America Quotes

“Contrary to what we hear, the great American divide is not a clash between conservatives who advocate liberty versus progressives who oppose liberty. Rather, the two sides each affirm a certain type of liberty. One side, for example, cherishes economic liberty while the other champions liberty in the sexual and social domain. Nor is it a clash between patriots and anti-patriots. Both sides love America, but they love a different type of America. One side loves the America of Columbus and the Fourth of July, of innovation and work and the “animal spirit” of capitalism, of the Boy Scouts and parochial schools, of traditional families and flag-saluting veterans. The other side loves the America of tolerance and social entitlements, of income and wealth redistribution, of affirmative action and abortion, of feminism and gay marriage.”
― Dinesh D'Souza, America: Imagine a World Without Her

“When Kenya became independent in the early 1960s, it was at the same economic level as South Korea. But Kenya took the socialist road and South Korea took the capitalist road. Today South Korea is many times richer than Kenya. Sure, there are important cultural differences between the two countries. But we can also verify the superiority of capitalism to socialism by comparing South Korea with North Korea. Same people, same culture. Yet North Korea remains desperately poor while South Korea is a comparatively rich country. India suffered the same fate as other socialist nations—it had a stagnant economy, and indeed for nearly half a century India was symbolized by the “begging bowl.”
― Dinesh D'Souza, America: Imagine a World Without Her

“The allegation of some progressives that America is an evil empire is not simply wrong—it is obscene.”
― Dinesh D'Souza, America: Imagine a World Without Her

“Bill Ayers, Frank Marshall Davis, Edward Said, Roberto Mangabeira Unger, and Jeremiah Wright. This is a group I’ve previously called “Obama’s founding fathers.”
― Dinesh D'Souza, America: Imagine a World Without Her

“Frank Marshall Davis, the former Communist who was Obama’s mentor in Hawaii, was so radical that he opposed President Truman’s Marshall Plan as a “device” for maintaining “white imperialism.” Truman and Marshall, he wrote, were using “billions of U.S. dollars to bolster the tottering empires of England, France, Belgium, Holland and the other western exploiters of teeming millions.” Indeed the objective of America after World War II was “to re-enslave the yellow and brown and black peoples of the world.” While Davis spurned America he praised “Red Russia” as “my friend.”3 Young Obama—sitting in Davis’s hut in Hawaii week after week for several years—took it all in. This portrait of devoted young Obama imbibing the ravings of a pot-smoking former Communist is the progressive version of a Norman Rockwell painting.”
― Dinesh D'Souza, America: Imagine a World Without Her

“Second, America is drowning in debt. While China is the world’s largest creditor nation, America is the world’s largest debtor nation. At $17 trillion, the national debt is now bigger than the annual gross domestic product—in other words, it is bigger than the total sum of goods and services that America produces in a year. Nearly half of this debt has been accumulated during the Obama years, at the average rate of a trillion dollars a year. At this pace, Obama will more than double the deficit in two terms. Since a substantial portion of America’s debt is owed to foreign countries, such as China and the Arab nations, debt produces a transfer of wealth away from America and toward the rest of the world. Today, instead of America owning the world, the world increasingly owns America.”
― Dinesh D'Souza, America: Imagine a World Without Her

“A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep.”
― Dinesh D'Souza, America: Imagine a World Without Her

“Obama’s claims about teachers and CEOs gets to a broader puzzle about how a capitalist society assigns rewards. At first glance, it seems that there is no relationship between merit and reward. Athletes and entertainers, who provide services much less indispensable than teachers and doctors, earn vastly more than either of those two professions. Earlier I mentioned the example of the parking lot guy who parks all the cars and makes money for the resort, yet he gets a pittance of that money. From his point of view, there is no relationship between work and reward. He does the work, and “they” get the profits. This is pretty much how workers feel in a variety of occupations. They are the “makers” and their bosses are the “takers.” In a truly fair and merit-based society, they should get more and the bosses should get less. These arguments are, whether their proponents recognize it or not, anchored in Karl Marx’s notion of “surplus value.” Marx is largely discredited today, because Communism proved a failure, and Marx’s prophecies proved dead wrong.”
― Dinesh D'Souza, America: Imagine a World Without Her

