Book Review: Dinesh D'Souza's "What's So Great About America"
Dinesh D'Souza's "What's So Great About America" (2002)
Fitz E. Barringer
2005-01-02
The black flames were still raging inside the World Trade Center, the West side of the Pentagon lay in ruins, and somewhere above a Pennsylvanian field a few brave people aboard United Airlines Flight 93 were about to overpower their captors when Americans first began to ask why. Why would America, the land of prosperity and human freedom, come under such brutal attack from an organized band of Islamic fundamentalists?
This complex and relevant question forms the basis of Dinesh D'Souza's powerful and compelling book What's So Great About America. In the political treatise D'Souza argues that the very aspects of American identity so revered by other nations - her military power, her enormous economy, and her human freedoms - are the same targets of Islamic fundamentalists like Osama bin Laden and Sayyid Qutb.
Around this central theme, D'Souza also wonders why various groups both inside and outside of America criticize our government and way of life. Many Europeans, for instance, see Americans as arrogant and uncultured. Some Americans, meanwhile, such as the so-called multiculturalists, believe that America suppresses the ethnic identities of other nations and peoples.
Indeed, according to D'Souza, it appears that in the thirteen years following the fall of the Soviet Union, America has become the most hated nation on Earth. The Islamic nations hate American immorality; the multiculturalists despise American repression of other cultures; and Europeans resent our position of worldwide power.
Despite this propensity of hate directed at America, however, D'Souza argues that all people, and Americans especially, should love the United States and respect it as "the last best hope for the world." America's freedoms and values truly elevate it to a level beyond any nation before.
In his argument for American greatness, D'Souza does not shy away from the claims of its enemies and detractors. Instead, he confronts their statements head on. Cleverly and in a systematic approach with methodological accuracy, D'Souza dismantles the positions of the Europeans, multiculturalists, and Islamic fundamentalists.
The Europeans dissenters, he claims, are simply jealous of America's prosperity and power. France, Germany, and other like-mined European states fondly remember the days of European conquest and worldwide domination. Now, faced with the success of their former New World colony, Europeans criticize America's power as a way to maintain their own faÀ܈üade of global relevancy.
To the multiculturalists who believe that America suppresses the cultural identities of its immigrants and minorities, D'Souza says "wrong." Speaking from his own experiences as an Indian immigrant and drawing on numerous other examples, D'Souza proposes that many immigrants embrace American culture because it gives them opportunities unavailable in their home nations. In addition to more money and a more comfortable life, America offers personal freedoms and a right to choose one's own destiny - a prospect, D'Souza claims, unimaginable to many Indians, Middle-Easterners, or other third world inhabitants.
D'Souza reserves his most compelling argument for the Islamic fundamentalists who believe that their societies, based on virtue, are superior to the American culture of freedom. This argument, he states, is fundamentally flawed because Islamic states force virtue on their inhabitant while America, through freedom, allows its citizens to choose virtue. Any regime, state, or society that requires virtue by law, such as many Islamic states, actually has no virtue at all. If an Islamic woman covers he face because she is forced to, she is obeying a law, not being virtuous. This shocking, but compelling statement, allows D'Souza to illustrate other inconsistencies in fundamentalist Islamic thought and provide several remedies to the issues of anti-Americanism in the Islamic world.
Along the way, D'Souza manages to eloquently defend or clarify various aspects of Western and American culture that many see as evidence of American wickedness. The would-be evils of slavery, colonialism, and capitalism are all addressed and refuted. Even the problems of the disintegration of African American families are confronted in the book.
Despite the broad array of topics addressed in What's So Great About America, however, D'Souza maintains a consistent focus. The reader is never in doubt of D'Souza's position on a topic or the aims of his arguments. Moreover, his flowing prose is easy to follow and enjoyable to read.
Amidst the worries of the War of Terror and the many attacks on American society, D'Souza's What's So Great About America offers an interesting, informative, and relevant contradiction to America's dissenters. By its conclusion, the reader is armed with a variety of arguments that defend America's place in the world. In addition, the conclusion reminds the reader that America's boundless opportunities and its freedoms - not just its power and its economy - truly do make the United States a great nation.
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Publisher: Penguin
Pages: 240
Purchase: What's So Great About America.