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United States of Socialism: Who's Behind It. Why It's Evil. How to Stop It.
For those who witnessed the global collapse of socialism, its resurrection in the twenty-first century comes as a surprise, even a shock. How can socialism work now when it has never worked before?
In this pathbreaking book, bestselling author Dinesh D’Souza argues that the socialism advanced today by the likes of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Bernie Sanders, Ilhan Omar and Elizabeth Warren is very different from the socialism of Lenin, Mao and Castro. It is “identity socialism,” a marriage between classic socialism and identity politics. America’s typical socialist is not a working-class union man but a Black Lives Matter activist, a transgender militant or a prophet of environmental apocalypse. Today’s socialists claim to model themselves not on Mao’s Great Leap Forward or even Venezuelan socialism but rather on the “socialism that works” in Scandinavian countries like Norway and Sweden.
This is the new face of socialism that D’Souza confronts and decisively refutes with his trademark incisiveness, wit and originality. He shows how socialism abandoned the working class and found new recruits by drawing on the resentments of race, gender and sexual orientation. He reveals how it uses the Venezuelan, not the Scandinavian, formula. D’Souza chillingly documents the full range of lawless, gangster, and authoritarian tendencies that they have adopted.
United States of Socialism is an informative, provocative and thrilling exposé not merely of the ideas but also the tactics of the socialist Left. In making the moral case for entrepreneurs and the free market, the author portrays President Trump as the exemplar of capitalism and also the most effective political leader of the battle against socialism. He shows how we can help Trump defeat the socialist menace.
In this pathbreaking book, bestselling author Dinesh D’Souza argues that the socialism advanced today by the likes of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Bernie Sanders, Ilhan Omar and Elizabeth Warren is very different from the socialism of Lenin, Mao and Castro. It is “identity socialism,” a marriage between classic socialism and identity politics. America’s typical socialist is not a working-class union man but a Black Lives Matter activist, a transgender militant or a prophet of environmental apocalypse. Today’s socialists claim to model themselves not on Mao’s Great Leap Forward or even Venezuelan socialism but rather on the “socialism that works” in Scandinavian countries like Norway and Sweden.
This is the new face of socialism that D’Souza confronts and decisively refutes with his trademark incisiveness, wit and originality. He shows how socialism abandoned the working class and found new recruits by drawing on the resentments of race, gender and sexual orientation. He reveals how it uses the Venezuelan, not the Scandinavian, formula. D’Souza chillingly documents the full range of lawless, gangster, and authoritarian tendencies that they have adopted.
United States of Socialism is an informative, provocative and thrilling exposé not merely of the ideas but also the tactics of the socialist Left. In making the moral case for entrepreneurs and the free market, the author portrays President Trump as the exemplar of capitalism and also the most effective political leader of the battle against socialism. He shows how we can help Trump defeat the socialist menace.
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First published June 2, 2020
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About the author
Dinesh D'Souza
53 books905 followersDinesh D’Souza is a political commentator, bestselling author, filmmaker and a former policy analyst in the Reagan White House, Dinesh D'Souza graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Dartmouth College in 1983. He served as John M. Olin Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and the Robert and Karen Rishwain Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. D'Souza writes primarily about Christianity, patriotism and American politics.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 320 reviews
May 25, 2020
A brilliant expose on the radical agenda of the left and the true evils of socialism. This author is brilliant and well-researched. I have watched him speak on you tube and I was impressed with his wit and eloquence. I loved his analogy about walking into your neighbors house and helping yourself to what is in his fridge. You just wouldn't do that and yet the left wants in our pocketbooks for everything! Take it from a Canadian living with a far-left, communist loving, investment scaring Liberal government. You do not want this in America!
February 23, 2021
In United States of Socialism, Dinesh D’Souza attempts to present a moral argument for capitalism based around a false dichotomization by placing everyone into one of two categories: “capitalist man” and “socialist man.” Capitalist man creates and socialist man takes. D’Souza proceeds to straw man, demonize, and generalize the latter, fails to adequately address the flaws of the former, and never even acknowledges the reality that most people fall somewhere between the two extremes. Throughout the book, he contradicts himself, reverses his logic when it suits him, misrepresents his sources, fearmongers, mythologizes, assumes people’s motivations, tells bold-faced lies, and commits a tremendous number of other fallacies. He may utilize these tactics unintentionally, but given the fact that he frequently points out when his opponents utilize these exact same tactics, combined with his high level of education (he has a B.A. in English) and his lengthy career in politics and academia, he most likely uses these rhetorical devices to deliberately manipulate his audience. Also, in certain contexts, such as his debate with Christopher Hitchens at the University of Notre Dame, he adheres to high rhetorical standards and presents his arguments honestly, but in other contexts, such as in this book or in his frequent mainstream media appearances, he adopts much lower standards. D’Souza does make a few good points when critiquing identity politics and mass media, but this does not make up for his glaring lack of objectivity. Propaganda like this, whether right-wing or left-wing, hurts society because it leads to inaccurate assumptions, a lack of productive discourse, fear, hate, and ignorance of what people with different worldviews actually think and why.
D’Souza begins by setting a tone of demonization and dehumanization towards his adversaries. These include Democrats, socialists, democratic socialists, communists, leftists, progressives, Nazis, and fascists. Although a quick Google or Wikipedia search reveals the stark differences between the definitions of these terms, D’Souza uses them interchangeably to encompass anyone who disagrees with him. He sometimes personally attacks specific individuals, but he usually just attacks groups as a whole. He refers to the New York Daily News reporters as “blithering nitwits,” progressives as “blind” and as “leeches, Democrats as “fools” who don’t love America, and socialists as “crazy,” as “serpents,” and as “the least compassionate, most uncharitable group in society (31).” The typical socialist “is a transsexual ecofeminist who marches in Antifa and Black Lives Matter rallies and throws cement blocks at her political opponents (95).” The typical progressive “despises the founding and the kind of people the founders cherished. He considers himself better than them, more enlightened (85).” D’Souza offers no data to support these claims, instead relying on a smattering of anecdotal evidence and proceeding to generalize and create a faceless evil for his audience to fear.
He seems to believe that leftists have no sense of morality, but this contempt may stem from the difference between the way progressives and conservatives view morality. According to Jonathan Haidt’s pioneering work in moral psychology, The Righteous Mind, progressives and conservatives have different concepts of fairness. Everyone cares about fairness, but on the left, fairness often implies equality, and on the right, it means proportionality. Both sides possess morality, but D’Souza frequently accuses those who possess a different morality of having evil motivations. He accuses those “in academia, in media, the legal and nonprofit sector” of laziness, prejudice, condescension, and entitlement. He admits that he technically belongs to this group, but assures readers that none of this applies to him. These people, he says, want to rule the nation and tell others what to do. He concludes “that power is not their solitary motive; rather, they seek both power and an ideological transformation of American society (72).” These accusations may have contained some merit if D’Souza had directed them at specific individuals, but he makes little effort to do so, simply accusing all leftists.
He does this again later in the book when pointing out the shortcomings of mass media. “Fake news is all we can expect from the progressive media, and that for the most part is all we get (235).” He goes so far as to write that “the left seeks to achieve its goals through naked propaganda,” while failing to acknowledge the irony (224). He makes good points when he criticizes CNN, MSNBC, The New York Times and some other left-wing media for sensationalizing their stories and propagandizing to their audiences, but then claims that Fox News Channel, a right-wing organization, acts differently, when in reality, Fox utilizes the same propaganda model. Most mass media, regardless of political ideology, seek to maximize ratings in order to earn more advertising dollars at the expense of providing accurate information.
D’Souza often uses straw man fallacies to attack left-wing ideas. He complains about the costs of such policies without mentioning the benefits. He even lies to make his points. For example, although he concedes that Finnish healthcare costs less than American healthcare, he also claims that “it’s inferior in quality and offers a smaller array of services (158).” He specifically cites Finland’s common practice of using mid-wives rather than doctors to deliver babies as evidence of America’s superiority. Yet according to most quality of healthcare indicators, Finland actually ranks much higher than America in most criteria, including infant mortality rates. According to UNICEF’s 2020 Child Mortality Report, the United States has an infant mortality rate of 6 per 1,000 (the highest among major industrial nations), whereas Finland boasts an infant mortality rate of just 2 per 1,000. Many other factors affect these rates, but quality of healthcare plays one of the most important roles. As additional evidence of American superiority, D’Souza points out that many citizens of Scandinavian countries purchase private health insurance to supplement their public healthcare coverage. These secondary health plans help pay for noncovered services such as dental care, vision care, physiotherapy, and elective care, but even so, citizens still pay less out-of-pocket in all other rich developed countries except Switzerland. That D’Souza fails to acknowledge this data proves either negligence or dishonesty.
D’Souza also straw mans the idea of Universal Basic Income (UBI) and inaccurately explains the proposals of Andrew Yang, an entrepreneur and former presidential candidate. D’Souza points out that giving every American a monthly income check of $1,000 would cost around $1.8 trillion a year and that the United States could only implement such a program if it got rid of many existing social programs. He then states that no Democrats actually want to do this, not even Yang, but during his presidential campaign, Yang repeatedly states that not only would he get rid of many such programs, but also that his proposal necessitates their removal. D’Souza could have addressed a number of different flaws with UBI beyond the obvious issue of how to pay for it, but instead he simply takes another opportunity to demonize Democrats by calling them liars and thieves.
While lying about his adversaries, D’Souza also contradicts himself multiple times. He claims that American leftists don’t want to model the American economy on Nordic economies. He specifically accuses Bernie Sanders, a self-described democratic socialist, of not wanting what the Scandinavians have, yet just a few pages later, he quotes Sanders praising one of Finland’s healthcare policies. D’Souza also reverses his logic when it suits him. For example, he cites the Republican party as the party that ended slavery and the Democratic party as the party that founded the Ku Klux Klan, but later in the book he acknowledges that the current Democratic party “is not the Democratic party of JFK and Jimmy Carter,” showing that he clearly understands how political parties evolve over time (224). Again, he either fails to notice these contradictions or purposely misleads his readers.
In addition to the fallacies mentioned above, D’Souza also commits the following:
• Slippery slope – If the majority raises taxes, then they could also take everything you own and leave you with nothing (14).
• False equivalency – New York without skyscrapers would be like Paris without cafes (19). New York skyscrapers as they currently exist have significantly more downside than do Parisian cafes. Also, in this instance, D’Souza quotes New York mayor Bill de Blasio out of context.
• Suppressed evidence, or half-truth – “It is hard to name any prominent figure on the Venezuelan left, as on the American left, who hasn’t profited handsomely from their politics (171)." True, but this applies to many prominent political figures on the American right as well.
• Appeal to tradition – The U.S. Supreme Court has consisted of nine justices for a long time, so it should stay that way (94). Many people worry that increasing the number of justices would unfairly shift the balance of power towards the current ruling party, but various methods that don’t involve “packing the courts” also exist to address these concerns.
• Appeal to ignorance – Scientists can’t prove that climate change exists, therefore it doesn’t. They’ve been wrong in the past, so why should this be any different? (114-116)
• Argument from authority – D’Souza references many intellectual masterworks including Friedrich Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom, George Orwell’s 1984 and Animal Farm, John Rawls’s Theory of Justice, and Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations, but he sometimes misrepresents them and distorts their ideas to correspond to his own worldview. For example, he frequently alludes to Orwell’s 1984 to denounce socialism in all its forms, while glossing over the fact that Orwell himself identified as a democratic socialist. He misrepresents Rawls’s ideas, not giving an adequate explanation of equality of opportunity and the difference principle, two key components of Rawls’s philosophy.
• Observational selection – Nearly the whole book falls under this fallacy. When writing of a politician or historical figure that he likes, such as Ronald Reagan or Henry Ford, D’Souza only mentions the positive. Conversely, when writing of Herbert Marcuse or Franklin D. Roosevelt, D’Souza only mentions the negative. The same applies to when he writes about complex topics in general.
D’Souza spends the last chapter of United States of Socialism praising Donald Trump to the point of idolatry. He compares Trump to Abraham Lincoln and thinks that Trump alone can save America from the evil leftists trying to destroy the country. His partisanism becomes most amplified in one of his closing lines: “Trump has made it fun to beat the hell out of leftists and socialists, and even when Trump is gone, we must continue to enjoy the Trumpian experience of being a butt-kicking Republican, Christian, right-wing American capitalist (255).” D’Souza has done his readers and his country a great disservice by publishing this blatant piece of propaganda. He has engaged in a bad-faith argument about what most on the American left actually think, has demonized and dehumanized the entire left, and has consistently accused his adversaries of utilizing the same deceptive rhetorical tactics that he uses himself. Readers would learn much more by reading the books referenced by D’Souza than by D’Souza himself.
