If America is going down, what is causing this to happen? Clearly the cause isn’t external. There is no Nazi or Communist menace strong enough to destroy the United States. The radical Muslims are a serious threat, both to American lives and American interests, but they do not control the U.S. economy nor can they threaten America’s existence. At best, they are an external drag. Disconcertingly, however, the most powerful drag on America seems to be coming from inside America. We are being brought down from within.
Who or what is responsible for this? In my previous two books, I focused on one man, Barack Obama. Obama’s presidency can be summed up in the phrase, “Omnipotence at home, impotence abroad.”11 Domestically, the Obama Democrats have been expanding the power of the state and reducing the scope of the private sector. Internationally, they have been reducing the footprint of America in the world. How to explain this dual motion? I stressed the anticolonial ideology that Obama adopted from his father, as detailed in Obama’s own autobiography Dreams from My Father. The core idea of anti-colonialism is that the wealth of the West has been obtained by theft. Consider the world as it must have looked in the mid-twentieth century to Obama’s Kenyan father, Barack Obama Sr., or to my own dad, living in India. These men looked around the world and they saw affluence in the West and indigence everywhere else. They saw luxury in Paris and London and impoverishment in Nairobi and Mumbai. When they paused to consider why, the answer seemed obvious: the rich countries became rich by invading, occupying, and looting the poor countries. At this time, Britain still ruled Kenya, India, and many other countries. It was the heyday of colonialism. Thus the anti-colonial explanation seemed unavoidable, irrefutable. It is still widely believed and taught in schools and colleges as the standard account of how the West grew rich and how other countries remained poor.
Anti-colonialism is a Third World ideology, but it came to the United States during the Vietnam War. Consequently Obama learned his anti-colonialism not just from Barack Obama Sr. but from a whole host of anti-colonial radicals in America. I call these men Obama’s founding fathers, and they include the former Communist Frank Marshall Davis, the domestic terrorist Bill Ayers, the Palestinian scholar Edward Said, the self-described Brazilian revolutionary Roberto Mangabeira Unger, and the incendiary preacher Jeremiah Wright. While Obama’s primary mentor was his dad, he learned chapter and verse of the anti-colonial ideology in America, in Hawaii, and at Columbia University and Harvard Law School, and in Chicago.12
Since the 1960s, anti-colonialism in America has been integrated into a larger ideology. For decades, that ideology used to be called “liberalism.” The ideology fell into such disrepute in the 1980s and 1990s, however, that liberals stopped calling themselves liberals. Now they call themselves “progressives.” The term progressive suggests a commitment to progress. Progress implies change, and Obama’s 2008 campaign slogans all focused on “change.” But change in what direction? Presumably change here means improvement, things getting better. But what improvement? Better for whom? It has been said that if termites could talk, they would call what they do “progress.” So we should reserve our enthusiasm for progressivism until we find out what progressives believe and what kind of change they want.
The term “progressive” harkens back to the progressive movement of the early twentieth century. Modern progressives invoke that movement, but they have formulated a much more comprehensive radicalism that goes far beyond anything that Theodore Roosevelt or Woodrow Wilson envisioned. Roosevelt and Wilson were traditional American patriots who wanted to enact reforms, but not remake an America they believed was fundamentally good, indeed great. The new progressive ideology proceeds from a powerful left-wing critique of America, one that grew out of the 1960s and has been refined and elaborated since then.
This critique builds on a single idea: theft. Clearly this is also the core idea of anti-colonialism. Listen to Frantz Fanon, a leading anti-colonialist whom Obama said he read avidly in college. “The wealth of the imperial countries is our wealth too… . The well-being and progress of Europe have been built up with the sweat and the dead bodies of Negroes, Arabs, Indians, and the yellow races… . Europe is literally a creation of the Third World. The wealth which smothers her is that which was stolen from the under-developed peoples.” This awareness, Fanon writes, produces “a double realization: the realization by the colonized peoples that it is their due and the realization by the capitalist powers that they must pay.”13 Modern progressivism incorporates this theft accusation into a systematic critique of America and the West.
According to the progressive critique, America was founded in an original act of piracy: the early settlers came from abroad and stole the country from the native Indians. Then America was built by theft: white Americans stole the labor of African Americans by enslaving them for 250 years. The theft continued through nearly a century of segregation, discrimination, and Jim Crow. The borders of America were also extended by theft: America stole half of Mexico in the Mexican War. Moreover, America’s economic system, capitalism, is based on theft since it confers unjust profits on a few and deprives the majority of workers of their “fair share.” Finally, America’s foreign policy is based on theft, what historian William Appleman Williams termed “empire as a way of life.” Why are we in the Middle East? Clearly it is because of oil. America’s actions abroad are aimed at plundering other people’s land and resources so that we can continue to enjoy an outsized standard of living compared to the rest of the world.
The progressive indictment is a powerful one, encompassing past and present. It is not merely a political critique; it is also an historical one. Since the 1960s, progressive scholars have been doing a new kind of research. They call it “history from below.” History, they say, has traditionally been told from the viewpoint of the great actors, the kings and statesmen who were seen to define events. This is history written by “winners.” Meanwhile, the little people get ignored and the losers never get to tell their side of the story. “History from below” is intended to correct the imbalance. So thoroughly has it been institutionalized that it has now become the mainstream way to tell the American story.
