Dinesh D'Souza's Death of a Nation: Rectifying revisionist history
All written history is revisionist. With each successive generation, history is rewritten by people with new access to classified information, memoirs of those who were present, and the ever changing political landscape that colors everything we read about history and current events, political and cultural. Often, the revisions of important events of the past are welcome and truthful, corrections of past misperceptions. But just as often, revisionist history is slanted toward the politics of the era, the decade, or the current climate.
Since the 1960s and the takeover of higher education by tenured radicals that followed, American history has indeed been revised to favor the progressive left and to indoctrinate Americans with a distorted view, if not outright misrepresentation, of the facts of American history. The 1960s were characterized by the anti-Americanism of the new left, and these leftists set out to drastically alter how Americans learned the history of their country. Academia, in short, lied. Its books lied.
Dinesh D'Souza's new documentary, Death of a Nation, attempts to correct the record and to inform viewers about the various -isms that are generally conflated by academics and the media, most all of whom are anti-American leftists: Nazism, socialism, communism, Marxism, fascism, and progressivism. They are all of a piece, and the left admires and endorses them all in one form or another. All are anti-capitalist, anti-American. All are characterized by totalitarianism to one degree or another.
To present this truth of the distortion of our nation's history is a dangerous act of courage. D'Souza is a brave man. He is also a grateful man, grateful to be an American. He was born in Mumbai.
The truth of the film's premise is undeniable. It is the Democratic Party that promulgated the Civil War, so fervent were Democrats to preserve the institution of slavery. Thanks to Abraham Lincoln, the Republic was saved. Then came the Jim Crow laws, segregation, and all policies of the Southern Democrats. Then the presidency of Woodrow Wilson, a card-carrying racist in every sense of the word, cemented the fact that the Democrats were the party of racism.
It was Wilson who screened D.W. Griffith's Birth of a Nation at the White House in 1915. The film revived the Ku Klux Klan with Wilson's blessing. It is that film from which D'Souza takes his title and turns it upside-down. Wilson's presidency reified the Progressive movement that has escalated with every passing decade. It was Wilson who promoted white supremacy.
The film exposes the venal racism that motivated Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood. She was as genocidal in theory as Hitler. Her foundation has been a smashing success: over 15M African-American babies have been aborted since 1973. If not for all these abortions, African-Americans would outnumber Hispanics in the US.
The left has become increasingly intolerant of opposing views, has become more dismissive of the Constitution, and successively has embraced one or another of the far-left -isms. So convinced of the supremacy of their own views, they think nothing of calling for the banning of free speech if in opposition to their own, and ever more government control over how the American people live their lives. As the film points out, the Nazi platform is remarkably similar to the current Democratic Party platform, including state control of nearly every aspect of life: health care, banks, industry, religious expression, education, and the media. Are not all these things the left seeks to control today?
The Obama administration put D'Souza in prison for funneling a mere $20K to a college friend running for office. His conviction was in effect punishment for his documentary, Obama's America, in 2012. That film, too, was an attempt at educating the public about Obama's nefarious intentions for the "transformation of America." D'Souza's imprisonment was political revenge, plain and simple. This is how the Clinton-Obama left plays the game.
Obama weaponized every government agency over which he presided; FBI, CIA, DOJ, EPA, IRS, NSA. He turned America into a police state with two unequal systems of justice. The crimes of the Clintons are legion. The crimes of the Obama administration are still being unearthed, slowly but surely. The illegal, unconstitutional attempt to sabotage the Trump campaign and then his presidency began under Obama, most likely at his behest. He meant for Hillary to carry on his transformation of the country. D'Souza does not delve into what is the most serious political scandal in U.S. history. He only draws the obvious comparisons to the other corrupt regimes of the West.
D'Souza does explore the comparison between Lincoln and Trump. Lincoln was equally, if not even more so, loathed by half the country, especially the half that did not want an end to slavery, the Democrats. Those who hated him successfully assassinated him. Skipping ahead, we learn in the film that FDR admired Hitler. True. Both men saw themselves as progressives. Both sought to make and succeeded in making citizens more dependent on the government. FDR admired Mussolini as well, and yet he remains a hero of the left.
This is not surprising once one realizes that fascism, Nazism, and communism are all ideologies of the left. All are aligned against President Trump today as they were against Lincoln in 1860. This fact should be a wake-up call for all Americans. Do we value the liberty that was the principal gift of the Founders, or are we going to willingly give it up out of apathy?
There is no apathy among the Trump-supporters. They very much want to preserve the nation of our founding and the freedoms promised in it. That is why Trump won the election and why the left has been in a meltdown ever since. The left is like a spoiled child who has a tantrum when he does not get what he wants when he wants it. But leftists are often sadly uninformed as to the reality of America's profound success in making lives better for everyone.
Antifa, Black Lives Matter, Occupy Wall Street, the anti-ICE activists – are all products of the left. Their champions in Congress are well known: Pelosi, Schumer, Ellison, Swalwell, Warren, Harris, Booker, Schiff...it is a long list. They want open borders, unrestricted illegal immigration, and the dependency of as many people as possible on the government. They abhor a strong America and favor submission to terrorist states like Iran, North Korea, and Russia.
Death of a Nation is not only a needed corrective to the revisionist history of the left, but a warning to all Americans. Wake up. Walk away from the Democrats if you value the freedoms older citizens grew up taking for granted. We can take them for granted no more. They are at risk with each election. D'Souza's film is a must-see for every American who reveres the Constitution and the liberty it guaranteed every citizen of America.