Here is a list of some of the best books that he referred to (he does not mention the last five books by name, but he does mention the authors):
The Road to Serfdom by Friedrich Hayek
A Theory of Justice by John Rawls
The Gulag Archipelago by Alexsandr Solzhenitsyn
1984 by George Orwell
The Federalist by Hamilton, Madison, and Jay
Eros and Civilization by Herbert Marcuse
The Nordic Theory of Everything by Anu Partanen
The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith
The Theory of Moral Sentiments by Adam Smith
Anarchy, State, and Utopia by Robert Nozick
On Liberty by John Stuart Mill
My Bondage and My Freedom by Frederick Douglass
Capitalism and Freedom by Milton Friedman
The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx
Das Kapital by Karl Marx
An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals by David Hume
Manufacturing Consent by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky
The Age of Reason by Thomas Paine
Additional references:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaga...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_m...
D’Souza begins by setting a tone of demonization and dehumanization towards his adversaries. These include Democrats, socialists, democratic socialists, communists, leftists, progressives, Nazis, and fascists. Although a quick Google or Wikipedia search reveals the stark differences between the definitions of these terms, D’Souza uses them interchangeably to encompass anyone who disagrees with him. He sometimes personally attacks specific individuals, but he usually just attacks groups as a whole. He refers to the New York Daily News reporters as “blithering nitwits,” progressives as “blind” and as “leeches, Democrats as “fools” who don’t love America, and socialists as “crazy,” as “serpents,” and as “the least compassionate, most uncharitable group in society (31).” The typical socialist “is a transsexual ecofeminist who marches in Antifa and Black Lives Matter rallies and throws cement blocks at her political opponents (95).” The typical progressive “despises the founding and the kind of people the founders cherished. He considers himself better than them, more enlightened (85).” D’Souza offers no data to support these claims, instead relying on a smattering of anecdotal evidence and proceeding to generalize and create a faceless evil for his audience to fear.
He seems to believe that leftists have no sense of morality, but this contempt may stem from the difference between the way progressives and conservatives view morality. According to Jonathan Haidt’s pioneering work in moral psychology, The Righteous Mind, progressives and conservatives have different concepts of fairness. Everyone cares about fairness, but on the left, fairness often implies equality, and on the right, it means proportionality. Both sides possess morality, but D’Souza frequently accuses those who possess a different morality of having evil motivations. He accuses those “in academia, in media, the legal and nonprofit sector” of laziness, prejudice, condescension, and entitlement. He admits that he technically belongs to this group, but assures readers that none of this applies to him. These people, he says, want to rule the nation and tell others what to do. He concludes “that power is not their solitary motive; rather, they seek both power and an ideological transformation of American society (72).” These accusations may have contained some merit if D’Souza had directed them at specific individuals, but he makes little effort to do so, simply accusing all leftists.
He does this again later in the book when pointing out the shortcomings of mass media. “Fake news is all we can expect from the progressive media, and that for the most part is all we get (235).” He goes so far as to write that “the left seeks to achieve its goals through naked propaganda,” while failing to acknowledge the irony (224). He makes good points when he criticizes CNN, MSNBC, The New York Times and some other left-wing media for sensationalizing their stories and propagandizing to their audiences, but then claims that Fox News Channel, a right-wing organization, acts differently, when in reality, Fox utilizes the same propaganda model. Most mass media, regardless of political ideology, seek to maximize ratings in order to earn more advertising dollars at the expense of providing accurate information.
D’Souza often uses straw man fallacies to attack left-wing ideas. He complains about the costs of such policies without mentioning the benefits. He even lies to make his points. For example, although he concedes that Finnish healthcare costs less than American healthcare, he also claims that “it’s inferior in quality and offers a smaller array of services (158).” He specifically cites Finland’s common practice of using mid-wives rather than doctors to deliver babies as evidence of America’s superiority. Yet according to most quality of healthcare indicators, Finland actually ranks much higher than America in most criteria, including infant mortality rates. According to UNICEF’s 2020 Child Mortality Report, the United States has an infant mortality rate of 6 per 1,000 (the highest among major industrial nations), whereas Finland boasts an infant mortality rate of just 2 per 1,000. Many other factors affect these rates, but quality of healthcare plays one of the most important roles. As additional evidence of American superiority, D’Souza points out that many citizens of Scandinavian countries purchase private health insurance to supplement their public healthcare coverage. These secondary health plans help pay for noncovered services such as dental care, vision care, physiotherapy, and elective care, but even so, citizens still pay less out-of-pocket in all other rich developed countries except Switzerland. That D’Souza fails to acknowledge this data proves either negligence or dishonesty.
D’Souza also straw mans the idea of Universal Basic Income (UBI) and inaccurately explains the proposals of Andrew Yang, an entrepreneur and former presidential candidate. D’Souza points out that giving every American a monthly income check of $1,000 would cost around $1.8 trillion a year and that the United States could only implement such a program if it got rid of many existing social programs. He then states that no Democrats actually want to do this, not even Yang, but during his presidential campaign, Yang repeatedly states that not only would he get rid of many such programs, but also that his proposal necessitates their removal. D’Souza could have addressed a number of different flaws with UBI beyond the obvious issue of how to pay for it, but instead he simply takes another opportunity to demonize Democrats by calling them liars and thieves.
While lying about his adversaries, D’Souza also contradicts himself multiple times. He claims that American leftists don’t want to model the American economy on Nordic economies. He specifically accuses Bernie Sanders, a self-described democratic socialist, of not wanting what the Scandinavians have, yet just a few pages later, he quotes Sanders praising one of Finland’s healthcare policies. D’Souza also reverses his logic when it suits him. For example, he cites the Republican party as the party that ended slavery and the Democratic party as the party that founded the Ku Klux Klan, but later in the book he acknowledges that the current Democratic party “is not the Democratic party of JFK and Jimmy Carter,” showing that he clearly understands how political parties evolve over time (224). Again, he either fails to notice these contradictions or purposely misleads his readers.
In addition to the fallacies mentioned above, D’Souza also commits the following:
• Slippery slope – If the majority raises taxes, then they could also take everything you own and leave you with nothing (14).
• False equivalency – New York without skyscrapers would be like Paris without cafes (19). New York skyscrapers as they currently exist have significantly more downside than do Parisian cafes. Also, in this instance, D’Souza quotes New York mayor Bill de Blasio out of context.
• Suppressed evidence, or half-truth – “It is hard to name any prominent figure on the Venezuelan left, as on the American left, who hasn’t profited handsomely from their politics (171)." True, but this applies to many prominent political figures on the American right as well.
• Appeal to tradition – The U.S. Supreme Court has consisted of nine justices for a long time, so it should stay that way (94). Many people worry that increasing the number of justices would unfairly shift the balance of power towards the current ruling party, but various methods that don’t involve “packing the courts” also exist to address these concerns.
• Appeal to ignorance – Scientists can’t prove that climate change exists, therefore it doesn’t. They’ve been wrong in the past, so why should this be any different? (114-116)
• Argument from authority – D’Souza references many intellectual masterworks including Friedrich Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom, George Orwell’s 1984 and Animal Farm, John Rawls’s Theory of Justice, and Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations, but he sometimes misrepresents them and distorts their ideas to correspond to his own worldview. For example, he frequently alludes to Orwell’s 1984 to denounce socialism in all its forms, while glossing over the fact that Orwell himself identified as a democratic socialist. He misrepresents Rawls’s ideas, not giving an adequate explanation of equality of opportunity and the difference principle, two key components of Rawls’s philosophy.
• Observational selection – Nearly the whole book falls under this fallacy. When writing of a politician or historical figure that he likes, such as Ronald Reagan or Henry Ford, D’Souza only mentions the positive. Conversely, when writing of Herbert Marcuse or Franklin D. Roosevelt, D’Souza only mentions the negative. The same applies to when he writes about complex topics in general.
D’Souza spends the last chapter of United States of Socialism praising Donald Trump to the point of idolatry. He compares Trump to Abraham Lincoln and thinks that Trump alone can save America from the evil leftists trying to destroy the country. His partisanism becomes most amplified in one of his closing lines: “Trump has made it fun to beat the hell out of leftists and socialists, and even when Trump is gone, we must continue to enjoy the Trumpian experience of being a butt-kicking Republican, Christian, right-wing American capitalist (255).” D’Souza has done his readers and his country a great disservice by publishing this blatant piece of propaganda. He has engaged in a bad-faith argument about what most on the American left actually think, has demonized and dehumanized the entire left, and has consistently accused his adversaries of utilizing the same deceptive rhetorical tactics that he uses himself. Readers would learn much more by reading the books referenced by D’Souza than by D’Souza himself.
Here is a list of some of the best books that he referred to (he does not mention the last five books by name, but he does mention the authors):
The Road to Serfdom by Friedrich Hayek
A Theory of Justice by John Rawls
The Gulag Archipelago by Alexsandr Solzhenitsyn
1984 by George Orwell
The Federalist by Hamilton, Madison, and Jay
Eros and Civilization by Herbert Marcuse
The Nordic Theory of Everything by Anu Partanen
The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith
The Theory of Moral Sentiments by Adam Smith
Anarchy, State, and Utopia by Robert Nozick
On Liberty by John Stuart Mill
My Bondage and My Freedom by Frederick Douglass
Capitalism and Freedom by Milton Friedman
The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx
Das Kapital by Karl Marx
An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals by David Hume
Manufacturing Consent by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky
The Age of Reason by Thomas Paine
Additional references:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaga...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_m...
September 25, 2020
"Teach your kids about socialism by making them clean the bathroom -
pay them $10, then take 7 of the $10 and give [it] to a sibling who didn't work -
I bet your child [who performed the task] won't be a socialist for long!"
-- quote (paraphrased here) circulating on social media sites since August 2019
It's difficult to type out a review for D'Souza's United States of Socialism because I have the sinking feeling that someone, somewhere out there will be eagerly awaiting to criticize me for liking - or at least agreeing with sections of - this book. (One of the higher-rated positive reviews has a number of folks blasting away in the comments at the GR member for his opinions.) Perhaps my opening bit of humor won't go over well, either. Very simply, this is one of those divisive tomes that will be liked by people who share some similar opinions with the author, and disliked by those who think he is not understanding of or just outright wrong on the subject matter. Using a fair amount of humor and history to bolster his arguments, I thought D'Souza made valid points on why the recent comeback and/or support, by a number of notable politicians, for socialism is ultimately a bad idea for the U.S.
pay them $10, then take 7 of the $10 and give [it] to a sibling who didn't work -
I bet your child [who performed the task] won't be a socialist for long!"
-- quote (paraphrased here) circulating on social media sites since August 2019
It's difficult to type out a review for D'Souza's United States of Socialism because I have the sinking feeling that someone, somewhere out there will be eagerly awaiting to criticize me for liking - or at least agreeing with sections of - this book. (One of the higher-rated positive reviews has a number of folks blasting away in the comments at the GR member for his opinions.) Perhaps my opening bit of humor won't go over well, either. Very simply, this is one of those divisive tomes that will be liked by people who share some similar opinions with the author, and disliked by those who think he is not understanding of or just outright wrong on the subject matter. Using a fair amount of humor and history to bolster his arguments, I thought D'Souza made valid points on why the recent comeback and/or support, by a number of notable politicians, for socialism is ultimately a bad idea for the U.S.
March 2, 2020
A dangerously misinformed diatribe against "progressives" that engages only superficially with a bad faith understanding of socialism.
I received an ARC of this book from Netgalley.
I received an ARC of this book from Netgalley.
June 8, 2020
Very good book that illustrates the dangers of socialism. Most of you other reviewers on here couldn't tell your a$$ from your elbow. You've been so deceived and brainwashed that you're willing to riot, protest and even vote in your own tyranny.
June 4, 2020
Author has inadequate understanding of economic theory and it’s practical implementation. Entirely unqualified to even write a coherent sentence, let alone purport to be an “authority” or knowledgeable in any way on the topic. Not worth it. If you’re interested in the topic, try “Socialism and America” by Irving Howe or “Socialism: Past and Future” by Michael Harrington.
September 3, 2020
Excellent definitive explanations and core examples. Even monarchy and feudalism are better and an argument made for being more moral.
Regardless the real current world governmental forms analysis was 5 star. I especially liked the data for North and South Korea and East vs West Germany's.
Socialism has been wrongly defined by many moderns. Many so called socialist forms are NOT at all government ownership of all producers.
Quantities of the 1 star reviewers need to actually read this book.
Appendix law cases were extremely interesting. Other reviewers specify better than I can on this. I find the reality of net worth being last 12 years accumulated by Democratic Party operatives sending all the rest of us down the Venezuelan road too depressing to enumerate. Ironic indeed. Authoritarian ownership of all the citizen's labor and output is primarily legal slavery. Orwell nailed the essence of why it always fails. The boot on the human face.
Regardless the real current world governmental forms analysis was 5 star. I especially liked the data for North and South Korea and East vs West Germany's.
Socialism has been wrongly defined by many moderns. Many so called socialist forms are NOT at all government ownership of all producers.
Quantities of the 1 star reviewers need to actually read this book.
Appendix law cases were extremely interesting. Other reviewers specify better than I can on this. I find the reality of net worth being last 12 years accumulated by Democratic Party operatives sending all the rest of us down the Venezuelan road too depressing to enumerate. Ironic indeed. Authoritarian ownership of all the citizen's labor and output is primarily legal slavery. Orwell nailed the essence of why it always fails. The boot on the human face.
