Homeland Defense. - "What's So Great About America" - book review

National Review, June 3, 2002 by John Fonte

What's So Great About America, by Dinesh D'Souza (Regnery, 218 pp., $27.95)

This book speaks to two different audiences, and does so with two distinct voices. The first voice addresses the general reader, a John Q. Public who has presumably been bombarded with an array of ideologies hostile to America's history and culture. This voice is vintage D'Souza: clear, graceful, and well reasoned. The second voice addresses D'Souza's fellow conservatives on political philosophy and strategy. This voice is highly problematic.

In the first three-quarters of the book, we hear D'Souza's first voice. It patiently explains to the reader that the multiculturalists, Third World radicals, Islamists, European critics, reparations seekers, and assorted cultural relativists are wrong about America: Our country is in fact "great and noble" and remains "worthy of our love and sacrifice."

D'Souza says the U.S. should be defended vigorously in the current war against radical Islamic terrorism. Media elites continue to reassure us that Islam, historically, is a "religion of peace," but D'Souza doesn't hesitate to challenge this comforting cliche. Quoting Bernard Lewis, he notes that Islamic culture has traditionally divided the world into the "House of Islam" and the "House of War" -- and has, as a result, embraced as legitimate all forms of jihad or holy war against non- Muslim peoples. The radical Islamists hate us, D'Souza maintains, not because they misunderstand us, but because they understand us all too well. They know that "America is a subversive idea" -- and that the spread of American ideals such as democracy, capitalism, and individual rights will undermine their efforts to establish theocracy.

While radical Islamism at home and abroad dominates today's headlines, D'Souza believes that "the most serious internal critique of America" comes from multicultural ideologists, who are "a powerful, perhaps even dominant force in American high schools and colleges." They denigrate Western culture, while promoting the patently contradictory dogma that no culture is superior to any other. D'Souza points out that for the past 500 years -- thanks to its creation and development of modern science, democracy, and capitalism -- the West has in fact surpassed other civilizations.

HeHe also skillfully debunks the arguments of those who want America to pay reparations to black Americans for slavery. He points out that while slavery and racism have existed throughout all of history, it was Americans and Westerners -- not Africans (who first enslaved fellow Africans, then sold them to Europeans), Asians, or Middle Easterners -- who acted most forcefully against these evils. He quotes the historian C. Vann Woodward, who noted that in the U.S. Civil War 500,000 white soldiers were killed, "one life for every six slaves freed."

As an immigrant and a self-described "person of color," D'Souza is persuasive in describing the attraction of America to newcomers from all races and cultures. For individuals from nonwhite ethnic groups he champions what he calls the "immigrant strategy" (focusing on economic advancement instead of perceived grievances) as opposed to the "Jesse Jackson strategy" (emphasis on political agitation and past injustices). A good part of D'Souza's examination of immigrant successes makes sense; he is too quick, however, to dismiss the concerns of many conservatives about the possible "Balkanization of America." He asserts that because the assimilative powers of American culture are very strong, America "never will be Bosnia."

But while it's true that America never will be Bosnia, it could very well become Berkeley: Instead of assimilating into the traditional melting pot, newcomers could be indoctrinated into the multicultural ideology of ethnic resentments and group (instead of American) consciousness. This is the type of "assimilation" promoted by elite American universities. As historian Victor Davis Hanson has noted, the convergence of a dominant multicultural ideology with mass immigration is especially destructive.

D'Souza contrasts immigrants and indigenous minorities, arguing that "African-Americans and American Indians are the only groups for whom patriotism is a problem." He is hopeful even about Muslim immigrants to America and Europe, asserting that "they have renounced jihad of the sword and confined themselves to jihad of the pen" -- but this ignores a very important fact: After September 11, American Muslims have simply not rallied to the war on terrorism the way Japanese-Americans, German- Americans, and Italian-Americans rallied to the nation in World War II. Indeed, the best empirical evidence available shows that only one in ten Muslim immigrants is more loyal to the U.S. than to the Muslim nation of his birth. The problematic nature of Muslim immigration for American democracy is a major blind spot in D'Souza's analysis.

In the last quarter of the book, D'Souza's second voice emerges. Here he addresses his fellow conservatives, and his argument runs as follows: Since the 1960s, "America has become a different country," because the worldview of Jean-Jacques Rousseau has triumphed. The pre- Rousseauian morality held that "human nature is flawed," and that therefore to rely on one's feelings or "inner voice" is misguided. It is not through inchoate feelings but through reason or revelation that we should determine how to behave. Rousseau, says D'Souza, "turns this paradigm upside down. For him, human nature is basically good." Thus, we should listen to our "inner voice" -- because this voice alone is authentic. Rousseau's "ideal of authenticity" is now "entrenched and pervasive" in American culture, no matter how much cultural conservatives "react to it with fear and loathing."