Consider Howard Zinn’s classic text, A People’s History of the United States. This is probably the most influential history book of the past half century. Zinn makes no effort to conceal his perspective. “I prefer to try to tell the story of the discovery of America from the viewpoint of the Arawaks, of the Constitution from the standpoint of the slaves, of Andrew Jackson as seen by the Cherokees, of the Civil War as seen by the New York Irish, of the Mexican war as seen by the deserting soldiers of Scott’s army, of the rise of industrialism as seen by the young women in the Lowell textile mills, of the Spanish-American war as seen by the Cubans, the conquest of the Philippines as seen by black soldiers on Luzon, the Gilded Age as seen by southern farmers, the First World War as seen by socialists, the Second World War as seen by pacifists, the New Deal as seen by blacks in Harlem, the postwar American empire as seen by peons in Latin America.”14
Zinn is not afraid to give a one-sided picture. He does not believe there is such a thing as objective history; therefore, he wants to present his side. And what is his side? Zinn believes in global economic equality, looking forward, as he puts it, to “a time when national boundaries are erased, when the riches of the world are used for everyone.”15 Zinn makes his case, however, with a large compendium of facts, and I for one cannot fault his emphasis on “history from below.” It is both interesting and morally commendable to look at the world from the point of view of the ordinary man, the little guy. How do the great events of the past and present affect him or her? Nations cannot be judged solely by how they make provision for the high and mighty. Rather, what matters is what kind of life a nation makes possible for the newcomer, the commoner, the low man on the totem pole. In this book I too will be doing “history from below,” challenging Zinn and the progressives, but on their own terms.
Incredibly, the “thef
t” indictment of America has never been comprehensively answered. In fact, I am not aware of any previous attempt to answer it. America has champions and boosters, but so far they have relied heavily on slogans of liberty and patriotism and rah-rah-rah. But they have not squarely faced the progressive critique nor have they refuted it. Perhaps it is irrefutable. Didn’t we seize the country from the native Indians? Didn’t we steal the labor of the blacks? Isn’t it true that having taken the land of the Mexicans, we won’t now let them come back and work as agricultural laborers on what used to be their land? The progressive critique seems anchored in accepted facts.
The core of progressivism, of Obama’s philosophy, is a moral critique of capitalism. This is different from the twentieth-century debate between capitalism and socialism, in which capitalism prevailed. In the last century, capitalism won the economic debate on the grounds of efficiency. But capitalism has never fully met the charge that it is unethical. In the 2012 presidential campaign, we heard about how America is divided into two groups: makers and takers. The makers are supposed to be the productive people, and the takers the ones who rely on the government. Presumably if takers outnumber makers, then progressives will continue to win elections.
This analysis, however, misses the appeal of progressivism to makers no less than to takers. Consider the fellow who parks cars at an expensive resort and earns $12 an hour. How many cars did he park yesterday? Let’s say a hundred. And it costs around $25 to park a car overnight at the Ritz Carlton or the Beverly Hilton. So how much did the hotel make on the parking? It made $2,500. And how much did the hotel pay the parking guy? Around $100. So from the point of view of the parking guy, he’s being cheated. He’s the one who is parking the cars. Yet virtually the entire profit goes to the hotel. Why does he get so little? Who gets the remaining $2,400? Our indignant parking guy imagines some rich fellow using the money to take his girlfriend to Hawaii. The parking guy doesn’t view himself as a “taker.” Rather, he’s a “maker.” It’s the rich guy who is the “taker,” depriving his employees who do the work of their “fair share.” The parking lot attendant wants to know, “Where’s my American dream?”
We cannot convince the parking guy—and countless others like him—by simply chanting, “Free markets!” “Capitalism!” “America—Love It or Leave It.” We have to actually show where the other $2,400 went. In other words, we have to show why the rewards of the free market system are not only efficient but also fair. If we cannot do this, we must admit that the actual outcomes of the capitalist system cannot be ethically justified.
If the facts adduced by the progressives are true, the conclusion is both startling and unavoidable. If America is founded on theft, and continues to sustain its wealth through rip-off and plunder, then America as a nation is morally indefensible.
So what should be done about this? A few progressives—the real radicals, the ones who are not afraid to speak their inner mind—do not hesitate to say it: America should be destroyed. For my America film I interviewed the radical activist Ward Churchill. I asked him where today is the “evil empire.” He said, “You’re in it.” He added that the world would be better off if America, like Nazi Germany, were destroyed. I asked him bluntly if he would be satisfied if a bomb could be detonated that would wipe out America. In a calm tone, he replied, “Yes.” So this is the extreme progressive view.