June 4, 2020
This book was the dumbest thing I’ve ever read. Imagine being so up your and your party’s ass that you can’t be bother to care about any one that different from you. Don’t capitalize on a tragedy to give fearsome conservatives a place of comfort. Be uncomfortable and accept that the world needs to change. You can’t live in a world where you don’t emphasize with everyday Americans who just want a chance to get by than the ultra power full politicians and businessmen who would sell you and your wold family to Al Qaeda if it meant they could when the next election. Pathetic excuse of thinking. Just plain propaganda. Maybe even try to disguise it next time. Feel bad giving it one stars😞💔 it should be in the negatives for wasting people’s time 🥰✨💕
October 21, 2020
Well, the subtitle was clearly meant to either raise hackles or have those who bow to the altar of Fox News cheer with glee, so I took a gander at D’Souza’s wikipedia page after about 100 pages of this book. I was completely unsurprised (I’ll keep the hyperlinks in to see if they translate over):
“Dinesh Joseph D'Souza (/dɪˈnɛʃ dəˈsuːzə/; born April 25, 1961) is an Indian-born American far-right political provocateur, author, filmmaker, conspiracy theorist and convicted felon.[1][2][3][4][5] Born in Bombay, D'Souza moved to the United States as an exchange student and graduated from Dartmouth College. He became a naturalized citizen in 1991. From 2010 to 2012, he was president of The King's College, a Christian school in New York City until he resigned after an alleged adultery scandal.[6]
In 2014, D'Souza pleaded guilty in federal court to one felony charge of using a "straw donor" to make an illegal campaign contribution to a 2012 United States Senate campaign.[7][8] He was sentenced to eight months in a halfway house near his home in San Diego, five years' probation, and a $30,000 fine.[9][10] In 2018, D'Souza was issued a pardon by President Donald Trump.[11]
D'Souza has written over a dozen books, several of them have been New York Times best-sellers.[12][13] In 2012, D'Souza released the documentary film 2016: Obama's America, an anti-Obama polemic based on his 2010 book The Roots of Obama's Rage; it earned $33 million, making it the highest-grossing conservative documentary of all time and one of the highest-grossing documentaries of any kind.[14][15] He has since released three other documentary films: America: Imagine the World Without Her (2014), Hillary's America (2016) and Death of a Nation (2018). D'Souza's films and commentary have generated considerable controversy due to their promotion of conspiracy theories and falsehoods,[16][17][18][12][19][20] as well as for their incendiary nature.”
The links didn’t transfer over, so here it is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinesh_...
On page 42, D’Souza sums up his position:
“What’s the goal here? It goes beyond economic confiscation [the idea that socialists want to take all your stuff and give it the public coffers, collectivism style]; I believe it is nothing less than to make traditional Americans [whatever that means] to feel like foreigners in their own country. The identity socialists [his cloy term] seek an overturning of norms—a redefinition of the American dream [a propagated fallacy in its own]—that would convert foreigners into natives, and natives into foreigners.” He then spends the next 350 pages telling us that “walls work” and global warming is a hoax and the GOP is a multicultural melting pot, and so much basically pulled for Trump’s Twitter feed to kiss the king’s ring finger.
I’m not going to get on a soapbox and defend the Left against this sort of human being. The Far Right has their occasional non-Caucasian to prop up in front of the cameras and D’Souza fervently uses his vitriol, propaganda, and fandom to stoke the flames of echo-chamber division, but his monochromatic views of the world are laughably incongruous with reality. Look, I’m not an “everyone is a beautiful and unique snowflake” leftist. Governments are complex and nebulous constructions prone to the pressures of constantly shifting societies, people are complex and hypocritical and capable of transformations. D’Souza’s ignorance on how this country was founded on institutionalized slavery, indentured servitude, the genocide of the indigenous, and by pure exploitation of the workforce plays right into Rupert Murdoch’s, Roger Stone’s, and Donald Trump’s (and all his billionaire donors’ [https://www.forbes.com/sites/michelat...] playbooks. D’Souza is unabashedly a weird form of apologist, using smoke and mirrors to cast the power players and deal-makers he swoons for as true (traditional?) Americans: “The founders [of the United States] really believed all men are created equal. They simply couldn’t make good on that belief in their own time” (p. 79-80). He even seems to completely ignore the rampant poverty in India, favoring instead to focus on those who made millions off the slave-labor available to them. Sure, we have lots of stuff we can buy, more than ever before, most all of it made by “peasants” in Asia working in horrible conditions for meager wages, and most all of it stuff we do not need (i.e., junk destined for landfills). Does that make you feel better? What D’Souza claims to be “liberal history” is actually looking at events and epochs from the bottom-up, not the top-down. Washington won the revolutionary war, but he did it with the expendable bodies of thousands of others who are forgotten to history. Same goes for the manufacturing of your smart phone. Even though Trump was born with a silver spoon wedged between his gums, he managed to screw up multiple times with shyster schemes and bankruptcies, but had the safety nets that allowed him the privilege to maintain his wealth and ego. Most aren’t so lucky or privileged or “blessed”, but D’Souza doesn’t care—he made it, so there’s no excuse that you can’t either. I honestly wonder if D’Souza believes humanity has a “natural caste system”. Some are winners, most are losers. So it goes.
With his broad-stroking of “socialism” here D’Souza also panders to Joseph McCarthy’s playbook:
Socialism, a system for raising up the working class, has now largely abandoned the working class. A program for raising the condition of ordinary citizens and workers has turned into a coordinated effort to make those very citizens and workers feel unwelcome and demonized in their own country. Socialism in America today has turned black against white, female against male, homosexual and transexual against heterosexual [,] and illegals against legal immigrants and American citizens. The typical socialist today is not a union guy who wants higher wages; it is a transexual ecofeminist who marches in Antifa and Black Lives Matter rallies and throws cement blocks at her political opponents” (pp. 130-1). What a warped perspective to have. Xenophobia, anyone? This could have, and probably has, slithered through the lips of Tucker Carlson and Ann Coulter and Alex Jones and Rush Limbaugh many times over the past six years. I see the geriatric Caucasian males nodding their heads in agreement, waving their flags and tipping their ironic “Keep America Great” hats. Kudos.
D’Souza is fearful of Bernie Sanders and his followers and even attacks fellow capitalists like Andrew Yang who show any empathy towards the downtrodden. But he missteps so often in his determination to vilify, it’s truly tough to get through this book unless you’re already drinking the cool-aid. In Chapter 2 “The Dream and the Nightmare: How Socialism Came to America”, D’Souza quotes Sanders as following in FDR’s footsteps ideologically, and that the New Deal and progressivism opened the door to socialism in America, but D’Souza is so hell-bent on demonizing the “new socialists” that even him illustrating how capitalism and socialism had merged already to create a framework that benefits the lower classes while allowing the upper crust to prosper gets lost in the din. Socialists were in the US decades before FDR, fighting for equality in the streets and fair treatment in the workplace. “Get your government out of my Medicare” some senior citizen told John McCain years ago. That is the terrible cognitive dissonance with such a huge portion of this population, thanks to the propaganda machine of the “Conservative Right”, to which D’Souza is a second-string player at best, and a convicted criminal pardoned by Trump no less.
We live in a PSYOPed world, especially here in the United States of Hypocrisy. Words have power, but words are all too often misused, abused, and bastardized. So too is history. Yes, Communism holistically failed thanks to power-mad tyrants, authoritarian despots, and military juntas. That’s not an ideological problem, that’s a human problem. I’m not a political science scholar, but I know intimately how every one of us is a hypocrite on some level. There will never be an Eden on Earth. Never. I know that the “system” is so rigged against any outside party labels that it will not change until it aborts itself. Don’t worry, Cold War McCarthyists, America will never become democratically socialist in the Scandinavian vein. We have vampiric capitalists on the Right and corporate capitalists on the Left, with bizarro Libertarians somewhere in-between. But vampiric capitalism is obviously hurting more than helping—you can’t have your head in the sand forever to see it (https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank...). D’Souza believes people vote with their purchasing power, but this is absolute nonsense to most. Yes, I’ve boycotted Amazon since 2014, but it doesn’t hurt Bezos or his stockholders at all. I haven’t stepped foot inside a Walmart in over twenty years, but the Waltons are doing just fine (except being jealous of Bezos). I am one of the “woke”, but we are a minority. Most people are struggling to make ends meet, and they gravitate towards the best deals which only the behemoths can provide—Amazon, Walmart, etc. Americans are overwhelmingly overweight, addicted to all kinds of stuff (including technology and simple consumerism), in debt, and undereducated. However, I think there are ways to again merge capitalism with socialism (progressivism?) for the betterment of the majority—and store-bought pundits can call it whatever they want. I know the psychology of the filthy-rich becomes a monomaniacal competition among “peers” for who have the most wealth, houses, yachts, companies, stocks, accolades, and other stuff. I believe the upper classes have a responsibility to help the lower classes get a leg up on life. I believe the government should be there for the lower classes first—not to enable them but to empower them, that corporations should be held accountable for everything they do (including the rights of the workforce), that Wall Street and other industries should have concrete oversight, transparency, and accountability (this is jobs creation), and that we should have the infrastructure available to care for everyone—proactive health care for all, mental health for all, college for all who can handle it, the opportunity for jobs for all (or universal basic income to those who make under $75K or so), affordable housing for all (or at least rent control laws, etc). There’s plenty of room for taxes and other forms of profit in these dynamics (legalize pot \m/), which should make the capitalists happy (they should just pay their f-ing fair share of taxes). No matter what system is in place, there will always be a small fraction who will try to abuse the system, be it food stamps or tax loopholes. We cannot let that small fraction deny the potential for greater good. Where would we get the money for all of this, one might ask.
What if we ended warmongering and focused on diplomacy and partnerships? What if we had a system in place that actually drained the swamp of bureaucratic dross and wanton waste? What if we balanced budgets—or, Mammon-forbid, actually acquired a savings—instead of climbed into monstrous debt and kicked that can down the road for other generations to pay off or fold on? What if the wealthy and corporations with over 500 employees actually paid their fair share of taxes? What if we had a Green New Deal that revitalized the economy, reinforced our infrastructure, and created good-paying jobs with healthcare for all while trying to avert global calamities? What if we had the best and least expensive healthcare system in the world? What if we had a Civil Service requirement for every 18-year old after high school, be it with the local Food Bank, the Army Corp of Engineers, the Marine Corps, or the Peace Corps? This is my version of fantasyland I’m thinking of, but it’s also the maximum use of our collective potential to help every possible person contribute to the society they profess to be apart of and create a pattern of positive change for the future generations on the horizon, who will be inheriting a lousy hand of cards thanks to us.
The most liked review on here does a simple synopsis of 1-star and 5-star ratings, citing the 1-stars as basically illiterate lib-tards and the 5-stars as educated empaths, and saying we’re falling towards Venezuela on the Scale of Socialism. With Trump and his cronies currently in charge, the administration reeks of Venezuela in a different way—flirting with authoritarianism. Hopefully he’s not a veteran needing VA healthcare for his Agent Orange-caused cancer or IED-caused hearing loss or his prosthetics or mental health care, and will not be reliant on Social Security to keep the AC running in summer months, or in need of Medicare to get his laundry list of over-priced meds to keep him upright and lucid, or ever in need of unemployment benefits should the stock market and economy tank further and longer. The system as it is, is a titanic bureaucratic mess. It could be monumentally better in so many powerful ways, but factions want it a mess they can profit from. That is the history of the United States.
“Dinesh Joseph D'Souza (/dɪˈnɛʃ dəˈsuːzə/; born April 25, 1961) is an Indian-born American far-right political provocateur, author, filmmaker, conspiracy theorist and convicted felon.[1][2][3][4][5] Born in Bombay, D'Souza moved to the United States as an exchange student and graduated from Dartmouth College. He became a naturalized citizen in 1991. From 2010 to 2012, he was president of The King's College, a Christian school in New York City until he resigned after an alleged adultery scandal.[6]
In 2014, D'Souza pleaded guilty in federal court to one felony charge of using a "straw donor" to make an illegal campaign contribution to a 2012 United States Senate campaign.[7][8] He was sentenced to eight months in a halfway house near his home in San Diego, five years' probation, and a $30,000 fine.[9][10] In 2018, D'Souza was issued a pardon by President Donald Trump.[11]
D'Souza has written over a dozen books, several of them have been New York Times best-sellers.[12][13] In 2012, D'Souza released the documentary film 2016: Obama's America, an anti-Obama polemic based on his 2010 book The Roots of Obama's Rage; it earned $33 million, making it the highest-grossing conservative documentary of all time and one of the highest-grossing documentaries of any kind.[14][15] He has since released three other documentary films: America: Imagine the World Without Her (2014), Hillary's America (2016) and Death of a Nation (2018). D'Souza's films and commentary have generated considerable controversy due to their promotion of conspiracy theories and falsehoods,[16][17][18][12][19][20] as well as for their incendiary nature.”
The links didn’t transfer over, so here it is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinesh_...
