What Makes America Great According to Dinesh D'souza’s Book

Introduction

The novel, What’s So Great About America, written by Dinesh D’Souza, dives deep into the mindset of American culture and uses historical examples to prove the author’s thesis on why America is the superior nation of the world and what makes America great. The main purpose of this novel is to look into the past and present state of affairs in American culture and how they ultimately helped shape the society around it for the better.

D’Souza highlights three major turning points in American history that help back his theory: the collective understanding of the evils of slavery, the impact of Western nations, and Islamism. Slavery was the generation in which lesser people served the rich but how we were able to grow out of that and see every citizen as equals. The Western nations were ones in which people fought for because of the rich land that has been untouched. Islamic ideologies were more left sided while D’Souza has a right sided mind, concluding that any ideas coming from those in Asia did not have the right sense of mind. D’Souza is able to explain why America is great and how it has become one of the most powerful nations in the world.

Evidence That Supports Thesis

Dinesh D’Souza has had much experience within the government and politics of America. D’Souza has made himself present in the world with having multiple books published and recognized and documentaries. D’Souza created a path for himself, “D’Souza has been named one of America’s most influential conservative thinkers by the New York Times Magazine”.

After reading the novel, it is certain that what he has written is very adequate. His knowledge is for sure seen in this novel, he has very strong opinions on America and how it came to be. He spends time writing about slavery in America and how it is just wrong. No one would want to be used as someone’s slave and do their dirty work, but in America that is how it played out. He brings up the fact that every human is equal and all hold their own special qualities and that no one should be stripped of that freedom. America relies on their morals, such as freedom. D’Souza is a prime example of living that American Dream and proving that with hard work, anyone is able to accomplish what they set their mind too.

Throughout this novel, D’Souza makes statements that are knowledge from facts. He creates statements that can be from his opinion, but a majority of the novel comes from facts. While D’Souza speaks about the Western nations, it comes from both facts and opinions. While settlers were seeking out new land to obtain, they had to endure the worst. He speaks about how with settlers being able to get new land, there was a great movement with it.

The fact that slavery had been abolished created the movement towards the West because slavery had been abolished and everyone knew they were viewed as equals and anyone could set out on the American dream. In addition, D’Souza notes that with the Western nations being created, came with much more, such as property rights. Property rights are as such, someone buys a piece of land and they own that land and can do as they please with it. Which means that no one is allowed to go on their property and destroy it as a sign of dominance, as they did before in the world. There are many other great things that occurred but they would not have without the creation of the western world.

D’Souza makes a point when he writes, “Colonialism had injured those who lived under it, but paradoxically it proved beneficial to their descendants.” He is saying that while those who were during the colonization stage, it was rough and difficult trying to find supplies to create their way of living, but when other came in, generations later, they knew where to find tools, food, and supplies in order to live a successful life. In this novel, D’Souza is very knowledge of America and knows what he is talking about. It is evident that he is more conservative about America.

In the first chapter of the novel, he prefaces it with the terrorist attack in New York on the twin towers. Ever since that attack, America has been in war to keep their moral, with the idea that there is much freedom throughout the United States. D’Souza speaks about bin Laden, “Probably bin Laden strikes the biggest chord with the man in the Arab street when he blames the poverty and degradation of the Islamic world on Western and specifically American oppression”. D’Souza makes it known that the Islamic people do not find American’s to be intelligent, well-rounded or any of that sort.

They believe all we want from them is oil and to keep it just at that. Then, they try and prove how they are greater in all the aspects in which we are not. It is known that the Islamic states have oil but, “without its oil revenues, the Islamic world will find itself in the position of sub-Saharan Africa: it will cease to matter”. What D’Souza is explaining is that, there is nothing to serve to their people except that they hold oil over our heads and try to prove they are a stronger and wealthier country than us, but if they did not have oil, they have nothing.

Summary and Critique of Author’s Conclusion

The bottom line that D’Souza proves is how America is so well-rounded and strong. How our country was able to come from nothing and we were able to prove to every other country how to build up a strong economy and government. Our troops are one of the strongest in the world and how our constitution was able to give us the foundation we needed to keep our country the way it is. Even with our morals, we are given the freedom to do as we please, and with our flaws we can still mess up and do things that are against our law and constitution. But that is when our justice system comes out and how to prove someone innocent guilty of a crime.

D’Souza makes it known how great America is, “My conclusion is that America is the greatest, freest, and most decent society in existence”. This novel was a majority of how he expressed his thoughts and feelings about America and how it was able to come to what is now today. Even though this novel was a great deal of his thoughts and reflections, they were not many other viewpoints. The point of this novel was to express what he thought created America today and how we have a multitude of connection and resources that make us the greatest nation on earth.

Personal Reflection

After reading What’s So Great About America written by Dinesh D’Souza, he was able to relate this right to the real world with the terrorist attack on our country. This book is able to be related to the real world because we are still going through the war that was started when the twin towers were attacked. This book is how America came to be when it was dealing with slavery and how it took years upon years for that to be abolished. Along with how the settlers were able to trek out to the western front and create land and life in that part of America.

To conclude the essay, I would thoroughly recommend this novel to others. I would because it gave me a deeper insight on America and the more specifics on how everything came to be. This novel is one of a kind and it created a change for those who did not fully understand where everything had come from and how those generations before created the foundation for what America is today.

References

1. “Dinesh D'Souza's Biography.” Dinesh D'Souza, 2019, www.dineshdsouza.com/bio/
2. D'Souza, Dinesh. What's so Great about America. Regnery Publishing, a Division of Salem Media Group, 2015.
3. “What's So Great About America?: Well, Freedom and Pretty Much Everything the Left Hates.” What's So Great About America?: Well, Freedom and Pretty Much Everything the Left Hates | United Liberty | Free Market - Individual Liberty - Limited Government, 2007, www.unitedliberty.org/articles/18482-what-s-so-great-about-america-well-freedom-and-pretty-much-everything-the-left-hates.