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I would like to recommend ‘Stealing America’ by Dinesh D’Souza—Yes, that Dinesh D’Souza, the altruistic, Christian, conservative. D’Souza found that his incarceration for violating campaign finance laws provided him with a new perspective on the machinations of the progressives in politics. He presents this perspective in this book.
While he is in all likelihood not an Objectivist, he references Ayn Rand positively two times.
First, preceding chapter 4 Creating New Wealth:
“The businessman’s tool is values. The bureaucrat’s tool is fear. —Ayn Rand, Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal”
And, second in chapter 7 You Didn’t Build That:
“One of the few writers to celebrate entrepreneurs was Ayn Rand; she unapologetically defends capitalism, the system and also capitalists, the people!…Ultimately, we will see the progressive pitch for what it is, an ingenious scam aimed at depriving the wealth creators of the wealth they have created. Rand calls them ‘looters,’ and this is basically a clinically accurate term for a group that is very much with us today.”
I would suggest that if you choose, read it for the perspective and see how it comports with your own understanding of Objectivism.
Also, although it seems certain that D’Souza did not intend to promote Objectivism, he did so in a modest way and offers an example of how someone interested in promoting Objectivism might do it by quoting Rand or referring to her positively in a book or article that presents a topic of interest.
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Perhaps D’Souza was influenced after his debate with Objectivist Andrew Bernstein. Although it appeared that D’Souza won the debate, perhaps D’Souza learned that his spiel that atheism is evil, because Hitler and Stalin were atheists, doesn’t hold any water.
In that debate, I liked D’Souza — I got the impression that he is smart, charismatic and most importantly likes to pick up an intellectual fight instead of playing it politically-correct.
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D’Souza is very articulate, but as he did in his debate with Andy Bernstein, he falls back on Jesus as his moral base. Of course if you’re a Christian like him, that’s all you’ve got!
In any case, it’s good to see him referencing Ayn Rand. Let’s hope he keeps it up. Maybe some of the points Andy made, made D’Souza go back and read up a bit, and he saw some sensibility he was unable to deny?
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I know that D’Souza has been actively hostile to Ayn Rand/Objectivism. I wouldn’t assume that that’s changed, but we can hope.
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HB,
I know that D’Souza has been actively hostile to Ayn Rand/Objectivism. I wouldn’t assume that that’s changed, but we can hope.
But any compromise with Objectivism will aid Objectivism in the long run. We can’t expect principled and consistent advocacy for a while yet, for the most part. Recall Aquinas and his Aristotle-guided Christianity that unintentionally caused the Renaissance and Enlightenment. Objectivism, as philosophy, is more basic than ideology, religion, etc. Those conservatives looking for pro-capitalist intellectual ammunition will find that Rand’s bullets travel longer distances and penetrate cultural armor deeper than expected and wanted. Their ignorance and evasion of philosophy can also aid us. Their use of Rand’s non-basic ideas will lead them to her basics, whatever they may choose at that point. And when basic ideas become culturally discussible, Rand will become dominant. Leftism and religion will be recognized as destructive and without intellectual defense.
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It is unfortunate that Andrew Bernstein did not call out D’Souza on the latter’s lies and fabrications about history. D’Souza was tendentiously wrong about every historical issue, including the infamous lie that Hitler and Stalin were Atheists. See
http://user-of-objectivism.blogspot.com/2010/11/supposed-atheisms-of-hitler-and-stalin.html
and since some HBL readers might not be able to follow the link, here is the text:
The Supposed Atheisms of Hitler and Stalin
Hitler
Hitler consistently identified himself in his writings as a Christian, and a life-long Catholic. Before the Nazi party came into power, a faction led by Ernst Roehm successfully campaigned for the votes of German secularists, neo-Pagans and homosexuals. Hitler exterminated the top 61 leaders of this secularist faction in The Night of the Long Knives in 1934. Non-religious heterosexual Aryans were allowed to remain in the Nazi Party, but after 1934 the remaining Atheists had no political influence.
Germany’s Churches, both Catholic and Protestant, and Catholic and Protestant religious parties, overwhelmingly supported Hitler, giving him special praise for his anti-abortion and anti-homosexual policies and for his “War Against Judeo-Bolshevism.” Hitler repaid the favor, re-establishing state religions in previously secular conquered countries in Europe. Hitler created two new countries, Slovakia and Croatia, as Nazi satellites; both were established as Roman Catholic theocracies with Roman Catholic clergy at the head of their governments.
Purported “evidence” for Hitler’s alleged Atheism comes mainly from “Hitler’s Table Talk,” a compendium “edited” by notorious pathological liar Martin Bormann. None of the supposed “documents” of Hitler’s supposed “Atheism” has been reliably authenticated; most are demonstrably forgeries, fabricated long after their alleged dates.
Stalin
Joseph Stalin (“Party Name” of Yosip Dzhougashvili) had been a child prodigy whose religious poetry was celebrated by critics and widely published while he was still in his teens. Receiving a scholarship at 16, he chose to attend a seminary for future Orthodox Christian priests rather than a secular university. Shortly before his final exams, Dzhougashvili decided that the emerging Communist movement embodied Christian altruism more perfectly than the established Orthodox Christian Church, and became a Communist activist.
Arguments for Stalin’s supposed Atheism hinge on the fact that he remained in the Communist Party during Lenin’s brief anticlerical campaign (after the Orthodox Christian Church, which as an established church had played in Tzarist Russia a role analogous to that of the Communist Party in the subsequent Soviet regime, was dis-established and the Soviet State was made secular.) Stalin’s one authenticated “Atheist” statement, from an extemporaneous speech (“You know, they are fooling us, there is no God…all this talk about God is sheer nonsense”) dates from that period.