On page 42, D’Souza sums up his position:
“What’s the goal here? It goes beyond economic confiscation [the idea that socialists want to take all your stuff and give it the public coffers, collectivism style]; I believe it is nothing less than to make traditional Americans [whatever that means] to feel like foreigners in their own country. The identity socialists [his cloy term] seek an overturning of norms—a redefinition of the American dream [a propagated fallacy in its own]—that would convert foreigners into natives, and natives into foreigners.” He then spends the next 350 pages telling us that “walls work” and global warming is a hoax and the GOP is a multicultural melting pot, and so much basically pulled for Trump’s Twitter feed to kiss the king’s ring finger.
I’m not going to get on a soapbox and defend the Left against this sort of human being. The Far Right has their occasional non-Caucasian to prop up in front of the cameras and D’Souza fervently uses his vitriol, propaganda, and fandom to stoke the flames of echo-chamber division, but his monochromatic views of the world are laughably incongruous with reality. Look, I’m not an “everyone is a beautiful and unique snowflake” leftist. Governments are complex and nebulous constructions prone to the pressures of constantly shifting societies, people are complex and hypocritical and capable of transformations. D’Souza’s ignorance on how this country was founded on institutionalized slavery, indentured servitude, the genocide of the indigenous, and by pure exploitation of the workforce plays right into Rupert Murdoch’s, Roger Stone’s, and Donald Trump’s (and all his billionaire donors’ [https://www.forbes.com/sites/michelat...] playbooks. D’Souza is unabashedly a weird form of apologist, using smoke and mirrors to cast the power players and deal-makers he swoons for as true (traditional?) Americans: “The founders [of the United States] really believed all men are created equal. They simply couldn’t make good on that belief in their own time” (p. 79-80). He even seems to completely ignore the rampant poverty in India, favoring instead to focus on those who made millions off the slave-labor available to them. Sure, we have lots of stuff we can buy, more than ever before, most all of it made by “peasants” in Asia working in horrible conditions for meager wages, and most all of it stuff we do not need (i.e., junk destined for landfills). Does that make you feel better? What D’Souza claims to be “liberal history” is actually looking at events and epochs from the bottom-up, not the top-down. Washington won the revolutionary war, but he did it with the expendable bodies of thousands of others who are forgotten to history. Same goes for the manufacturing of your smart phone. Even though Trump was born with a silver spoon wedged between his gums, he managed to screw up multiple times with shyster schemes and bankruptcies, but had the safety nets that allowed him the privilege to maintain his wealth and ego. Most aren’t so lucky or privileged or “blessed”, but D’Souza doesn’t care—he made it, so there’s no excuse that you can’t either. I honestly wonder if D’Souza believes humanity has a “natural caste system”. Some are winners, most are losers. So it goes.
With his broad-stroking of “socialism” here D’Souza also panders to Joseph McCarthy’s playbook:
Socialism, a system for raising up the working class, has now largely abandoned the working class. A program for raising the condition of ordinary citizens and workers has turned into a coordinated effort to make those very citizens and workers feel unwelcome and demonized in their own country. Socialism in America today has turned black against white, female against male, homosexual and transexual against heterosexual [,] and illegals against legal immigrants and American citizens. The typical socialist today is not a union guy who wants higher wages; it is a transexual ecofeminist who marches in Antifa and Black Lives Matter rallies and throws cement blocks at her political opponents” (pp. 130-1). What a warped perspective to have. Xenophobia, anyone? This could have, and probably has, slithered through the lips of Tucker Carlson and Ann Coulter and Alex Jones and Rush Limbaugh many times over the past six years. I see the geriatric Caucasian males nodding their heads in agreement, waving their flags and tipping their ironic “Keep America Great” hats. Kudos.
D’Souza is fearful of Bernie Sanders and his followers and even attacks fellow capitalists like Andrew Yang who show any empathy towards the downtrodden. But he missteps so often in his determination to vilify, it’s truly tough to get through this book unless you’re already drinking the cool-aid. In Chapter 2 “The Dream and the Nightmare: How Socialism Came to America”, D’Souza quotes Sanders as following in FDR’s footsteps ideologically, and that the New Deal and progressivism opened the door to socialism in America, but D’Souza is so hell-bent on demonizing the “new socialists” that even him illustrating how capitalism and socialism had merged already to create a framework that benefits the lower classes while allowing the upper crust to prosper gets lost in the din. Socialists were in the US decades before FDR, fighting for equality in the streets and fair treatment in the workplace. “Get your government out of my Medicare” some senior citizen told John McCain years ago. That is the terrible cognitive dissonance with such a huge portion of this population, thanks to the propaganda machine of the “Conservative Right”, to which D’Souza is a second-string player at best, and a convicted criminal pardoned by Trump no less.
We live in a PSYOPed world, especially here in the United States of Hypocrisy. Words have power, but words are all too often misused, abused, and bastardized. So too is history. Yes, Communism holistically failed thanks to power-mad tyrants, authoritarian despots, and military juntas. That’s not an ideological problem, that’s a human problem. I’m not a political science scholar, but I know intimately how every one of us is a hypocrite on some level. There will never be an Eden on Earth. Never. I know that the “system” is so rigged against any outside party labels that it will not change until it aborts itself. Don’t worry, Cold War McCarthyists, America will never become democratically socialist in the Scandinavian vein. We have vampiric capitalists on the Right and corporate capitalists on the Left, with bizarro Libertarians somewhere in-between. But vampiric capitalism is obviously hurting more than helping—you can’t have your head in the sand forever to see it (https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank...). D’Souza believes people vote with their purchasing power, but this is absolute nonsense to most. Yes, I’ve boycotted Amazon since 2014, but it doesn’t hurt Bezos or his stockholders at all. I haven’t stepped foot inside a Walmart in over twenty years, but the Waltons are doing just fine (except being jealous of Bezos). I am one of the “woke”, but we are a minority. Most people are struggling to make ends meet, and they gravitate towards the best deals which only the behemoths can provide—Amazon, Walmart, etc. Americans are overwhelmingly overweight, addicted to all kinds of stuff (including technology and simple consumerism), in debt, and undereducated. However, I think there are ways to again merge capitalism with socialism (progressivism?) for the betterment of the majority—and store-bought pundits can call it whatever they want. I know the psychology of the filthy-rich becomes a monomaniacal competition among “peers” for who have the most wealth, houses, yachts, companies, stocks, accolades, and other stuff. I believe the upper classes have a responsibility to help the lower classes get a leg up on life. I believe the government should be there for the lower classes first—not to enable them but to empower them, that corporations should be held accountable for everything they do (including the rights of the workforce), that Wall Street and other industries should have concrete oversight, transparency, and accountability (this is jobs creation), and that we should have the infrastructure available to care for everyone—proactive health care for all, mental health for all, college for all who can handle it, the opportunity for jobs for all (or universal basic income to those who make under $75K or so), affordable housing for all (or at least rent control laws, etc). There’s plenty of room for taxes and other forms of profit in these dynamics (legalize pot \m/), which should make the capitalists happy (they should just pay their f-ing fair share of taxes). No matter what system is in place, there will always be a small fraction who will try to abuse the system, be it food stamps or tax loopholes. We cannot let that small fraction deny the potential for greater good. Where would we get the money for all of this, one might ask.
What if we ended warmongering and focused on diplomacy and partnerships? What if we had a system in place that actually drained the swamp of bureaucratic dross and wanton waste? What if we balanced budgets—or, Mammon-forbid, actually acquired a savings—instead of climbed into monstrous debt and kicked that can down the road for other generations to pay off or fold on? What if the wealthy and corporations with over 500 employees actually paid their fair share of taxes? What if we had a Green New Deal that revitalized the economy, reinforced our infrastructure, and created good-paying jobs with healthcare for all while trying to avert global calamities? What if we had the best and least expensive healthcare system in the world? What if we had a Civil Service requirement for every 18-year old after high school, be it with the local Food Bank, the Army Corp of Engineers, the Marine Corps, or the Peace Corps? This is my version of fantasyland I’m thinking of, but it’s also the maximum use of our collective potential to help every possible person contribute to the society they profess to be apart of and create a pattern of positive change for the future generations on the horizon, who will be inheriting a lousy hand of cards thanks to us.
The most liked review on here does a simple synopsis of 1-star and 5-star ratings, citing the 1-stars as basically illiterate lib-tards and the 5-stars as educated empaths, and saying we’re falling towards Venezuela on the Scale of Socialism. With Trump and his cronies currently in charge, the administration reeks of Venezuela in a different way—flirting with authoritarianism. Hopefully he’s not a veteran needing VA healthcare for his Agent Orange-caused cancer or IED-caused hearing loss or his prosthetics or mental health care, and will not be reliant on Social Security to keep the AC running in summer months, or in need of Medicare to get his laundry list of over-priced meds to keep him upright and lucid, or ever in need of unemployment benefits should the stock market and economy tank further and longer. The system as it is, is a titanic bureaucratic mess. It could be monumentally better in so many powerful ways, but factions want it a mess they can profit from. That is the history of the United States.
June 8, 2020
Francis Bacon writes in his essay "On Studies," "Read not to contradict and confute, not to believe and take for granted, nor to find talk and discourse, but to weigh and consider." True intellects can approach a writer like D'Souza with an open mind to weigh and consider his arguments, then apply those arguments to logic and reason to determine their truth. A thoughtful and honest intellect cannot make three claims about D'Souza, whether you agree with him or not:
1. D'Souza is illiterate. Why? As a graduate of Dartmouth and a member of Phi Beta Kappa, with a history of service as a policy analyst for Regan, a John M. Olin fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a Robert and Karen Rishwain Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford, and the president of The King's College for two years, he is definitely a brilliant thinker. He cites many sources in every chapter to substantiate his arguments. You might not like his ideas, but you can't claim that he is illiterate, a hack academic, or not intelligent.
2. D'Souza is a racist or xenophobe. As a legal immigrant from India who became a naturalized citizen, D'Souza is both a person of color and someone who went through our immigration system legally to become an American citizen. He doesn't speak from a position of white privilege, and he offers a unique voice to the ideological dialogue.
3. D'Souza is using his book to exploit George Floyd's tragic death. Although several reviewers claim that D'Souza is trying to profit from national outrage and unrest from the tragedy, that is a non sequitur. It does not logically follow that a book about the flaws in socialism would enrich an author because it was released during the protests and riots. Only someone who adhered to the concept of identity politics as an underpinning of their ideology would make that logical jump--which might kind of make his point. Likewise, publishers set release dates well in advance, so there is no connection between the book release and the riots or protests. The release date was set for June 2nd for several months.
That being said, what I liked about the book was that D'Souza lays out the history of socialism and how it contradicts America's ideals of the self-made man. By looking at the failed historical examples of socialism and how modern socialists distort those ideals to convince us that democratic socialism is going to be different, D'Souza suggests that the modern socialist left presents what he calls the "Sven Socialism" model as demonstrated by the nordic countries, to suggest that we could have a kinder, gentler sort of socialism; however, D'Souza points out that those cultures are very different from ours--less inclusive to outsiders, and that socialism for them is about the common good, kind of a "we're in this all together" attitude. In contrast, while on the surface modern democratic socialists want to present this as their ultimate goal, they are really using the Venezuela playbook. In addition, he offers a moral justification for capitalism that is just brilliant, and he also suggests how we might resist or fight back against the tide of socialist idealism that seems to be rising. One quote in the book seems to sum it up brilliantly, ". . . unable to assemble a majority and win over critics and dissenters through honest persuasion, the left seeks to achieve its goals through naked propaganda, shameless deception, various forms of intimidation, outright coercion, and the politics of personal destruction." As a microcosm of what he's talking about here, I will apply this to reviews to his book on Goodreads. This book was released on June 2nd. Two people in March claim to have advanced copies of the book and released poor reviews before the book was even released. Nothing in either review suggested that the reviewer actually read the text--no real specific objections to specific arguments or textual references. If these reviews were turned in by students in my English class, both would have received F's because there was no engagement in the argument or text to substantiate that the reader actually read it. By June 4th, Goodreads is flooded with similar vacuous reviews to tank the rating. This sounds remarkably like "naked propaganda" and "shameless deception" to silence the author's voice and limit his audience through fake reviews. In addition, the profanity and suggestion that D'Souza was in some way trying to profit from the George Floyd tragedy sound like "various forms of intimidation" and the "politics of personal destruction" that seek not only to silence but also to destroy the author. In an ironic way, these fake reviews pretty clearly make his point. I invite intelligent thinkers of all political persuasions to read it and decide for yourself. Weigh and consider his points, and if you disagree, leave a logical, well-reasoned review to counter his arguments. I would welcome hearing a differing viewpoint to add to my own understanding of the argument.
1. D'Souza is illiterate. Why? As a graduate of Dartmouth and a member of Phi Beta Kappa, with a history of service as a policy analyst for Regan, a John M. Olin fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a Robert and Karen Rishwain Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford, and the president of The King's College for two years, he is definitely a brilliant thinker. He cites many sources in every chapter to substantiate his arguments. You might not like his ideas, but you can't claim that he is illiterate, a hack academic, or not intelligent.