“The Sioux position, conveyed by White Face, is that the land needs to be returned; it needs to become tribal land again. White Face showed me what used to be several ancient sacred sites “where the Great Spirits dwell” and she wants those sites restored, so Sioux people can once again commune with the spirits. I reminded White Face that before the Sioux, there were Cheyenne Indians and other tribes on that land. So if America stole the land from the Sioux, didn’t the Sioux steal the land from the Cheyenne and other tribes? If the land is returned to the Sioux, shouldn’t the Sioux turn around and give it back to those who had it before? White Face looked flustered.”
― Dinesh D'Souza, America: Imagine a World Without Her

“Another way to put it is that the majority must not use its power to trample on minority rights. The Founders were very concerned about this. What if the majority decides, for instance, to confiscate the property of the minority? The Founders insisted that “tyranny of the majority” is just as dangerous as having a one-man tyrant. In some ways, it’s more dangerous. It’s bad enough to be oppressed by one man—even worse to be oppressed by the bulk of your fellow citizens. In Notes on Virginia Jefferson declared that “an elective despotism was not the government we fought for.”
― Dinesh D'Souza, America: Imagine a World Without Her

“253”
― Dinesh D'Souza, America: Imagine a World Without Her

“STORY”
― Dinesh D'Souza, America: Imagine a World Without Her

“Inequality of outcomes is not seen as a necessary evil that government should seek to remedy; rather, the government itself exists to guard citizens’ right to accumulate unequal fortunes and property.”
― Dinesh D'Souza, America: Imagine a World Without Her

“bulls and even royal edicts were largely ignored thousands of miles”
― Dinesh D'Souza, America: Imagine a World Without Her

“A third entrepreneurial contribution is risk. While labor gets paid its fixed wage, the entrepreneurs take all the risk. Entrepreneurs might do well, but they might also lose money, ending up worse than they were before they started. The worker’s risk is much lower: at worst, he’s out of a job and doesn’t get additional wages. No one, however, asks the worker to receive wages only if the company does well, or to give back wages to help the company meet its obligations. So these distinctive entrepreneurial contributions—ideas, organization, and risk—are very different from “labor,” indeed they involve the establishing of a system that then enables labor to function. If labor gets paid “wages” in return for its contributions, entrepreneurs get paid “profits” in return for theirs. There is nothing inherently unfair about that, even when the profits are substantial, since without entrepreneurs, the workers would not have their jobs. Moreover, the parking lot guy seems to be suffering from an optical illusion. He thinks that he is doing the work of parking the car, but he is merely the last man in a chain of employees who are getting this particular job done. The parking lot guy wonders, “All I got paid was $100. Where did the rest of the money go?” Well, it went to all the other people who created and designed, and continue to maintain and manage a resort property in which it is feasible to charge $25 per day to park a car. Instead of wallowing in his grievances, and voting for Obama, the parking lot guy would do better for himself if he asked, “How can I become one of the managers?” or “How can I start a company that builds and operates parking lots?”
― Dinesh D'Souza, America: Imagine a World Without Her

“For Obama, however, it is good for America to have less influence. In tune with his progressive and anti-colonial ideology, Obama regards the American empire as the only remaining empire in the world. While America exalts democratic and universalistic ideals, in reality its foreign policy has been based on self-interest and plunder. America has used its power irresponsibly, to dominate others and to control their oil and other resources. Consequently Obama seeks to end America’s neocolonialism, its large-scale global theft. To do this, he has to end America’s tenure as the sole global superpower. Obama wants America to be a normal country, and to play a shrunken, more modest role in the world.”
― Dinesh D'Souza, America: Imagine a World Without Her