But there is also a rival view, which we can call the mainstream progressive or Obama view. This view agrees with the diagnosis of America but provides a different remedy. The mainstream progressive remedy is guilt and atonement. Americans, in this view, should feel guilty about what they have done and continue to do. Moreover, Americans—especially those who are productive and successful—must realize that their wealth is illegitimate and must be returned to its rightful owners. Obama clearly believes this. He aggressively peddles the theft critique, especially through his “fair share” rhetoric, and his own presidency is a tribute to the power of the theft argument. How, for example, did Obama get elected as a complete unknown? How did he get reelected when the economy was doing so badly? Why do the media give him a perpetual honeymoon? There is a one-word answer: slavery. America’s national guilt over slavery continues to benefit Obama, who ironically is not himself descended from slaves.
Much of the progressive expansion of government—from the welfare state to affirmative action—can be understood as America’s form of reparations for the crimes of history: not just slavery but also segregation, Jim Crow, and racism. Many blacks today still believe America owes them, and some advocate racial reparations in the form of cash payments. What does Obama think about reparations? Consider a revealing statement by one of his former students. He said that when Obama taught at the University of Chicago, Obama “told us what he thought of reparations. He agreed entirely with the theory of reparations. But in practice he didn’t think it was really workable.” In order to have reparations, a society would have to settle such questions as “who is black, how far back do you go, what about recent immigrants,” and so on. Considering such complexities, Obama rejected the idea of reparations for slavery. And this was also his position when running for president.16
But while Obama rejects race-based reparations, I believe he has found a way to achieve global reparations. This involves large transfers of wealth from America to the rest of the world. It also involves wealth redistribution within America. Why should America, which has 5 percent of the world’s population, consume 25 percent of the world’s resources? Why should successful people in America have so much more than other Americans? Obama insists these inequalities are undeserved; as he famously told a crowd of supporters, “If you’ve got a business—you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.” Obama seems convinced that wealth is at best appropriated or at worst stolen rather than earned. He seeks to use his power to take it back. He intends to redistribute the money in America and around the world. In his view, he’s giving back to people what has been illicitly taken from them.
Obama’s approach is supported by a theme in philosophy that goes under the name of “stolen goods.” The basic idea is simple: if you are in possession of stolen goods, you have to return them. If you have acquired wealth by stealing, or if you inherit goods that your ancestors stole from others, it’s not enough to say sorry or to provide token compensation. No, you must return what isn’t yours, and if you’ve used the wealth to accumulate more, then you must return that too.17 So if it is true that America was built on stealing, and that America’s abundance is the product of theft, then America as a nation is indefensible, inexcusable, and under obligation to undo the crimes she has committed and continues to perpetrate on her own citizens and on the rest of the world. Undoing America’s crimes—and if necessary undoing America in the process: this is a summary of the progressive agenda. This is the progressive case for American suicide.
In this book, I intend to refute the progressive critique and provide a new understanding of what America means and why America is worth preserving. I will examine the historical critique by asking a simple question: As a result of the events of American history, are the people on the bottom better off or worse off? In other words, are the native Indians today better or worse because of the arrival of Columbus and Western civilization? Are blacks today better or worse because their ancestors were hauled here as slaves? Are Mexicans who now live on the American side of the border better or worse than Mexicans whose land was not conquered during the Mexican War? This is a way of examining history by considering its current impact.
I also intend to argue that America invented something new in the world. There are very few truly world-changing inventions. Fire is one of them. The wheel is another. The invention of agriculture is a third. In this book I will show that America is a society based upon perhaps the most important invention of all time: the invention of wealth creation. For most of human history, wealth was presumed to be finite. Consider a boy on the playground with ten marbles. How can
he get more marbles? There is only one way. He has to take someone else’s marbles. In the same way, wealth was mostly in land and the only way to get land was to take it. Conquest, in other words, was the natural mode of human acquisition. That’s how most countries were founded, through force and conquest. Slavery and feudal economic exploitation were simply extensions of the conquest ethic. You get stuff by grabbing it or, as Abraham Lincoln once put it: You work and I eat.
Conquest was not merely the way of the world; conquest was seen as a legitimate way to acquire wealth. It is still seen that way in much of the world. This idea is hard for us in America to understand. The ethics of conquest are rooted in the ethics of tribal solidarity. Our tribe is the most worthy of our allegiance, and therefore its interests are paramount. Our job is to ensure the protection and welfare of our tribe. Therefore we should attempt to subjugate other tribes, before they do the same to us. The ethics of conquest are the ethics of a football game; we want our team to possess the ball at all times, and we cheer when our guys knock down and run over the other guys. If we recall the Old Testament, we see how the victories of Israel over its enemies are considered by the Israelites to be unambiguously good. It’s either them or us, and it may as well be us.
Recognizing that conquest had been the universal ethic, America developed a new ethic, the ethic of wealth creation. America is founded on the understanding that wealth can be created through innovation and enterprise. Through the system of technological capitalism, we can go from ten marbles to twenty marbles without taking anyone’s marbles. Obviously there were inventors and merchants around before America. But America is the first society to be based on invention and trade. America is the capitalist society par excellence. I will show how this new system of wealth creation is fair and just, and how it produces a better life for little guys in America and around the world. I will not shy away from addressing the progressive arguments that earning is itself exploitation, that profits are plunder, and that America’s global actions are a disguised form of thievery.
Dinesh D'Souza - America: Imagine a World without Her Page 2