2. D'Souza is a racist or xenophobe. As a legal immigrant from India who became a naturalized citizen, D'Souza is both a person of color and someone who went through our immigration system legally to become an American citizen. He doesn't speak from a position of white privilege, and he offers a unique voice to the ideological dialogue.
3. D'Souza is using his book to exploit George Floyd's tragic death. Although several reviewers claim that D'Souza is trying to profit from national outrage and unrest from the tragedy, that is a non sequitur. It does not logically follow that a book about the flaws in socialism would enrich an author because it was released during the protests and riots. Only someone who adhered to the concept of identity politics as an underpinning of their ideology would make that logical jump--which might kind of make his point. Likewise, publishers set release dates well in advance, so there is no connection between the book release and the riots or protests. The release date was set for June 2nd for several months.
That being said, what I liked about the book was that D'Souza lays out the history of socialism and how it contradicts America's ideals of the self-made man. By looking at the failed historical examples of socialism and how modern socialists distort those ideals to convince us that democratic socialism is going to be different, D'Souza suggests that the modern socialist left presents what he calls the "Sven Socialism" model as demonstrated by the nordic countries, to suggest that we could have a kinder, gentler sort of socialism; however, D'Souza points out that those cultures are very different from ours--less inclusive to outsiders, and that socialism for them is about the common good, kind of a "we're in this all together" attitude. In contrast, while on the surface modern democratic socialists want to present this as their ultimate goal, they are really using the Venezuela playbook. In addition, he offers a moral justification for capitalism that is just brilliant, and he also suggests how we might resist or fight back against the tide of socialist idealism that seems to be rising. One quote in the book seems to sum it up brilliantly, ". . . unable to assemble a majority and win over critics and dissenters through honest persuasion, the left seeks to achieve its goals through naked propaganda, shameless deception, various forms of intimidation, outright coercion, and the politics of personal destruction." As a microcosm of what he's talking about here, I will apply this to reviews to his book on Goodreads. This book was released on June 2nd. Two people in March claim to have advanced copies of the book and released poor reviews before the book was even released. Nothing in either review suggested that the reviewer actually read the text--no real specific objections to specific arguments or textual references. If these reviews were turned in by students in my English class, both would have received F's because there was no engagement in the argument or text to substantiate that the reader actually read it. By June 4th, Goodreads is flooded with similar vacuous reviews to tank the rating. This sounds remarkably like "naked propaganda" and "shameless deception" to silence the author's voice and limit his audience through fake reviews. In addition, the profanity and suggestion that D'Souza was in some way trying to profit from the George Floyd tragedy sound like "various forms of intimidation" and the "politics of personal destruction" that seek not only to silence but also to destroy the author. In an ironic way, these fake reviews pretty clearly make his point. I invite intelligent thinkers of all political persuasions to read it and decide for yourself. Weigh and consider his points, and if you disagree, leave a logical, well-reasoned review to counter his arguments. I would welcome hearing a differing viewpoint to add to my own understanding of the argument.
June 4, 2020
Terrible. Inaccurate. Written by a racist trump supporter.
December 3, 2020
Socialism is gaining popularity in America even though it has failed every time it’s been tried—D’Souza counts 25 instances based in Marxism, which doesn’t include the early forms of collectivism that also failed. Most young people think capitalism is fascism, so they want even more government control over business. (This does not make sense to me.)
While original Marxism is based in class struggle, today’s socialist use identity politics to create the division of Marx’s blueprint. Now it’s non-white vs. white, LGBT vs. non-LGBT, women vs. men, and so on. (The fact that socialism relies on citizens turning on each other should be a red flag for anyone.)
He combs through popular statements by today’s socialists and looks at their actions. They say they want Nordic socialism despite never visiting there and promoting policies that don’t match theirs at all. They gush over Venezuela and Cuba and visit those countries over and over.
D’Souza notes that very few have defended capitalism adequately. Most defenders praise its efficiency but not its morality. Capitalism is the only system that lets you keep the fruit of your labor. Socialism compels you to labor where and when the state dictates, then it confiscates the fruit of your labor, and if you’re lucky you get something back to subsist on. Socialism is slavery.
D’Souza is unapologetic in defending liberty and attacking tyranny. We can no longer afford to be submissive to socialists and tyrants. D’Souza is a great writer, no matter the topic. It was incredibly engaging, felt very short, and I wanted to highlight the whole thing. The only odd thing in the editing was the phrase “just desserts.” It was spelled as “just deserts” in every instance. I don’t know how that was never caught.
Clean content.
[The country’s Founding] is a socialist nightmare. It’s a nightmare because it affirms as the possession of citizens what the socialists would like to take away through the agency of government. In order to take away your wealth and earnings and possessions, the socialists must insist that those things don’t really belong to you. You somehow stole or appropriated them. You seized for yourself what belongs to the commonweal of society. ... For socialists, this is what democracy means: the collective right to appropriate. What gives this right the force of justice, and of law, is that it is supposedly an expression of the “will of the people.” But the founders did not agree with this. They did not agree that there is some “will of the people” that can directly govern a society. And even if there were, they rejected the premise that the people have the right to gang up in a majority and seize the property and earnings of their fellow citizens whose only crime is to be in the political minority.
Should the citizens of a large country dominate those of a smaller country because they are more numerous? Certainly not. Why then should the majority of a society hold sway over the whole society, making decisions not merely for itself but also for the minority?
[Progressive hero Woodrow] Wilson also recognized the Bolshevik regime in the Soviet Union just days after the czar abdicated. The United States was the first government in the world to do so, establishing a dishonorable tradition of progressive endorsement of socialist tyranny. Well, actually, Wilson did more. He had his own version of identity politics. As I’ve shown in my earlier books, he introduced racial segregation to the federal government, which had not been segregated prior to his administration. He helped to revive the Ku Klux Klan. He supported eugenic measures that would later inspire the Nazis, who used them as a model for the Nuremberg Laws.
For identity socialists and for the left more generally, blacks and Latinos are in, whites are out. Women are in, men are out. Gays, bisexuals, pansexuals, transsexuals, together with other, more exotic types, are in; heterosexuals are out. Illegals are in, native-born citizens are out. One might think this is all part of the politics of inclusion, but to think that is to see only half the picture. The point, for the left, is not merely to include but also to exclude, to estrange their opponents from their native land.
This argument [“You didn’t build that”] is flawed on its face. The “rest of us” didn’t pay for the roads and the schools and the police protection; the entrepreneurs paid also. So why should entrepreneurs incur some special or additional obligation to reimburse society for things to which they have already paid their fair share? Should entrepreneurs be penalized because they made better use of their education, or because they used the roads to transport their goods while the rest of us used them for less productive purposes? This makes no sense.
Can anyone who has lived through this great transformation of the past couple of decades not see the massive improvements they have produced? Is there a progressive or socialist alive today who would give them up? Are there young people who can even imagine what life was like before then? It is the enthusiasm of customers in America, and worldwide, that has produced the inequality that progressives bewail today. The moral justification of those profits is that they represent the wishes—and welfare—of delighted consumers. This is democracy in action, whether the left admits it or not.
How did these supply-side entrepreneurs and their core teams get so rich? If you listen to the progressives and the socialists, you’ll hear a lot about “appropriation” and how these guys enjoy a disproportionate share of “the nation’s wealth.” But it’s not the “nation’s” wealth; it’s their wealth. They got it by producing things that have enriched people’s lives so much that they were thrilled to pay for them, and probably would have been willing to pay a lot more. So the entrepreneurs didn’t appropriate anything; they earned what they have acquired through their entrepreneurial ventures. Contrary to Obama and Warren, they really did build that!
Where is the justice in the rewards [people like Wilt Chamberlain and Stephen King] rake in? Their merit, Nozick argues, is not some external standard dictated by a third party but rather the value that has been created for the consumer. In commerce, as in politics, value is in the eye of the beholder. Buyers no more have to justify their choices to outside parties than voters do. Both groups confer rewards based on their own standards of value, regardless of whether those standards can withstand external scrutiny.
Unable to assemble a majority and win over critics and dissenters through honest persuasion, the left seeks to achieve its goals through naked propaganda, shameless deception, various forms of intimidation, outright coercion and the politics of personal destruction.
[Jennifer Rubin] wants Trump supporters not only to exit the government, she wants them to be unemployable in the private sector. “It’s not only Trump that has to lose,” she says, “but that all his enablers have to lose. We have to collectively, in essence, burn down the Republican Party. We have to level them because if there are any survivors, if there are people who weather this storm, they will do it again.” This is the voice of tyranny. It seeks to establish full control of the culture so that, using the instruments of government and the media, it can exercise tyrannical control over our lives. They don’t just want to take our money; they want to turn us into sniveling devotees of their wickedness and corruption.
The latest form of repression is digital censorship—censorship on digital platforms. This is the unkindest cut of all, because many conservatives have turned to digital platforms as an alternative to the narrowness of the mainstream media. Now they find themselves restricted, shadow banned and booted off those platforms. The pretext is “hate,” even though in most cases the “hate” amounts to nothing more than vociferously resisting the hateful doctrines of the socialist left. We are, again, in Orwell territory. Yet notice that the digital platforms are private. This is not government censorship but rather private companies acting to achieve the same repressipon that the state normally enforces. In Orwell’s novels, the state is the primary villain. Orwell does, however, depict private individuals as informants. Someone tells, and that’s how the state knows to go after you. That’s the case here too. A journalist at Buzzfeed notifies YouTube Twitter, and that’s how you get permanently banned and become a digital unperson.
This, then, is the ultimate objective of the socialist left in America: to brainwash us through propaganda and to terrify us into submission, so that we all become Winston, cowering and whimpering at first and ultimately giving in, not only on the outside but also on the inside, our ideals crushed, our dignity gone, finally embracing our abusers and captors by saying, in unison, “I love Big Brother.” At this point, the left is content and our reeducation is complete.
While original Marxism is based in class struggle, today’s socialist use identity politics to create the division of Marx’s blueprint. Now it’s non-white vs. white, LGBT vs. non-LGBT, women vs. men, and so on. (The fact that socialism relies on citizens turning on each other should be a red flag for anyone.)
He combs through popular statements by today’s socialists and looks at their actions. They say they want Nordic socialism despite never visiting there and promoting policies that don’t match theirs at all. They gush over Venezuela and Cuba and visit those countries over and over.
D’Souza notes that very few have defended capitalism adequately. Most defenders praise its efficiency but not its morality. Capitalism is the only system that lets you keep the fruit of your labor. Socialism compels you to labor where and when the state dictates, then it confiscates the fruit of your labor, and if you’re lucky you get something back to subsist on. Socialism is slavery.
D’Souza is unapologetic in defending liberty and attacking tyranny. We can no longer afford to be submissive to socialists and tyrants. D’Souza is a great writer, no matter the topic. It was incredibly engaging, felt very short, and I wanted to highlight the whole thing. The only odd thing in the editing was the phrase “just desserts.” It was spelled as “just deserts” in every instance. I don’t know how that was never caught.
Clean content.
[The country’s Founding] is a socialist nightmare. It’s a nightmare because it affirms as the possession of citizens what the socialists would like to take away through the agency of government. In order to take away your wealth and earnings and possessions, the socialists must insist that those things don’t really belong to you. You somehow stole or appropriated them. You seized for yourself what belongs to the commonweal of society. ... For socialists, this is what democracy means: the collective right to appropriate. What gives this right the force of justice, and of law, is that it is supposedly an expression of the “will of the people.” But the founders did not agree with this. They did not agree that there is some “will of the people” that can directly govern a society. And even if there were, they rejected the premise that the people have the right to gang up in a majority and seize the property and earnings of their fellow citizens whose only crime is to be in the political minority.
Should the citizens of a large country dominate those of a smaller country because they are more numerous? Certainly not. Why then should the majority of a society hold sway over the whole society, making decisions not merely for itself but also for the minority?
[Progressive hero Woodrow] Wilson also recognized the Bolshevik regime in the Soviet Union just days after the czar abdicated. The United States was the first government in the world to do so, establishing a dishonorable tradition of progressive endorsement of socialist tyranny. Well, actually, Wilson did more. He had his own version of identity politics. As I’ve shown in my earlier books, he introduced racial segregation to the federal government, which had not been segregated prior to his administration. He helped to revive the Ku Klux Klan. He supported eugenic measures that would later inspire the Nazis, who used them as a model for the Nuremberg Laws.
For identity socialists and for the left more generally, blacks and Latinos are in, whites are out. Women are in, men are out. Gays, bisexuals, pansexuals, transsexuals, together with other, more exotic types, are in; heterosexuals are out. Illegals are in, native-born citizens are out. One might think this is all part of the politics of inclusion, but to think that is to see only half the picture. The point, for the left, is not merely to include but also to exclude, to estrange their opponents from their native land.
This argument [“You didn’t build that”] is flawed on its face. The “rest of us” didn’t pay for the roads and the schools and the police protection; the entrepreneurs paid also. So why should entrepreneurs incur some special or additional obligation to reimburse society for things to which they have already paid their fair share? Should entrepreneurs be penalized because they made better use of their education, or because they used the roads to transport their goods while the rest of us used them for less productive purposes? This makes no sense.
