By Andrew Klavan
July 2, 2014
Dinesh D’Souza’s anti-Obama 2012 documentary 2016: Obama’s America was a surprise smash hit, earning 33 million dollars to make it one of the most successful American documentaries ever. The film put forward D’Souza’s thesis that Obama’s need to feel himself worthy of an absent radical father caused him to view America as a guilty colonialist power that had to be taken down a peg. It predicted that America’s enemies would grow stronger and its friends weaker as Obama progressed toward the end of his term. Much of what it predicted has come true.
You could tell D’Souza had hit a nerve when Obama toadies like Maureen Dowd went on the attack, accusing the Indian immigrant of racism! (What an original way for a leftist to counter an argument she doesn’t like. Funny no leftist has ever thought of it before.) But if we needed any further proof that D’Souza had in fact tapped into a rich mine of truth, it came when the federal government, now an oppressive arm of a corrupt Chicago-style Democrat machine, caught the author and filmmaker in a minor transgression of campaign finance laws and threatened to throw him in prison for over a decade. (This, after all, is the way this administration deals with inconvenient filmmakers, as we know. It’s quicker than the whole illegally-misuse-the-IRS-then-lose-the-evidence thing.)
D’Souza pled guilty; says he made a mistake; admits he’s not above the law. What he hasn’t done is fall silent in fear. Instead, he’s courageously produced a follow-up to the movie that got beneath this corrupt president’s thin skin and I’m delighted to report it’s a very good one.
America: Imagine The World Without Her begins by letting leftists tell why they hate this country, as they so obviously do. D’Souza doesn’t argue with them or try to make them look stupid. He lets them say exactly what they have to say: we stole the country from the Washington Redskins, we enslaved blacks, we murdered all those nice Vietnamese people, capitalism is greed, we suck.
D’Souza examines the way these arguments have become gospel to the left through the insidious work of “historian” Howard Zinn and the genuinely sinister activism of Saul Alinsky, spiritual mentor to both Obama and Hillary Clinton. And then D’Souza takes the left’s narrative apart by the simple technique of putting our “crimes” in the context of the rest of history and the actions of other countries throughout the world. Turns out — as rock star Bono says in the most moving scene in the picture — America is a terrific nation that has transformed the world for the good and continues to do so today.
Throughout the movie, D’Souza’s love for his adopted country comes shining through. His argument is poignant, powerful and convincing. Hey, you don’t even have to see it to know I’m right. You just have to read the nuanced, subtle, considered views of leftists who are already calling the film “nuts,” and a “total piece of junk,” and “the worst political documentary of all time.” Which is Leftese for “a good movie that tells the truth.”
It isn’t often I get to recommend a conservative work so wholeheartedly, but I’m just about positive you’ll like this, especially if you’re a patriot or simply an honest person ready to hear a different take than the one you’ve been getting at the movies for the last 50 years.
D’Souza’s a tough guy for not backing down, and a talented guy for delivering a strong sophomore effort. We need about 20 more like him.
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