“It is a fact that today steel can be made more cheaply outside America. This is also true of many other products: shoes, shirts, toys, and so on. Cars are different—Detroit’s prosperity plummeted because auto executives made bad decisions and overpaid their workers. Consequently others figured out how to make cars better and more cheaply not only in Korea and Japan, but also in other states like North Carolina. There is unintentional comedy today in watching Michael Moore’s film Roger and Me, in which Moore chases around the head of General Motors to find out why he closed the Flint, Michigan, plant in which Moore’s father used to work. Moore thinks that the plant was closed because greedy bosses like Roger Smith wanted to keep more profits. He fails to mention that unions, like the one his dad belonged to, pressured GM to raise wages so high that GM cars just cost too much. Hardly anyone wanted to buy mediocre cars that were so expensive. Either GM had to keep losing market share, or figure out how to make cars more cheaply. So if Moore wanted to find the greedy fellows who caused the Flint plant to close, he should have started by interviewing his dad.”
― Dinesh D'Souza, America: Imagine a World Without Her

“My conclusion is that technological capitalism is by far the best system for giving entrepreneurs and workers their “fair share.” This fair share, whether measured in terms of profits or wages, is precisely what people are entitled to as a result of the value they create for their fellow citizens. While short-term inequality frequently results from the dynamic energy of a capitalist economy, that energy also produces mass affluence that ultimately raises life expectancy and living standards for everyone.”
― Dinesh D'Souza, America: Imagine a World Without Her

“If Jefferson and the Founders knew that all men are created equal, why not outlaw slavery from the outset? The simple answer is that had they done so, there would never have been a union. Historian Eugene Genovese states the obvious, “If the Constitution had not recognized slavery, the Southern states would never have entered the union.” So the choice facing the Founders in Philadelphia was not whether to have slavery or not. Rather, it was whether to have a union that temporarily tolerated slavery, or to have no union at all.”
― Dinesh D'Souza, America: Imagine a World Without Her

“The 1960s was motivated by repudiation of the old way and the quest for a new way. “Liberation” now came to mean liberation from old values—from the spirit of 1776. This took many shapes and forms—drugs, religious experimentation, sexual promiscuity, even bra-burning, as well as protesting, looting, and rioting. Perhaps most repulsive was the heartless ingratitude and even meanness that young people showed their parents. When frugal, hardworking, patriotic parents saw their teenage children giving them and all they held dear the finger, they saw, with a deep sadness, all that their hard work and savings had wrought. In the late 1960s, from the point of view of parents, America became a foreign country.”
― Dinesh D'Souza, America: Imagine a World Without Her

“Earlier generations of Americans had to strive to provide food, clothing, and shelter for themselves and their children. This task could prove laborious, unending, backbreaking, but it also provided a goal and a horizon for life. It conferred dignity and a genuine sense of meaning and accomplishment. By contrast, the children of the 1960s had nothing comparable to live for. As far as they could see, the struggle against necessity no longer existed. Nor did they appreciate what their parents went through; rather, they regarded their parents as soulless conformists who lacked true openness and idealism.”
― Dinesh D'Souza, America: Imagine a World Without Her

“I read Tom Brokaw’s book The Greatest Generation. This book celebrates the virtues of the generation that grew up between the two world wars.9 As I read Brokaw’s book, I asked myself: What made the “greatest generation” so great? The answer is twofold: the Depression and World War II. The virtues of that generation were the product of scarcity and war. Hardship and need forged the admirable qualities of courage, sacrifice, and solidarity. But the greatest generation failed in one important respect: it could not produce another great generation. Why not? The obvious answer is affluence. The parents of the greatest generation wanted their children to have the advantages they never had. And in giving their children everything they wanted, the frugal, self-disciplined, sacrificial generation of World War II produced the spoiled children of the 1960s—the Clinton generation. Ironically”
― Dinesh D'Souza, America: Imagine a World Without Her