Can anyone who has lived through this great transformation of the past couple of decades not see the massive improvements they have produced? Is there a progressive or socialist alive today who would give them up? Are there young people who can even imagine what life was like before then? It is the enthusiasm of customers in America, and worldwide, that has produced the inequality that progressives bewail today. The moral justification of those profits is that they represent the wishes—and welfare—of delighted consumers. This is democracy in action, whether the left admits it or not.
How did these supply-side entrepreneurs and their core teams get so rich? If you listen to the progressives and the socialists, you’ll hear a lot about “appropriation” and how these guys enjoy a disproportionate share of “the nation’s wealth.” But it’s not the “nation’s” wealth; it’s their wealth. They got it by producing things that have enriched people’s lives so much that they were thrilled to pay for them, and probably would have been willing to pay a lot more. So the entrepreneurs didn’t appropriate anything; they earned what they have acquired through their entrepreneurial ventures. Contrary to Obama and Warren, they really did build that!
Where is the justice in the rewards [people like Wilt Chamberlain and Stephen King] rake in? Their merit, Nozick argues, is not some external standard dictated by a third party but rather the value that has been created for the consumer. In commerce, as in politics, value is in the eye of the beholder. Buyers no more have to justify their choices to outside parties than voters do. Both groups confer rewards based on their own standards of value, regardless of whether those standards can withstand external scrutiny.
Unable to assemble a majority and win over critics and dissenters through honest persuasion, the left seeks to achieve its goals through naked propaganda, shameless deception, various forms of intimidation, outright coercion and the politics of personal destruction.
[Jennifer Rubin] wants Trump supporters not only to exit the government, she wants them to be unemployable in the private sector. “It’s not only Trump that has to lose,” she says, “but that all his enablers have to lose. We have to collectively, in essence, burn down the Republican Party. We have to level them because if there are any survivors, if there are people who weather this storm, they will do it again.” This is the voice of tyranny. It seeks to establish full control of the culture so that, using the instruments of government and the media, it can exercise tyrannical control over our lives. They don’t just want to take our money; they want to turn us into sniveling devotees of their wickedness and corruption.
The latest form of repression is digital censorship—censorship on digital platforms. This is the unkindest cut of all, because many conservatives have turned to digital platforms as an alternative to the narrowness of the mainstream media. Now they find themselves restricted, shadow banned and booted off those platforms. The pretext is “hate,” even though in most cases the “hate” amounts to nothing more than vociferously resisting the hateful doctrines of the socialist left. We are, again, in Orwell territory. Yet notice that the digital platforms are private. This is not government censorship but rather private companies acting to achieve the same repressipon that the state normally enforces. In Orwell’s novels, the state is the primary villain. Orwell does, however, depict private individuals as informants. Someone tells, and that’s how the state knows to go after you. That’s the case here too. A journalist at Buzzfeed notifies YouTube Twitter, and that’s how you get permanently banned and become a digital unperson.
This, then, is the ultimate objective of the socialist left in America: to brainwash us through propaganda and to terrify us into submission, so that we all become Winston, cowering and whimpering at first and ultimately giving in, not only on the outside but also on the inside, our ideals crushed, our dignity gone, finally embracing our abusers and captors by saying, in unison, “I love Big Brother.” At this point, the left is content and our reeducation is complete.
June 3, 2020
Very scary but accurate explanation of today’s socialism and how it is trying to work it’s way into our American society and government. We must continue to fight against socialism. We must keep the ideals that America stands for. If we fall to that, we have destroyed our democracy and our country will die. Very good book as always from D’Souza! “America will never be a socialist country.” President Trump
June 11, 2020
This is the only book I've encountered (so far) that has either 1-star or 5-stars, nothing in between. I'm not a US citizen, but now I understand how badly polarised Americans are. I decided to give 3-stars, declaring my neutrality in US politics; but honestly, I liked the book.
June 8, 2020
In United States of Socialism Dinesh describes the evolution of Marxism and its current state as Identity Socialism. The common thread of conflict between oppressed vs. oppressor continues but instead of Workers vs. Capitalists its an intersectional coalition of ethnic minorities, women, sexual minorities, religious minorities, and socioeconomic egalitarians, against the dominant societal structure, ostensibly white, male, Christian, and free-market capitalists. Dinesh also argues, in response to socialist critics of free-market capitalism that free-market capitalism is inherently democratic and just.
I found this book interesting and insightful. The book progressed at a good pace and Dinesh's arguments were well supported. Dinesh writes to his audience and as someone who values his insight, wit, and courage, I found this book enjoyable.
I found this book interesting and insightful. The book progressed at a good pace and Dinesh's arguments were well supported. Dinesh writes to his audience and as someone who values his insight, wit, and courage, I found this book enjoyable.
June 4, 2020
awful book came with ripped pages and incorrect information. i even saw a cockroach in a page when i called to ask for a different one the person on the other line told me to eat the cockroach then hung up
June 4, 2020
By far the worst book ever written.
October 27, 2020
I'm not into politics, so never even heard of this author until I read his book, while it's well written in the fact that it's easy to read and the words flow nicely, the author fails to make most of his points, and comes off more as a professional troll preaching to the choir. Can somebody really believe what he believes and think he's undoubtedly right? Documented my thoughts throughout, see below:
In the preface he claimed West Germany and South Korea were success stories of capitalism (compared to East Germany and North Korea), but both those countries have universal healthcare, and college is practically free in Germany.
He compares socialists to the character Christian from Pilgrim's Progress. Does the author not realize that Christian succeeded?
In the Intro, thinks pointing out that Obama bought beachfront property as a way to disprove disproves climate change, acted as if this was checkmate for showing Obama doesn't even really believe in it (does offer more arguments later in chapter 3).
Says socialism is what's turning blacks and browns against whites, women against men. So it's socialism and not the years of oppression and being treated like 2nd and 3rd class citizens (and sometimes even lower than that)?
Makes bold statements like ""Socialists are the least compassionate, most uncharitable group in society" but doesn't back this up with any facts.
In Chapter 1, author was impressed with the 1978 standard of living (regular people with a nice house, 2 cars), isn't this dream no longer attainable for many now? Hasn't the middle class shrunk significantly since then? Isn't this what the "socialists" want to correct?
Brings up people arguing the Constitution is outdated, like surgeons using a textbook from the same time, but does nothing to discredit this view.
During the days of the robber barons, essentially says everyone but the capitalistic robber barons were corrupt.
In Chapter 2, he said Woodrow Wilson was against the automobile (they were for the rich to show off) and how capitalist Henry Ford transformed the industry so that everybody could afford and eventually needed a car. Probably the author's best example for capitalism so far.
In Chapter 3, talks about how socialism makes white males the enemy now, but this is inconsistent with one of the books primary antagonists, Bernie Sanders.
For climate change, argues nobody can tell the difference from when we were kids, and that humans can survive a 1 degree increase in temperature (and some in colder climates might enjoy it). Completely ignores the ecological affects it could have on plants, wildlife, water, etc.
"Of course, the whole thing is based on lies. Let’s start with racism, which has become increasingly rare in a society where it is now customary, if not obligatory, to tiptoe around blacks and other people of color, to express deference if not subservience to their demands and to put up with behavior that would be utterly intolerable if anyone else did it. We live in a society of black and brown privilege, yet all that we hear about is 'white privilege.'” - after this statement, author goes on to prove racism doesn't exist by pointing to hate crime hoaxes. The logic here being if there was real racism still around, there wouldn't be these hoaxes. Isn't an easy counter one of the many stats, such as disparity of pay, mortgage approval rates, convictions, prison sentences, etc. when controlling for everything but race?
In Chapter 4, author talks about Nordic socialism, and why it works to a point there because of more homogeneous ethnic and religious populations, smaller size, and a lack of immigration, but won't work here, because of the all the diverse group and overall size. I thought this was one of the author's best points.
Rails on European, Canadian, Australia healthcare, but all rank ahead of US by global reports. Ask a Canadian, European, or Australian if they'd trade healthcare. The ones I know wouldn't.
"So are the Scandinavian countries capitalist or socialist? We can resolve the contradiction by saying that they are capitalist in wealth creation and socialist in wealth distribution. 'The Nordic countries,' writes Jeffrey Dorfman, 'are smart enough not to kill the goose that lays the golden egg.' And the Finnish journalist Anu Partanen, in a book recommending the Nordic model for America, points to the success of Swedish and Danish companies like Ikea, H&M, Spotify, Volvo, Ericsson and Maersk to emphasize that 'the Nordic model goes to extraordinary lengths to support entrepreneurs.'" - so why can't the US also do this?
"But at the same time—and this is part of the appeal—it created a wealthy ruling class of Chavistas who run the country like their own private domain. They rewrite the constitution. They have their own private army. They are a governing elite exempt from the misery and desperation of ordinary citizens. They have uninhibited access to what remains of Venezuela’s oil wealth. In fact, their lifestyles are the envy of American leftists. Why be a millionaire and own three homes like Bernie Sanders when you can be a billionaire, like the Chavez family, and have mansions around the world? In Venezuela you don’t need a Clinton Foundation to trade favors for cash; the country itself is your private foundation. " -this sounds a lot like the current, non-socialist US 1%, both Republican and Democrat. Author tries to spin this as only a socialist problem though.
"Columbus, once honored as a great explorer, became the poster boy of white imperialism." -because Columbus was the poster boy for white imperialism. How many people did he (and his crews) slave, torture, rape, and kill?
"Propaganda on climate change, on identity politics, on gender and race and inequality, now dominates elementary and secondary education, and the debate that once occurred on American campuses is now a rarity" -is this propaganda? Is the opposite of all this the truth that should be taught?
"But in Venezuela, as in America, it is quite possible for 'public servants' to become very rich. In fact, it is hard to name any prominent figure on the Venezuelan left, as on the American left, who hasn’t profited handsomely from their politics" - this is only the left? So the right/Republicans don't profit the same way? No bias here, right?
Chapter 5:
"If you peruse the list of America’s wealthiest men and women, you’ll see that a sizable majority of them now are Democrats, even though the Democratic agenda would seem inimical to their economic interests." -doesn’t this mean they realize something? Doesn't this mean it's not greed like he has stated so many times before throughout his book?
Talks about how people vote with their purchases as consumers, but the obvious counterpoint he neglects is when monopolies/oligopolies form. There is no alternative for things like healthcare or internet access.
"Even the best advocates of capitalism, from Adam Smith to Friedrich Hayek to Ayn Rand, emphasize its efficiency, how well markets 'work.' And they have proven successful, but only to a point." -only to point, so he realizes there's a limit? Author does not delve into what this limit is though.
"No one is being forced to work at Walmart, so why don’t the workers leave and create their own Walmart? Sure, they may lack the initial capital, but they can borrow that at a going rate of interest." -I thought this was an example of both his inconsistency and illogical views. For inconsistencies, he's constantly complaining about fake news, and the socialist media, Hollywood, and the education system. Doesn't the same argument apply there, why can't he and others like him just start a new Hollywood, or media company, or University? Does he really think low wage workers have the ability to borrow the necessary funds at a competitive interest rate to compete with Walmart? And if they did, would not Walmart actively undercut their prices to drive this new competition out of business (as they've done to the old mom and pop shops in the past)?
Talks about Trumps success buying the Commodore hotel with no help from his father, but ignores the fact that his father used political connections to get him a $400m tax abatement. Also mentions Jeff Bezos "the son of a sixteen-year-old mom and a deadbeat dad" language clearly used to make it sound like he came from nothing, but by all accounts Bezos grew up middle class, and got a $300k loan from his parents to start Amazon, things the author ignores.
Talks about how entrepreneurs take risks, so they deserve the profit. While this may be true at the low levels of capitalism, the higher up you go the more protection you get with bankruptcy laws and bailouts to protect the investors but not the workers.
"We have spoken earlier of the critical elements of entrepreneurship, but I left one of them out. That element is a most surprising one, because it runs counter to all the anticapitalist propaganda. It is unselfishness, empathy, the ability to identify with the feelings and wants of others. More than any other profession—with the possible exception of the clergy—entrepreneurs, and especially supply-side entrepreneurs, restrain their own selfish impulses and put themselves in the place of their customers." Big eye roll. While for sure the entrepreneur often puts himself in the customers shoes, the author does nothing to demonstrate unselfishness or empathy. This is a great example of how he frames everything in the book. Anything remotely close to socialism, absolute evil. Anything capitalistic, the purest of pure.
Talks about the genetic lottery, compares it to regular lottery, how everyone has an equal chance. This seems wrong, because success rates, and ability to move up in life vary greatly depending on where you started. Would be nice if he talked about the difference in success rates between those who grew up lower class, middle class, upper class.
Says rise of automation isn't a concern because people will develop new needs and wants. But what about stagnant wages, the decline in good jobs, and the erosion of the middle class?
"The Obamas, the Clintons and the Bidens are now living the billionaire lifestyle." -this comes after he points out their net worth of each is in the millions. Maybe it's an attempt at hyperbole, but using billions here just seems like he's trying trying to purposely mischaracterize in order to paint a more negative picture.
