D'Souza Explains American Exceptionalism, Something Obama Does Not Understand. Sometimes It Takes A Non-Native To Explain

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The brilliant Dinesh D’Souza re-visits Obama’s Dream for America on Thanksgiving/Chanukah eve.

Read More About: Which dream will prevail in America? Will it be the American dream or Obama’s dream?

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http://israel-commentary.org/?p=7982

Two fantastic videos with Dinesh D’Souza speaking now and at the Nixon Library one year ago

OBAMA’S DREAM IS NOT THE AMERICAN DREAM

NOVEMBER 21, 2013

The American dream is a dream that goes back a couple of hundred years to when a bunch of guys got together in Philadelphia and came up with a formula for a new kind of country. The American founders believed that if this recipe was adopted, this new country would become the strongest, most successful, most prosperous country on the planet. And so it has been. Here we are, and we are on top of the world. The idea that America is based on a unique formula is called American exceptionalism.

In 2009, President Obama was asked, “Do you believe in American exceptionalism?” He gave a very odd answer. He said, “I believe in American exceptionalism” but then he added this, “Just as the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believed in Greek exceptionalism.” If everyone believes they are exceptional, then clearly no one is.

It’s worth stepping back for a moment and asking, “What is exceptional about America?” What would happen if you were to come to my native country of India; what if you lived there, worked there, stayed for many years, and maybe even took Indian citizenship Could you actually become Indian? No. Why not? Because to be Indian, you need two things; brown skin and Indian parents. Being Indian is a function of birth and blood. And so it is in most countries in the world.

But, not in America. In America, the Irish, the Italians, the Jews, the Koreans, and the West Indians can come here and can, in fact, become “American.” You become American by assimilating into a way of life, to a constitution and a rule of law. So that’s one aspect of American exceptionalism.

Here is another: America is a country founded on entrepreneurship, on trade, and on business. This may seem sort of obvious, but historically the entrepreneur, the merchant, and the trader have been reviled and looked down upon. Confucius said that the noble man knows what is virtuous but the low man knows what is profitable.

Even in Europe today, inherited money is better than earned money. Why? Because inherited money is innocent. It fell out of the sky. If you earned it, the assumption is that you probably had to run over some guys to get it. There is a prejudice against the nouveau riche, against earned wealth.

Historically there is a totem pole, and the businessman and the entrepreneur is at the bottom. But the American founders took that totem pole and flipped it. The entrepreneur is at center stage.

For me, the American dream is not merely a dream of economic opportunity. There is economic opportunity in America. But what is remarkable to me is how well ordinary citizens have it in America.

There is a material allure to America, but when I think of my own life, what has mattered most to me in coming to America is that here is a country where I get to write the script of my own life. Here is a country where my destiny isn’t given to me, it’s constructed by me. Here is a country where my life is a blank sheet of paper and I am the artist. I think this is why young people around the world are magnetically drawn to America: because America represents the self-directed life. This is the core of the American dream.

And then we have a different dream. This is Obama’s dream. Before we get into Obama’s dream, I do want to point out that there is a common view even among conservatives, even among Republicans, that the problem with Obama is that he is a bungler, he is an amateur in the title of a recent book, he tries to do x but he gets y.

This has produced a whole set of conservative punditry essentially lecturing Obama on things like, “Obama, don’t you realize that confiscatory taxation does not produce economic growth?” “Oh, Obama, don’t you realize that by blocking oil drilling in America you aren’t going to create jobs?” “Oh, Obama, may we advise you that Assad, the dictator of Syria, or the Mullah’s in Iran are not our friends?” “Obama, you should wake up to the fact that if we slash our own nuclear weapons this will not inspire the Iranians to do the same.”

Now you can begin to see why people get conspiracy theories about Obama. He’s a traitor. He’s a secret Muslim. He’s a Manchurian candidate.

I would like to offer a little different theory, and that is that Obama subscribes to an ideology that aims to reduce America’s influence in the world. He wants to cut America down to size. He doesn’t want America to be number one. He would be perfectly happy if we were number 18 or number 37.

Why does Obama want to reduce America’s footprint in the world? Because he believes we’ve been stepping on the world. This is his ideology. What Obama really wants to do is redistribute power globally. He would like to see many countries on the world stage – Brazil, India, China, Russia, all vying for power. No single superpower calling the shots.

YouTube Video: Obama’s dream is not the American dream

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