Content provided in partnership with
Punctuating thoughts; is What's So Great About America an affirming statement, or a question?
Insight on the News, June 10, 2002 by Rex Roberts
Toward the end of his concise and generally sanguine state of the union address, What's So Great About America (Regnery, $27.95, 232 pp), Dinesh D'Souza suggests that the Cold War was but a short hiatus from the larger conflict that has dominated world politics for more than a millennium--the conflict between Christendom and Islam. Christianity no longer is the organizing principle guiding the civilization now known as the West, and Islam is a shadow of the empire that dominated the Middle East, Northern Africa and much of Asia in the 16th century. Still, D'Souza argues, the new war on terrorism is better understood as the resumption of an ancient conflict between cultures.
- Most Popular Articles in News
- The Ten Best Laptop bags
- Tata plans cheapest-ever car for Indian market
- GLOBALIZATION AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF UNDERDEVELOPMENT OF THE THIRD WORLD
- Corn is good for you; Corn is not only a tasty treat, but also a cereal that ...
- THE 50 BEST STYLISH HANDBAGS TO CARRY
- More »
"The enemy conducts its operations in the name of Islam," writes D'Souza, arguing that the terrorists who flew planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were neither cowards nor lunatics, but deeply religious Muslims. "They were armed with an idea, and their colleagues have the weapons, the strategy and the ruthlessness that are required to take on the United States and the West." Militant fundamentalists are prepared to die for their religion and their society. "This in itself is not contemptible or ridiculous," D'Souza continues. "Indeed, it raises the question of what we in America would be willing to give our lives for. No serious patriotism is possible that does not attempt to answer that question."
What's So Great About America is D'Souza's answer, which he gives in two parts: first, in the form of a rebuttal to America's critics, both inside and outside the United States; second, as an affirmation of Western civilization, particularly as it has been expressed in his adopted country. A native of India, he came to the states as an exchange student, graduated from Dartmouth College and soon was working in the Reagan White House, where he met his future wife. He went on to become a best-selling author and, currently, a fellow at the Hoover Institution in California. His experiences as an immigrant, a person of color and a prominent conservative give him a unique perspective on his subject.
The United States, he begins, has solved the problem of material need. By embracing science, democracy and capitalism--the three ideas that define the West--America has extended the benefits enjoyed by the rich and privileged to the common man, in itself "a moral triumph." Affluence, of course, is first cousin to avarice, and the primacy of the marketplace in American life has coarsened American culture, which D'Souza admits can be vulgar and pernicious. He expresses his own fears about raising his 7-year-old daughter in a self-absorbed society saturated with violence and pornography, and recognizes that the economic and political systems that have generated so much wealth also have diminished social institutions such as marriage.
And that's the rub, D'Souza says. Islamists are correct in describing the West as godless and pagan. "They are right that in the West religion has little sway over the public arena, and the West seems to have generated more unbelief than any other civilization in world history." Even the Islamists' epithet for the United States--the Great Satan--is appropriate if one considers Satan to be a tempter. "The Islamic militants fear that the idea of America is taking over their young people, breaking down allegiances to parents and religion and traditional community."
The difference between the two worldviews is clear and irreconcilable. "The West is a society based on freedom whereas Islam is a society based on virtue," D'Souza writes. By freedom, he means the West's insistence on human rights, self-actualization and tolerance, which devout Muslims consider a recipe for social chaos. By virtue, he means Islam's injunction that divine authority regulate all human activity, from the administration of the state to the ablution of the soul. "Is reason or revelation a more reliable source of truth?" D'Souza asks. "Does legitimate political authority come from God or man?"
Defending freedom requires the author to address not only Islamic objections but also endemic criticism from groups on the right and left: multiculturalists who see America as hegemonic abroad and fascistic at home; liberal intellectuals who decry the West's imperialist past; conservatives who reject moral relativism and rampant individualism; traditionalists who fear the subversion of the founding principles of the country. D'Souza explains why colonialism has a positive as well as negative legacy, why reparations for slavery is based on a misconstrued premise and why the "melting pot" is superior to diversity as a cultural metaphor.
He is less absolute when recounting the effects of technology and commerce on the United States in the last century. The automobile helped ruin notions of family and community, for example, and material abundance enabled recent generations to concentrate on what has become the all-American "quest for authenticity." Indeed, the imperative to achieve a righteous autonomy--in the vernacular, to "find oneself"--now trumps all other concerns and obligations. "Getting in touch with one's feelings and being true to oneself were now more important than conforming to the pre-existing moral consensus of society," D'Souza writes. "... And as this new generation inherited the reins of power, its ethos entered the mainstream. As a consequence of this change, America became a different country."