Chapter 6 is so unabashedly pro-Trump it's ridiculous. Compares Trump to Lincoln. Says Trumps only weaknesses were he didn't fire people soon enough, and he doesn't pick his fights. Even most Trump apologists realize he has his fair share of flaws.
Continues to blame the media and Hollywood, but aren't these capitalist enterprises?
Goes briefly into his own felony conviction, how the Deep State was against him as an enemy of Obama. Thought this was interesting, would have liked him to go a little deeper into his arrest, conviction, and pardon, was definitely interesting to read about.
"Trump’s trade policy can also be understood as a modest form of economic redistribution, not from the rich to the poor but from consumers to workers. Consumers, after all, have gotten the great windfall from the globalization, immigration and second communications revolution. It has been a revolution of better and cheaper products. But Trump knows that these same developments have severely hurt working-class people in manufacturing sectors, in the process wrecking whole communities! Even if it confounds strict libertarian principles, Trump insists—and he is right to insist—on some form of protection for those who have been hardest hit." -this sounds like the socialism that the author spent the whole book arguing against. Seems to be okay when it's Trump though. Funny how different he makes it sound it when it's a side he supports.
When talking about taking down socialism says, "Payback is the road back to a kinder, gentler politics, just as victory in the Civil War was the way to achieve a peaceful, post-slavery America." -does he not know about Reconstruction, Jim Crow, and the Civil Rights movement? Anybody that refers to post-slavery as peaceful is probably blinded by their biases.
Overall, seems completely biased and blind to any faults of capitalism, Trump, or Republicans, while attaching the word socialism to anything he doesn't like, and will quickly make derogatory comments about anybody not on his side. Throughout the book says socialists don't want to work, but never demonstrates this or proves this in any way. While the man is clearly smart, most of his arguments seem like something you'd expect from a passionate Junior High kid whose certain he's right, but that somebody with even a little bit of an open mind would be able to successfully debate. Really comes off more like that stereotypical racist, close minded relative. Was looking for some good counterpoints, as the last books I've read had been more on the liberal side, but you won't find any here.
In the preface he claimed West Germany and South Korea were success stories of capitalism (compared to East Germany and North Korea), but both those countries have universal healthcare, and college is practically free in Germany.
He compares socialists to the character Christian from Pilgrim's Progress. Does the author not realize that Christian succeeded?
In the Intro, thinks pointing out that Obama bought beachfront property as a way to disprove disproves climate change, acted as if this was checkmate for showing Obama doesn't even really believe in it (does offer more arguments later in chapter 3).
Says socialism is what's turning blacks and browns against whites, women against men. So it's socialism and not the years of oppression and being treated like 2nd and 3rd class citizens (and sometimes even lower than that)?
Makes bold statements like ""Socialists are the least compassionate, most uncharitable group in society" but doesn't back this up with any facts.
In Chapter 1, author was impressed with the 1978 standard of living (regular people with a nice house, 2 cars), isn't this dream no longer attainable for many now? Hasn't the middle class shrunk significantly since then? Isn't this what the "socialists" want to correct?
Brings up people arguing the Constitution is outdated, like surgeons using a textbook from the same time, but does nothing to discredit this view.
During the days of the robber barons, essentially says everyone but the capitalistic robber barons were corrupt.
In Chapter 2, he said Woodrow Wilson was against the automobile (they were for the rich to show off) and how capitalist Henry Ford transformed the industry so that everybody could afford and eventually needed a car. Probably the author's best example for capitalism so far.
In Chapter 3, talks about how socialism makes white males the enemy now, but this is inconsistent with one of the books primary antagonists, Bernie Sanders.
For climate change, argues nobody can tell the difference from when we were kids, and that humans can survive a 1 degree increase in temperature (and some in colder climates might enjoy it). Completely ignores the ecological affects it could have on plants, wildlife, water, etc.
"Of course, the whole thing is based on lies. Let’s start with racism, which has become increasingly rare in a society where it is now customary, if not obligatory, to tiptoe around blacks and other people of color, to express deference if not subservience to their demands and to put up with behavior that would be utterly intolerable if anyone else did it. We live in a society of black and brown privilege, yet all that we hear about is 'white privilege.'” - after this statement, author goes on to prove racism doesn't exist by pointing to hate crime hoaxes. The logic here being if there was real racism still around, there wouldn't be these hoaxes. Isn't an easy counter one of the many stats, such as disparity of pay, mortgage approval rates, convictions, prison sentences, etc. when controlling for everything but race?
In Chapter 4, author talks about Nordic socialism, and why it works to a point there because of more homogeneous ethnic and religious populations, smaller size, and a lack of immigration, but won't work here, because of the all the diverse group and overall size. I thought this was one of the author's best points.
Rails on European, Canadian, Australia healthcare, but all rank ahead of US by global reports. Ask a Canadian, European, or Australian if they'd trade healthcare. The ones I know wouldn't.
"So are the Scandinavian countries capitalist or socialist? We can resolve the contradiction by saying that they are capitalist in wealth creation and socialist in wealth distribution. 'The Nordic countries,' writes Jeffrey Dorfman, 'are smart enough not to kill the goose that lays the golden egg.' And the Finnish journalist Anu Partanen, in a book recommending the Nordic model for America, points to the success of Swedish and Danish companies like Ikea, H&M, Spotify, Volvo, Ericsson and Maersk to emphasize that 'the Nordic model goes to extraordinary lengths to support entrepreneurs.'" - so why can't the US also do this?
"But at the same time—and this is part of the appeal—it created a wealthy ruling class of Chavistas who run the country like their own private domain. They rewrite the constitution. They have their own private army. They are a governing elite exempt from the misery and desperation of ordinary citizens. They have uninhibited access to what remains of Venezuela’s oil wealth. In fact, their lifestyles are the envy of American leftists. Why be a millionaire and own three homes like Bernie Sanders when you can be a billionaire, like the Chavez family, and have mansions around the world? In Venezuela you don’t need a Clinton Foundation to trade favors for cash; the country itself is your private foundation. " -this sounds a lot like the current, non-socialist US 1%, both Republican and Democrat. Author tries to spin this as only a socialist problem though.
"Columbus, once honored as a great explorer, became the poster boy of white imperialism." -because Columbus was the poster boy for white imperialism. How many people did he (and his crews) slave, torture, rape, and kill?
"Propaganda on climate change, on identity politics, on gender and race and inequality, now dominates elementary and secondary education, and the debate that once occurred on American campuses is now a rarity" -is this propaganda? Is the opposite of all this the truth that should be taught?
"But in Venezuela, as in America, it is quite possible for 'public servants' to become very rich. In fact, it is hard to name any prominent figure on the Venezuelan left, as on the American left, who hasn’t profited handsomely from their politics" - this is only the left? So the right/Republicans don't profit the same way? No bias here, right?
Chapter 5:
"If you peruse the list of America’s wealthiest men and women, you’ll see that a sizable majority of them now are Democrats, even though the Democratic agenda would seem inimical to their economic interests." -doesn’t this mean they realize something? Doesn't this mean it's not greed like he has stated so many times before throughout his book?
Talks about how people vote with their purchases as consumers, but the obvious counterpoint he neglects is when monopolies/oligopolies form. There is no alternative for things like healthcare or internet access.
"Even the best advocates of capitalism, from Adam Smith to Friedrich Hayek to Ayn Rand, emphasize its efficiency, how well markets 'work.' And they have proven successful, but only to a point." -only to point, so he realizes there's a limit? Author does not delve into what this limit is though.
"No one is being forced to work at Walmart, so why don’t the workers leave and create their own Walmart? Sure, they may lack the initial capital, but they can borrow that at a going rate of interest." -I thought this was an example of both his inconsistency and illogical views. For inconsistencies, he's constantly complaining about fake news, and the socialist media, Hollywood, and the education system. Doesn't the same argument apply there, why can't he and others like him just start a new Hollywood, or media company, or University? Does he really think low wage workers have the ability to borrow the necessary funds at a competitive interest rate to compete with Walmart? And if they did, would not Walmart actively undercut their prices to drive this new competition out of business (as they've done to the old mom and pop shops in the past)?
Talks about Trumps success buying the Commodore hotel with no help from his father, but ignores the fact that his father used political connections to get him a $400m tax abatement. Also mentions Jeff Bezos "the son of a sixteen-year-old mom and a deadbeat dad" language clearly used to make it sound like he came from nothing, but by all accounts Bezos grew up middle class, and got a $300k loan from his parents to start Amazon, things the author ignores.
Talks about how entrepreneurs take risks, so they deserve the profit. While this may be true at the low levels of capitalism, the higher up you go the more protection you get with bankruptcy laws and bailouts to protect the investors but not the workers.
"We have spoken earlier of the critical elements of entrepreneurship, but I left one of them out. That element is a most surprising one, because it runs counter to all the anticapitalist propaganda. It is unselfishness, empathy, the ability to identify with the feelings and wants of others. More than any other profession—with the possible exception of the clergy—entrepreneurs, and especially supply-side entrepreneurs, restrain their own selfish impulses and put themselves in the place of their customers." Big eye roll. While for sure the entrepreneur often puts himself in the customers shoes, the author does nothing to demonstrate unselfishness or empathy. This is a great example of how he frames everything in the book. Anything remotely close to socialism, absolute evil. Anything capitalistic, the purest of pure.
Talks about the genetic lottery, compares it to regular lottery, how everyone has an equal chance. This seems wrong, because success rates, and ability to move up in life vary greatly depending on where you started. Would be nice if he talked about the difference in success rates between those who grew up lower class, middle class, upper class.
Says rise of automation isn't a concern because people will develop new needs and wants. But what about stagnant wages, the decline in good jobs, and the erosion of the middle class?
"The Obamas, the Clintons and the Bidens are now living the billionaire lifestyle." -this comes after he points out their net worth of each is in the millions. Maybe it's an attempt at hyperbole, but using billions here just seems like he's trying trying to purposely mischaracterize in order to paint a more negative picture.
Chapter 6 is so unabashedly pro-Trump it's ridiculous. Compares Trump to Lincoln. Says Trumps only weaknesses were he didn't fire people soon enough, and he doesn't pick his fights. Even most Trump apologists realize he has his fair share of flaws.
Continues to blame the media and Hollywood, but aren't these capitalist enterprises?
Goes briefly into his own felony conviction, how the Deep State was against him as an enemy of Obama. Thought this was interesting, would have liked him to go a little deeper into his arrest, conviction, and pardon, was definitely interesting to read about.
"Trump’s trade policy can also be understood as a modest form of economic redistribution, not from the rich to the poor but from consumers to workers. Consumers, after all, have gotten the great windfall from the globalization, immigration and second communications revolution. It has been a revolution of better and cheaper products. But Trump knows that these same developments have severely hurt working-class people in manufacturing sectors, in the process wrecking whole communities! Even if it confounds strict libertarian principles, Trump insists—and he is right to insist—on some form of protection for those who have been hardest hit." -this sounds like the socialism that the author spent the whole book arguing against. Seems to be okay when it's Trump though. Funny how different he makes it sound it when it's a side he supports.
When talking about taking down socialism says, "Payback is the road back to a kinder, gentler politics, just as victory in the Civil War was the way to achieve a peaceful, post-slavery America." -does he not know about Reconstruction, Jim Crow, and the Civil Rights movement? Anybody that refers to post-slavery as peaceful is probably blinded by their biases.
Overall, seems completely biased and blind to any faults of capitalism, Trump, or Republicans, while attaching the word socialism to anything he doesn't like, and will quickly make derogatory comments about anybody not on his side. Throughout the book says socialists don't want to work, but never demonstrates this or proves this in any way. While the man is clearly smart, most of his arguments seem like something you'd expect from a passionate Junior High kid whose certain he's right, but that somebody with even a little bit of an open mind would be able to successfully debate. Really comes off more like that stereotypical racist, close minded relative. Was looking for some good counterpoints, as the last books I've read had been more on the liberal side, but you won't find any here.
June 4, 2020
worst book ever. tryna promote it off of george floyd’s death. disgusting.
June 15, 2020
This book takes a strong look at the way the socialistic politicians have plagued this country since before Karl Marx. It shows what they have done, are doing, and how far they are willing to go to destroy anyone who stands against them. There is historical information about president's past and present who fight for capitalism and freedom. At the very end of this book there is helpful advice on how we can combat the socialist ways and try and triumph. Be strong America.
August 16, 2020
First, I find it hard to believe that I am the ONLY person on GOODREADS who has read and reviewed this book. But, as has been pointed out to me, it is fairly new. This is the history lesson every American should read. Everything the Democratic party is working towards has been tried before. It has failed every time. There is no free ride except for those in charge and confiscating the wealth. Thank you Dinesh!
June 4, 2020
This book forced me to throw my bird out of my window and yell “GO GET THE CRACKERS JIMMY” his name isn’t even Jimmy??? And he doesn’t eat crackers?? And why’d the author have to get my bird involved? This book is a no. NEVER read it
June 18, 2020
Top notch!
Great insight and very timely.
