HOUSTON, Texas–Dinesh D’Souza, filmmaker of 2016: Obama’s America, came to Houston to begin promotion of his new movie America. He had his latest book with him–America: Imagine The World Without Her.” Conservative and Republican activists and elected officials stood in line to get autographed copies. D’Souza is the author of the 2010 bestseller The Roots of Obama’s Rage.
D’Souza’s film America will be previewing in Houston on June 27, 2014 and in Atlanta on July 2, 2014. It will open in thousands of theaters nationwide on July 2, 2014. The Houston event was designed to engage activists and get them excited about the movie. D’Souza told the crowd that film executives will watch Houston to see how the movie previews.
The event was organized by the Texas Tea Party Republican Women’s Club and other Houston area, Harris County, Fort Bend, and Montgomery County Republicans. Texas elected officials, including the Texas Republican Party Lt. Governor nominee, State Senator Dan Patrick, and former Majority Whip Tom Delay, were in attendance. Veterans, including those who served in World War II, were also there to hear the speaker.
D’Souza, born in Bombay, India, is a writer, scholar, and public intellectual. He is a former policy analyst in the Reagan White House. D’Souza has been very critical of President Obama.
D’Souza claims that the federal government has engaged in selective prosecution because of D’Souza’s political views. D’Souza recently plead guilty to campaign finance fraud in federal court. The charges–exceeding donor limits in 2012 in a scheme to get others to contribute under their own names to the New York State Senate campaign of Wendy Long, and making false statements to investigators over the issue. D’Souza admitted to encouraging others to donate to the candidate after he had exceeded the legal amount in his own giving. He then secretly agreed to reimburse people at a later date who gave to the candidate. D’Souza met Long in the 1980’s while in college at Dartmouth.
Tom Delay called D’Souza a “courageous American citizen” and told the crowd that D’Souza may go to prison because of “this criminalization of politics.” Delay, who has faced criminal prosecution because of political actions, will have his case heard at the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals in mid-June.
D’Souza said that the founders of this country led America to be the strongest, most successful country in the world. America has been a super power for 60 years, and the sole super power since the fall of the Berlin Wall. “If America is to be pulled down, it will be from within. It will not be from Egyptian Malla or Venezuela dictators.”
D’Souza’s movie America seeks to “answer the central moral challenge of America’s critics, which is that America’s greatness is based on theft, plunder and oppression.” It reveals the plan of progressives to demonize the United States as the “new evil empire” and a “predatory colonial power.”
D’Souza warned that “anti-American propaganda is being promoted to our children and our grandchildren and is subsidized by us.” He said that teachers are involved in the “shaming of America.” Children are no longer encouraged to take pride in America.
D’Souza reminded the crowd that Obama told Americans during his inaugural speech that he “was going to remake America.” He said that for Obama to do so, he would first have to “unmake America.” He warned that Obama cannot do this by himself, he “needs a movement within the culture.” He said that “the movement” was “education, Hollywood, the media, churches, and national public radio.”
D’Souza explained that “shifting cultural assumptions occur when questions about gay marriage comes up and the consensus is already done.” He says the movement gets its strength by progressives thrusting powerful arguments on us and through the culture.
D’Souza said that conservatives are losing the argument because they base their dialogue on “liberty;” progressives base their argument on “justice.” He said that while “deprivation of liberty makes people feel bad, deprivation of justice makes your blood boil.” We are losing with young people because they are moved by ideas of justice.
D’Souza said that progressives are also winning because young people are not taught history. Educators are teaching “carefully selected history” and are “serving up a morality tale.” Students are told that the founding fathers were hypocrites because they had slaves. Children can recite Sojourner Truth but are then fast forwarded to the 1960’s where “things started to get better.”
The argument of progressives is that government redistribution of wealth is based on the idea of “stolen goods.” The argument has a historical, as well as, present component. The historical piece is that Native Americans were killed during the birth of this country, then we had slaves. The country also “took” half of Mexico. D’Souza said that American foreign policy is being sold as “taking from” countries that have resources, for example, Iraq. Capitalism is the final theft, and Obama now calls for “their fair share.”
Barak Obama’s argument is that wealth in America is created by American society and greedy entrepreneurs. If the property is not “yours,” you must give it back. D’Souza said that it is this idea that gives progressive their moral supremacy and energy.
D’Souza explained progressive thought by using the example of a hotel parking employee. The parking rate per night is $25, and the employee parks 100 cars a day. The employee makes the hotel $2,500.00 a day but he only makes $100. The employee is told and believes that the remaining dollars have been “stolen” from him.
D’Souza said that envy drives the left using the media, resentful politicians, pastors, and others. The movement requires a “member of a knowledgeable class” such as a professor. Obama offers up an answer of righteous indignation and a belief that others are “in surreptitious possession of your stuff.”
D’Souza said that the ones who rule in America, are the ones who establish the guideposts. He said that there are about 50,000 people who change public opinion. He said that bloggers and activists are a part of that.
He also said that conservatives have failed when they make films because they “preach a message.” D’Souza said that in order to be successful, a movie must first entertain, and it must move emotionally, only then can it have a message. He said he was going to give the liberal filmmaker Michael Moore some heavy competition and knock him off the charts.
D’Souza said that high quality, low cost education online, could be a “wrecking ball” to use against progressives. He explained that liberals operate in high cost, low quality education. He also said that small groups, like on a college campus, can birth an entire culture for a university. He told conservatives that “Obama mobilizes his power but we don’t.” D’Souza explained that the lion tamer makes the lion obediently prance because the lion does not know its power. Conservatives must claim their power.
D’Souza encouraged and inspired the group saying that the founding of our country was about creation, and the civil war was about preservation. He continued that World War II was about protection. He said that “our time is about restoration of America.” In the movie trailer, D’Souza said “how badly we need right now a Washington, a Lincoln, a Reagan. Well, we don’t have them, but we do have us.”
Texas State Senator and Republican nominee for Lt. Governor Dan Patrick said “Dinesh is without question one of the great intellects and conservative minds in America. If we can clone him and have him teach history on every college campus in America, all our problems will be solved in a very short time.” Republican State Senator nominee Paul Bettencourt said that “a message that a world without America is a world without hope. Without America’s commitment to liberty in the past, we would not be enjoying any of the freedoms that we are fighting to hang onto today.”
Harris County Republican Party Chair Elect Paul Simpson said that he was “optimistic that inspired conservatives can and will win the long-term fight for our principles in politics, education, and culture. America’s best days lie ahead.”
The intellectually pugilistic D’Souza still has a ton of fight in him. Speaking to the problems of fighting with progressives, he quoted George Bernard Shaw saying, “I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and besides, the pig likes it.”
Follow Lana Shadwick on Twitter @LanaShadwick2.
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