What's Great About America

[Cantankerous 0]

What's Great About America

by Dinesh D'Souza

February 23, 2006

The Complete Article from The Heritage Foundation

Quotes from the Article:

In the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, we heard a great deal about “why they hate us” and why America is so bad. In the meantime, we’ve endured lengthy lectures from multicultural activists about America’s history of slavery. Leftists continue to fulminate about American foreign policy, which they blame for most of the evils in the world. Cultural pessimists, some of them conservative, deplore the materialism of American life and the excesses and degradation of American culture. Clearly, anti-Americanism doesn’t just find support in cafes in Cairo, Tehran, and Paris; it is also a home-grown phenomenon. In the view of America’s critics, both domestic and foreign, America can do no right.

Having studied the criticisms of America with care, my conclusion is that the critics have a narrow and distorted understanding of America. They exaggerate American faults, and they ignore what is good and even great about America.

The immigrant is in a good position to evaluate American society because he is able to apply a comparative perspective. Having grown up in a different society—in my case, Mumbai, India—I am able to identify aspects of America that are invisible to people who have always lived here. As a “person of color,” I am competent to address such questions as what it is like to be a nonwhite person in America, what this country owes its minority citizens, and whether immigrants can expect to be granted full membership in this society. While I take seriously the issues raised by the critics of America, I have also developed an understanding of what makes America great, and I have seen the greatness of America reflected in my life. Unlike many of America’s homegrown dissidents, I am also acutely conscious of the daily blessings that I enjoy in America.

America’s Good Life

America provides an amazingly good life for the ordinary guy. Rich people live well everywhere, but what distinguishes America is that it provides a remarkably high standard of living for the “common man.” A country is not judged by how it treats its most affluent citizens but by how it treats the average citizen.

Equality

Critics of America allege that the history of the United States is defined by a series of crimes—slavery, genocide—visited upon African–Americans and American Indians. Even today, they say, America is a racist society. The critics demand apologies for these historical offenses and seek financial reparations for minorities and African–Americans. But the truth is that America has gone further than any society in establishing equality of rights.

The Pursuit of Happiness

America offers more opportunity and social mobility than any other country. In much of the world, even today, if your father is a bricklayer, you become a bricklayer. Most societies offer limited opportunities for and little chance of true social mobility. Even in Europe, social mobility is relatively restricted. When you meet a rich person, chances are that person comes from a wealthy family. This is not to say that ordinary citizens cannot rise up and become successful in France and Germany, but such cases are atypical. Much more typical is the condescending attitude of the European “old rich” toward the self-made person, who is viewed as a bit of a vulgar interloper. In Europe, as in the rest of the world, the preferred path to wealth is through inheritance.

The Ethics of Work

Capitalism gives America a this-worldly focus in which death and the afterlife recede from everyday view. The gaze of the people is shifted from heavenly aspirations to earthly progress. As such, work and trade have always been important and respectable in America. This “lowering of the sights” convinces many critics that American capitalism is a base, degraded system and that the energies that drive it are crass and immoral.

Religious Liberty

America has found a solution to religious and ethnic conflict. In many countries today, people from different faiths or tribes are engaged in bloody conflict: Serbs and Croatians, Sikhs and Hindus, Hindus and Muslims, Irish Catholics and Irish Protestants, Jews and Palestinians, Hutu and Tutsi—the list of religious and ethnic combatants goes on and on. Even in countries where ethnic or religious differences do not lead to extreme violence, there is generally no framework for people to coexist harmoniously. In France and Germany, for example, nonwhite immigrants have proved largely indigestible. They form an alien underclass within Europe, and Europeans seem divided about whether to subjugate them or to expel them. One option that is not available to the nonwhite immigrants is to become full citizens. They cannot “become French” or “become German” because being French and German is a function of blood and birth. You become French by having French parents.

Ideals and Interests

America has the kindest, gentlest foreign policy of any great power in world history. America’s enemies are likely to respond to this notion with sputtering outrage. Their view is that America’s influence has been, and continues to be, deeply destructive and wicked. Many European, Islamic, and Third World critics—as well as many American leftists—make the point that the United States uses the comforting language of morality while operating according to the ruthless norms of power politics. To these critics, America talks about democracy and human rights while supporting ruthless dictatorships around the world. In the 1980s, for example, the U.S. supported Anastasio Somoza in Nicaragua, the Shah of Iran, Augusto Pinochet in Chile, and Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines. Today, America is allied with unelected regimes in the Muslim world such as Pervez Musharaff in Pakistan, Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, and the royal family in Saudi Arabia. Moreover, the critics charge that America’s actions abroad, such as in the Gulf War and Iraq, were not motivated by noble humanitarian ideals but by the crass desire to guarantee American access to oil.

