mr. D’Souza himself escaped from), nor the monarchical follies of Europe, nor the ant-heap collectivisms of the Far East, that America acted to create and glorify, but the Rights of Man instead.
It’s not how we started, Mr. D’Souza is saying, but what we made ourselves into, that tells the true tale. In the same sense that we are still somewhat free to “write our own scripts,” we chose - as a nation - to abandon such transgressions and create a radically different form of political organization instead.
In the United States, in essence, we chose to “write our own script” socially as well as personally. And, although it is, unfortunately, never stated explicitly, the movie’s dramatizations lead the viewer to the obvious conclusion: That it’s the former which makes the latter possible, i.e., that social and political liberties are the absolute prerequisite for pursing one’s own personal dreams of self-realization.
America, in other words, as an originally essentially voluntarist nation, along with all that this has led to, strips bare all the lies of the academic wing-nuts who proclaim her history to be nothing more than institutionalized thuggery.
That is what makes America, both as a country and as the movie, so exceptional: That, here, for the most part, you really do get to still “write your own script.”
And that, precisely, is why the “progressives” hate both: For the Left - and, sadly enough, much of the Right as well - seeks to write your script for you instead. Such enemies of freedom recognize that in order to take America down politically it must first be taken down ideologically.
And that, in its turn, brings us to the major failing of the movie “America” - that it just doesn’t take its own thesis far enough.
Yes, Mr. D’Souza is correct in slamming the point home that it’s the educational institutions that drive the culture and set the leitmotif for American society. He flounders, however, when it comes to properly identifying the source of that educational rot: Philosophy.
If our colleges and universities, today, preach that reason and reality are in contradistinction to one another - that American thought conflicts with the dictates of existence - we have the philosopher Immanuel Kant to thank for that.
And if our students are being taught that “theory” doesn’t matter - that America’s limitations on political power are nothing more than arbitrary social constructs - we have the philosopher William James to thank for that.
And if many of our teachers teach that nothing is provable - that one can’t actually demonstrate that all human beings are entitled to their individual rights - we have the philosopher David Hume to thank for that.
And if our kids’ minds are being swamped with the idea that ethics is nothing more than illusion - that it doesn’t really matter whether you live as a producer or as a thief - we have the philosopher Georg Hegel to thank for that.
Far from being the mere “ivory tower” intellectual gymnastics that most people consider philosophy to be, it is philosophy in its widest, most systemic sense - i.e., the science that studies the fundamental aspects of the nature of existence - that drives ideas, and it is then those ideas that drive the world.
In order to properly reclaim America, therefore, it is the realm of philosophy that must be reclaimed first. It was the philosophies of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment that created the ideas of America to begin with, and it is only with the resurrection of reason, individualism and capitalism that the remaking of America can ever begin again.
In that regard, however, let’s cut Mr. D’Souza a little slack: For that’s going to take more than a two-hour movie to bring about.