Once Lenin was dead, Stalin resumed his prior habit of making frequent mention of “God” and “God’s will” in his speeches. Stalin consistently refused to include Atheist books in his library, calling them “antireligious waste-paper” (“Stalin’s Secret Life,” B. S. Ilizarov 2004.) While Stalin deported many priests to the Gulag during the Great Purge, the priests were mostly permitted to live – in contrast to (usually Atheist) “Old Bolsheviks,” most of whom were tortured and killed.
According to pro-Stalin activists in the Russian Orthodox Church today, Stalin had a “born again” Christian spiritual experience in 1941, and remained a devout Christian, and was a devotee of the folk mystic St. Matryona of Moscow until his death. Convinced that the German invasion was divine punishment for the dis-establishment of the Orthodox Church and the imprisonment of its priests, Stalin not only released the few priests still imprisoned by 1941, but also re-established the Russian Orthodox Church as the official Church of the State; priests, monks, patriarchs and bishops were placed on Soviet state payroll and given privileges comparable to the privileges of members of the Communist Party.
In Soviet satellite states, such as Poland, local churches (such as the Roman Catholic Church in Poland) were given considerable political authority. For the first time in Polish history, attendance at lessons in the Catholic Catechism, taught by Catholic priests, was made mandatory in all government schools. (Before Stalin, these classes were optional, although in some schools dissenting students were kept in unheated hallways, even in the notorious cold of Polish winters, and many attended the catechism classes just to keep warm.) In the Soviet Union itself, persecution of believers and clergy was limited to sects and churches considered heretical by the Patriarchs of the Established Orthodox Church.
Post-Stalin, questions of religion and Atheism were delegated to the leaders of local Communist Parties, with extreme differences from country to country.
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I have followed the commentary on this thread with some apprehension. What I feared, has come to be, namely that the focus would be on Dinesh D’Souza and not on what he wrote. I referenced his Christian background to indicate that I knew something about the author. However, ‘Stealing America’ is not about Christian faith or any faith at all. There are a few lines where D’Souza mentions that a correction officer thought he did a good job in a televised debate with an atheist. That debate may have been with Bernstein as Boris Reitman suggests, but the specifics were not mentioned in the book. All that was mentioned was that the correction officer thought better of him because of it.
‘Stealing America’ presents a perspective that was arrived at through the association of criminal thought and activity (a new experience for D’Souza) and the thought and activity of progressive politicians. In my view, this shows a commitment to the primacy of existence, as D’Souza integrates his new observations into the context of his existing knowledge. The lack of presentation of a Christian viewpoint may indicate an ability to compartmentalize and thus avoid integrating into the full context of his knowledge, but this is to be expected when one tries to integrate observation with faith—so it was left out.
I have no idea how D’Souza will evolve intellectually and I don’t really care, but in ’Stealing America’ he offers an impressive presentation of progressive politics that can be appreciated by Christian and Objectivist alike—and an example of writing for a general audience.
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Of course, he doesn’t intend to promote Rand or Objectivism, but can he be unwittingly helpful to our intellectual activism efforts? Is he a force we can leverage to our advantage?
If one considers D’Souza’s work as a whole, the answer is no. He is an opponent, not an ally. His work is not merely unhelpful, but the essence of the force that must be countered in order for Objectivist ideas to gain traction.
The best place to start with D’Souza is his book, What’s So Great About Christianity. It explains the foundations of his thought. I haven’t read it (and don’t intend to), but there are plenty of good reviews providing an overview of his case. I found this one short and clear: What’s So Great About Kant? A Critique of Dinesh D’Souza’s Attack on Reason
http://www.skeptic.com/eskeptic/11-08-17/#feature
The idea that Christianity is compatible with reason and freedom is not unique to D’Souza. The Conservatives also hold this view and many of them pitich it in articles and books. The thing that makes D’Souza special is that he understands what his argument means. He understands it all the way down, and he is a persuasive writer.
So how does this play out in practice? Consider his movie Obama’s America (2012). Around 2010 D’Souza began writing articles exploring the theme of Obama as “anti-colonialist”. This might make some sense in explaining Obama the man, and what motivates him, but it goes nowhere towards explaining the cultural phenomenon of Obama’s rise from obscurity on a bubble of Hope and Change. D’Souza’s film and Conservatism as a whole represent a profoundly anti-intellectual approach to an intellectual phenomenon. The distinguishing factor for D’Souza is that he is very good at it, and I believe he knows what he is doing.
In that light, consider this excerpt from the jacket of Stealing America:
As for American liberalism, it is not a movement of ideas at all but a series of scams and cons aimed at nothing less than stealing the entire wealth of the nation, built up over more than two centuries…
He is declaring at the outset that ideas are not the problem. We don’t need to look at ideas, and certainly we don’t need to question our premises. Liberalism just an uprising of thugs, propelled by thuggery and nothing more.
This thesis puts D’Souza in the camp of mortal enemy. Our chief task as intellectual activists is to connect with people who recognize that something is wrong and point them towards fundamental ideas as the answer. That naturally puts us at odds with people who have the wrong ideas. But the most potent enemy is the one who claims that ideas are not the problem. This characterizes the Conservative movement in general. All Conservatives are apologists for religion and altruism, but D’Souza is particularly good at it. He is not limited to merely paying lip-service to altruism and religion here and there. Religion provides the philosophic, thematic, and tactical strategy of his work.
It might seem rather flip to dismiss an entire book based on a sentence from the jacket. But I feel entirely confident in saying that I know the gist of it – an anesthetic balm for those who ought to be feeling the pain of their mistaken premises. I would be very interested in hearing whether I’m wrong about that.
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Re: Kenneth Stahl’s post 99159 of 01/19/16 at 9:51pm
This sounds like very promising reading. Thank you. You remind me to recommend a book too.
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