America’s Virtue

America, the freest nation on earth, is also the most virtuous nation on earth. This point seems counterintuitive, given the amount of conspicuous vulgarity, vice, and immorality in America. Islamic critics of America, such as the Egyptian philosopher Sayyid Qutb, argue that America has descended into what he terms jahiliyya—a condition of social chaos, moral diversity, sexual promiscuity, polytheism, unbelief, and idolatry that supposedly characterized the Bedouin tribes before the advent of Islam.

My conclusion is that America is the greatest, freest, and most decent society in existence. It is an oasis of goodness in a desert of cynicism and barbarism. This country, once an experiment unique in the world, is now the last best hope for the world.

Dinesh D’Souza is the Robert and Karen Rishwain Scholar at the Hoover Institution. He is the author of the New York Times best-seller What’s So Great About America. His other books include Illiberal Education, The End of Racism, Ronald Reagan: How an Ordinary Man Became an Extraordinary Leader, The Virtue of Prosperity, and Letters to a Young Conservative.

[Jason-Sasha 1]

Walmart

[trailmix 77]

hmmm, well - hmmm.

You know what, America is a pretty darn good country (article in a nutshell).

I would just like to add that there are quite a few darn good countries.

[Mr. Big Dog 10,747]

I like America. I came and live here by choice. It sure ain't perfect but it damn sure is a great place to live and raise a family. I could imagine a number of places to live but none of those would appear to offer the type of opportunities that I am fortunate enough to be able to pursue here.

[Jason-Sasha 1]

I'll never need to live anywhere else

[Cassie 8]

*biting tongue*

[Hilarious Clinton 452]

freedom fries

[Sand 5]

[Mr. Big Dog 10,747]

freedom fries

One of the moments that made me question my choice to be part of America.

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

freedom fries

One of the moments that made me question my choice to be part of America.

Its amazing that for an apparently enlightened country things like that go on and make national news. I'll bet even the French thought that was ridiculous

[vanee 13]

hmmm, well - hmmm.

You know what, America is a pretty darn good country (article in a nutshell).

I would just like to add that there are quite a few darn good countries.

My thoughts too. The US is a very good country. However, a number of other countries share most of the characteristics described in the article. It's one thing to compare the US to India, which is different in many ways. It's another thing to compare it to other countries that have similar opportunities and values (except perhaps for the role of the military, which the US is unique in).

Let's give praise where praise is due. The US is a great country. But comparatively speaking, it isn't that different from numerous other countries, depending on the countries you compare it with.

[Peikko 1,575]

I love living here but the portion highlighted is just OTT and distasteful. I expect it's a great way to sell a lot of books though. Enjoy those rose coloured spectacles.

[Nancy2015 2]

It is a good country to live in, I'd never say otherwise. but the fact that the guy was comparing it to India makes a lot of his points invalid. For instance, the U.S. doesn't provide a good standard of living for the average citizen - we're quite average citizens, but our opportunities are very limited and our quality of life is low. Of course, I bet we would be worse off if we lived in India, but we would be much better off in a socialist country.

And I don't even want to comment on the "gentle and noble" foreign policy

BTW, the highlighted part would be too much even for someone like O'Reily.

Edited September 9, 2007 by Sid and Nancy

[Natsman 0]

It is a good country to live in, I'd never say otherwise. but the fact that the guy was comparing it to India makes a lot of his points invalid. For instance, the U.S. doesn't provide a good standard of living for the average citizen - we're quite average citizens, but our opportunities are very limited and our quality of life is low. Of course, I bet we would be worse off if we lived in India, but we would be much better off in a socialist country.

And I don't even want to comment on the "gentle and noble" foreign policy

BTW, the highlighted part would be too much even for someone like O'Reily.

I agree on this one. It depends very much on where you're from. I can imagine somebody finds it heaven on earth when he/she is from Sudan

[Mr. Big Dog 10,747]

... but we would be much better off in a socialist country.

Are you serious?

I mean, I lived in one and I'd hate the thought of ever going back to living like that. *shudders*