Dinesh D'Souza: Likeness

“I feel a bit like the mosquito at the nudist colony—I'm just not sure where to begin!”

Dinesh D'Souza

"Does God Exist?" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Fzde_QN4fE&feature=youtu.be&t=19m40s — Dinesh D'Souza and Dan Barker debate at Prestonwood Christian Academy, Plano, TX (November 19, 2009)
Debates
Context: Dan has raised so many points... I feel a bit like the mosquito at the nudist colony—I'm just not sure where to begin!

Feeling

“What the immigrant cannot help noticing is that America is a country where the poor live comparatively well. This fact was dramatized in the 1980s, when CBS television broadcast an anti-Reagan documentary, "People Like Us", which was intended to show the miseries of the poor during an American recession. The Soviet Union also broadcast the documentary, with a view to embarrassing the Reagan administration. But by the testimony of former Soviet leaders, it had the opposite effect. Ordinary people across the Soviet Union saw that the poorest Americans have television sets and microwave ovens and cars. They arrived at the same perception of America that I witnessed in a friend of mine from Bombay who has been unsuccessfully trying to move to the United States for nearly a decade. Finally I asked him, "Why are you so eager to come to America?"”

Dinesh D'Souza

He replied, "Because I really want to live in a country where the poor people are fat."
Source: Books, What's So Great About America (2003), Ch. 3: Becoming American

People , Cars , Help , Country

“Imagine the unimaginable… What would the world look like if America did not exist?”

Dinesh D'Souza

Documentary films, America: Imagine the World Without Her (2014)

World , Imagination

“Visitors to places like New York are amazed to see the way in which Serbs and Croatians, Sikhs and Hindus, Irish Catholics and Irish Protestants, Jews and Palestinians, all seem to work and live together in harmony. How is this possible when these same groups are spearing each other and burning each other's homes in so many places in the world?”

Dinesh D'Souza

Articles, 10 Things to Celebrate: Why I'm an Anti-Anti-American (June 2003)

World , Way , Home

“The first time, we did not know what change would look like. Now we do. The first time, we did not know Barack Obama. Now we do. Which dream will we carry into 2016? The American dream or Obama's dream? The future is not in my hands. It's not even in Obama's hands. The future is in your hands.”

Dinesh D'Souza

Documentary films, 2016: Obama's America (2012)

Dreams , Change , Time , Future

“America, the freest nation on Earth, is also the most virtuous nation on Earth. This point seems counter-intuitive, given the amount of conspicuous vulgarity, vice and immorality in America. Some Islamic fundamentalists argue that their regimes are morally superior to the United States because they seek to foster virtue among the citizens. Virtue, these fundamentalists argue, is a higher principle than liberty. Indeed it is. And let us admit that in a free society, freedom will frequently be used badly. Freedom, by definition, includes the freedom to do good or evil, to act nobly or basely. But if freedom brings out the worst in people, it also brings out the best. The millions of Americans who live decent, praiseworthy lives desire our highest admiration because they have opted for the good when the good is not the only available option. Even amid the temptations of a rich and free society, they have remained on the straight path. Their virtue has special luster because it is freely chosen. By contrast, the societies that many Islamic fundamentalists seek would eliminate the possibility of virtue. If the supply of virtue is insufficient in a free society like America, it is almost nonexistent in an unfree society like Iran's. The reason is that coerced virtues are not virtues at all. Consider the woman who is required to wear a veil. There is no modesty in this, because she is being compelled. Compulsion cannot produce virtue, it can only produce the outward semblance of virtue. Thus a free society like America's is not merely more prosperous, more varied, more peaceful, and more tolerant; it is also morally superior to the theocratic and authoritarian regimes that America's enemies advocate.”

Dinesh D'Souza

Articles, 10 Things to Celebrate: Why I'm an Anti-Anti-American (June 2003)

People , Peace , Freedom , Evil

“If the televangelists are guilty of producing some simple-minded, self-righteous Christians, then the atheist authors are guilty of producing self-congratulatory buffoons like Condell.”

Dinesh D'Souza

"Why Is This Atheist So Smug?" http://news.aol.com/newsbloggers/2007/09/26/why-is-this-atheist-so-smug/62, AOL News.

“The American slave was treated like property, which is to say, pretty well.”

Dinesh D'Souza

Source: Books, The End of Racism (1995), Ch. 3

“It is understandable but implausible…to insist upon prominent media accounts about law-abiding citizens and quotidian virtue; this is a bit like the airline industry complaining that the press does not write stories about airplanes that land safely.”

Dinesh D'Souza

Source: Books, The End of Racism (1995), Ch. 7

Law , Understanding

“The American Indians sold Manhattan to the Dutch for $700 in today's money. My point is, that's what Manhattan was worth then. It was useless, it was just a piece of land, like any other piece of land which you can buy today for $700 in many places in the world. Manhattan today is the result of the people who built it, not the original inhabitants who occupied or sold it.”

Dinesh D'Souza

Dinesh D'Souza Takes On The Case For Reparations: 'The Innovation Of America Is The Result Of Capitalism' http://dailycaller.com/2014/06/18/dinesh-dsouza-takes-on-the-case-for-reparations-the-innovation-of-america-is-the-result-of-capitalism/, The Daily Caller (June 18, 2014).

Money , People , World

“In most countries in the world, your fate and your identity are handed to you; in America, you determine them for yourself. America is a country where you get to write the script of your own life. Your life is like a blank sheet of paper, and you are the artist.”

Dinesh D'Souza

Books, What's So Great About America (2003)

Life , Fate , World , Country