“Recall that this is the first time that America truly had a “generation gap,” a chasm between parents and children. In previous generations, children wanted to be like their parents. They wanted, as quickly as possible, to grow up and become adults. In the 1960s, however, children regarded themselves as morally superior to their parents, even while indulging in irresponsible behaviors like lawlessness and drug-taking that their parents had never even considered. In short order, the children became incomprehensible to their parents, not only in their music, but also in their values. And while the parents grew older, the children, in a sense, never grew up. They remained, as it were, perpetual adolescents. Now they are graying and grayed adolescents, a breed the world has never seen before.”
― Dinesh D'Souza, America: Imagine a World Without Her

“How did we get the 1960s? One is tempted to locate the ideological roots of this era in the 1930s. The expansion of the welfare state that President Lyndon Johnson termed the Great Society seems to have originated in President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal three decades earlier. It is true that FDR made some radical speeches that repudiate the principles of the founding. While the Founders considered the government to be the enemy of rights—several provisions of the Bill of Rights begin, “Congress shall make no law . . .”—FDR insisted that the government is the friend and the guarantor of rights. While the Founders regarded economic liberty as a basic right, FDR justified the curtailments of economic liberty for some in the name of economic security for all.”
― Dinesh D'Souza, America: Imagine a World Without Her

“Obama is the first president whose ideology was shaped by the radical 1960s. Bill Clinton was the first president who grew up in the 1960s, yet Clinton was also shaped by older influences, including Southern patriotism and Bible Belt conservatism. Clinton came of age in the era of the sexual revolution, and his personal behavior displayed the self-indulgence of the 1960s, yet Clinton’s policies showed nothing of the animus toward America that we find in Davis, Said, Unger, Ayers, and Wright. I am sure if you asked Clinton, even today, whether he would like to see America remain number one, he would emphatically say yes and be astonished that he was even being asked the question. With Obama, however, who knows what he would say, and whatever he said, it would probably be quite different from what he actually felt. The reason Obama has evaded and lied about his associations is that he doesn’t want people to know what he learned from them, and the degree to which their views of America are also his. Born in 1961, Obama was too young to have participated in the radicalism of the 1960s, but he is our first president who has learned, from the ideologues of that era, to think of his own country as America the Inexcusable.”
― Dinesh D'Souza, America: Imagine a World Without Her

“Roberto Mangabeira Unger, Obama’s teacher at Harvard Law School and friend since then, has sought to hide his association with Obama. “I am a leftist,” he later told an Obama biographer, “and by conviction as well as temperament, a revolutionary. Any association of mine with Barack Obama . . . could only do harm.” Unger advocates what he terms “world revolution,” a basic takeover of financial institutions and their reshaping to serve global economic equity. For instance, Unger calls for “the dismembership of the traditional property right” in favor of what he calls “social endowments.” Most remarkably, Unger calls for a global coalition of countries—supported by American progressives—to reduce the influence of the United States. He calls this a “ganging up of lesser powers against the United States.” He specifically calls for China, India, Russia, and Brazil to lead this anti-American coalition. Unger says that global justice is impossible when a single superpower dominates. He wants a “containment of American hegemony” and its replacement by a plurality of centers of power.”
― Dinesh D'Souza, America: Imagine a World Without Her

“Most recently, in order to quell dissent, the progressives are implementing a chilling policy of national surveillance and selective prosecution—using the power of the police to harass and subdue their opposition.”
― Dinesh D'Souza, America: Imagine a World Without Her

“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.”
― Dinesh D'Souza, America: Imagine a World Without Her

“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.”
― Dinesh D'Souza, America: Imagine a World Without Her

“American era is ending in part because a powerful group of Americans wants it to end. The American dream is shrinking because some of our leaders want it to shrink. Decline, in other words, has become a policy objective. And if this decline continues at the current pace, America as we know it will cease to exist. In effect, we will have committed national suicide.”
― Dinesh D'Souza, America: Imagine a World Without Her