All the usual suspects are there; Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Joe Biden, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, and Ilhan Omar.
His exposure of Barack Obama confirmed reports I had heard of for years!
Great insight and very timely.
All the usual suspects are there; Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Joe Biden, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, and Ilhan Omar.
His exposure of Barack Obama confirmed reports I had heard of for years!
August 17, 2020
This book explains what is going on in the United States in 2020 with the riots, erasing of our history, defunding of the police and the rise of the moral police and the mob. We are well on the way to becoming Venezuela. If they come for our guns, the endgame has arrived.
June 21, 2020
An illuminating book overall, with well-referenced anecdotes throughout history about the failure of socialism. For the last 20 percent of the book the tone changes, becoming too negative, partisan and personal, which is a shame, because many will throw this book against the wall, focusing on this last portion instead of learning from what came before.
July 24, 2020
Probably the best book out yet on the American left and their embrace of socialism through the primary vehicle of identity politics. This is truly a must read before the 2020 election, the other book I'd deem a must read is "Guilty by Reason of Insanity" by David Limbaugh. With an honorable mention to "The Case Against Socialism" by Senator Rand Paul.
This book correctly exposes the left for who they are and where they want to take this country. That anti free market economics will only take us down the path of Venezuela. (Which has been the modern system they demonstrably admire) Where we all lose weight not because it's a good idea, but because the system imposed leads to poverty and hunger for the majority. The Scandinavian model they preach about it is really a guise. Even the Nordic countries refute the American left that they are indeed free market economies. There welfare state is based on cultural unity not diversity or identity politics.
I enjoyed the authors historical analysis of the progressive left. They slowly left the working class behind. Why? Because Marx was wrong. The move away from Capitalism wouldn't come through the working class because they were largely content. In America they could build a good life for themselves as capitalism/freedom affords them that opportunity. There's no need to revolt. So the left moved to identity politics, tribalism, "intersectionality", convincing the young they're victims, the teaching of revisionist history and that capitalism is oppressive and evil. (research critical reviews of the "1619 project.") If you have to use deception and revisionist history to accomplish your political goals then that's pretty revealing that your philosophy and politics are worthless.
The author notes, the left in this country wants conformity of thought and to dissent from the leftist ethos.....you know standing up for crazy things like religious freedom, freedom of assembly, and freedom of speech....requires political and sometimes violent attack into submission. (see the baker in Colorado, the florist in Washington, the refusal of service to Trump supports or the catalogued violence against them, look at ANTIFA) The marxism won't come solely on economics, that culture has to be attacked first. (gender, marriage, children, family, heterosexuality, whiteness, masculinity, work ethics etc) Enemies literally have to be invented, hate crimes have to be hoaxed, and finding offense in something takes tremendous effort on the lefts part.
As he talks about President Trump, I'm reminded of President Lincoln's words regarding General Grant. After a bloody battle many petty, tepid, and political establishment union generals encouraged Lincoln to get rid of Grant. To which he replied to the ankle biters......" I cannot spare this man, he fights." The author correctly points out that President Trump is a fighter, he goes where no republican has gone before in standing up to the left. Violating the rules the left imposes on conservatives. The author is correct in the fact that republicans are the nice guy in the room. We care about our local areas of life....our business, our church, our neighbors etc. but are tepid in actually fighting for the direction of this nation. That we need to match the lefts enthusiasm in fighting for the direction of this nation. That the time for simple republican/conservative nicety is over. The time is past for us to develop a will to peaceably fight back.
Great book, worth a read.
This book correctly exposes the left for who they are and where they want to take this country. That anti free market economics will only take us down the path of Venezuela. (Which has been the modern system they demonstrably admire) Where we all lose weight not because it's a good idea, but because the system imposed leads to poverty and hunger for the majority. The Scandinavian model they preach about it is really a guise. Even the Nordic countries refute the American left that they are indeed free market economies. There welfare state is based on cultural unity not diversity or identity politics.
I enjoyed the authors historical analysis of the progressive left. They slowly left the working class behind. Why? Because Marx was wrong. The move away from Capitalism wouldn't come through the working class because they were largely content. In America they could build a good life for themselves as capitalism/freedom affords them that opportunity. There's no need to revolt. So the left moved to identity politics, tribalism, "intersectionality", convincing the young they're victims, the teaching of revisionist history and that capitalism is oppressive and evil. (research critical reviews of the "1619 project.") If you have to use deception and revisionist history to accomplish your political goals then that's pretty revealing that your philosophy and politics are worthless.
The author notes, the left in this country wants conformity of thought and to dissent from the leftist ethos.....you know standing up for crazy things like religious freedom, freedom of assembly, and freedom of speech....requires political and sometimes violent attack into submission. (see the baker in Colorado, the florist in Washington, the refusal of service to Trump supports or the catalogued violence against them, look at ANTIFA) The marxism won't come solely on economics, that culture has to be attacked first. (gender, marriage, children, family, heterosexuality, whiteness, masculinity, work ethics etc) Enemies literally have to be invented, hate crimes have to be hoaxed, and finding offense in something takes tremendous effort on the lefts part.
As he talks about President Trump, I'm reminded of President Lincoln's words regarding General Grant. After a bloody battle many petty, tepid, and political establishment union generals encouraged Lincoln to get rid of Grant. To which he replied to the ankle biters......" I cannot spare this man, he fights." The author correctly points out that President Trump is a fighter, he goes where no republican has gone before in standing up to the left. Violating the rules the left imposes on conservatives. The author is correct in the fact that republicans are the nice guy in the room. We care about our local areas of life....our business, our church, our neighbors etc. but are tepid in actually fighting for the direction of this nation. That we need to match the lefts enthusiasm in fighting for the direction of this nation. That the time for simple republican/conservative nicety is over. The time is past for us to develop a will to peaceably fight back.
Great book, worth a read.
June 13, 2021
Dinesh seems to think the modern Democratic Party of the 21st century is the same as the Democratic party of the 19th and 20th century. He doesn't seem to acknowledge the party switch.
Dinesh actually thinks fascism is a kind of socialism and not what it really is which is a force that opposes socialism and worker's rights. I really need to repeat this because I run into this misconception a lot: fascism opposes anarchism, communism, class conflict, democracy, democratic socialism and really when it comes down to it enlightenment liberal values. The Nazi party is short for National Socialist but they were not socialist. The party named themselves that in an attempt to appeal to workers but once they got power they dropped any pretense for worker's rights. If you think the Nazis were socialists then you probably believe the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea) is a democracy.
Dinesh gives a hilariously bad defense of the economic exploitation and inequality and instability of the 1920s Gilded Age. It should seem the unfettered capitalism Dinesh worships fails and falls into a Great Depression. There is no acknowledgement on this on the author's part.
If you knew anything about the left magazine Jacobin you'd know its not referencing the French Revolution but rather the Haitian from the title of the book Black Jacobins by C. L. R. James which I highly recommend which is significant because Dinesh tries to slander it with connecting it to the horrors of the French party and not Toussaint, a Haitian general in the revolution, no really, read Black Jacobins, you'd name your magazine after that too.
When Dinesh says Thomas Paine is for free markets and thus not a socialist Dinesh is under the misunderstanding, as Ben Shapiro is, that free markets and socialism are mutually exclusive. It seems these people don’t know economics or what words mean. That's fine for your average person but you’d think if you’re writing a book about it you might want to understand these things. Unless you just want to remain ignorant and or make deceitful propaganda. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_...
And really the worst of the book is toward the end as it devolves into Dinesh talking about some unfounded conspiracy about Obama covering up being gay and people being killed to cover up Obama's sexuality. This article goes into that craziness: https://www.thenation.com/article/arc...
And not only that but Dinesh really thinks he went to prison on some conspiracy on the part of0 Obama and the deep state.
I don't recommend this book unless you want to look at rightwing propaganda. It was mind numbing. I do recommend some historians he takes shots at. I recommend Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States and find yourself a book by Eric Foner. Read Umberto Eco's take on fascism.
And no Republicans are not the party of the nice guys. Republican officials are increasingly making the party a party of anti-democracy as they flood the country with policies making it needlessly harder for people to vote and continuing this conspiracy that the 2020 Presidential election was stolen, even removing their officials from positions who will not toe this line. Really they've been like this for awhile now. No Michael Flynn I don't want what happened in Myanmar to happen here.
Dinesh actually thinks fascism is a kind of socialism and not what it really is which is a force that opposes socialism and worker's rights. I really need to repeat this because I run into this misconception a lot: fascism opposes anarchism, communism, class conflict, democracy, democratic socialism and really when it comes down to it enlightenment liberal values. The Nazi party is short for National Socialist but they were not socialist. The party named themselves that in an attempt to appeal to workers but once they got power they dropped any pretense for worker's rights. If you think the Nazis were socialists then you probably believe the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea) is a democracy.
Dinesh gives a hilariously bad defense of the economic exploitation and inequality and instability of the 1920s Gilded Age. It should seem the unfettered capitalism Dinesh worships fails and falls into a Great Depression. There is no acknowledgement on this on the author's part.
If you knew anything about the left magazine Jacobin you'd know its not referencing the French Revolution but rather the Haitian from the title of the book Black Jacobins by C. L. R. James which I highly recommend which is significant because Dinesh tries to slander it with connecting it to the horrors of the French party and not Toussaint, a Haitian general in the revolution, no really, read Black Jacobins, you'd name your magazine after that too.
When Dinesh says Thomas Paine is for free markets and thus not a socialist Dinesh is under the misunderstanding, as Ben Shapiro is, that free markets and socialism are mutually exclusive. It seems these people don’t know economics or what words mean. That's fine for your average person but you’d think if you’re writing a book about it you might want to understand these things. Unless you just want to remain ignorant and or make deceitful propaganda. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_...
And really the worst of the book is toward the end as it devolves into Dinesh talking about some unfounded conspiracy about Obama covering up being gay and people being killed to cover up Obama's sexuality. This article goes into that craziness: https://www.thenation.com/article/arc...
And not only that but Dinesh really thinks he went to prison on some conspiracy on the part of0 Obama and the deep state.
I don't recommend this book unless you want to look at rightwing propaganda. It was mind numbing. I do recommend some historians he takes shots at. I recommend Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States and find yourself a book by Eric Foner. Read Umberto Eco's take on fascism.
And no Republicans are not the party of the nice guys. Republican officials are increasingly making the party a party of anti-democracy as they flood the country with policies making it needlessly harder for people to vote and continuing this conspiracy that the 2020 Presidential election was stolen, even removing their officials from positions who will not toe this line. Really they've been like this for awhile now. No Michael Flynn I don't want what happened in Myanmar to happen here.
October 21, 2020
Dinesh D'Souza's forte is his ability to combine polemics and scholarship effortlessly. He does that admirably in this book also. Having read a few of his books and watched him for hours on YouTube, he gives me the impression of an intellectual Don Quixote, always in search of a new opponent. This time he takes on the socialist crowd in the Democratic party.
The socialist turn in American politics is epitomised by the rise of Bernie Sanders, who advocates free college education, a National Health Service and extensive social security programmes, all funded by higher taxes. The socialists in the democratic party claim that they draw inspiration from the Scandinavian model. D’Souza argues that the policies proposed by the likes of Bernie Sanders differ from the Scandinavian model in crucial respects: Scandinavian countries are characterised by high levels of social homogeneity which impel citizens in these countries to make sacrifices for each other. So these countries have high rates of income tax for the middle-income groups and high rates of VAT which affect all classes of people indiscriminately. In comparison, America has higher marginal rates of income tax for the very rich and very low or nil VAT. What the left proposes is even higher rates of tax for the rich in America. D’Souza calls this ‘theft socialism’ (as in Venezuela) as opposed to what he calls ‘unification socialism’ of Scandinavia. He fears that socialism will ruin American society and economy as it did in Venezuela.
D’Souza argues that American socialism is more about identity politics than about class politics. So the blue-collar workers and the poor, natural constituency of the left, tend to support the Republicans in America rather than the Democratic Party. The latter appeals to the cultural minorities: women, students, blacks, Hispanics and LGBTQ. According to D’Souza, the intellectual roots of American socialism lies in post Marxism espoused by the likes of Herbert Marcuse. These cultural Marxists saw the realm of culture as a battlefield and saw the marginalised as foot soldiers of the revolution. They placed no hope in the workers in Advanced capitalist countries to bring about a radical transformation. Instead, cultural minorities would be the new proletariats.
So D’Souza’s case against American socialism is that it is not what it claims to be. Its underpinnings are in a version of Marxism and the course it proposes to take is a very dangerous one which may take America to Venezuela rather than to Scandinavia.
While the merits of this book are many, it is marred by its shrill tone, too much of the author's personal story and somewhat blind hero-worship of Donald Trump.
The socialist turn in American politics is epitomised by the rise of Bernie Sanders, who advocates free college education, a National Health Service and extensive social security programmes, all funded by higher taxes. The socialists in the democratic party claim that they draw inspiration from the Scandinavian model. D’Souza argues that the policies proposed by the likes of Bernie Sanders differ from the Scandinavian model in crucial respects: Scandinavian countries are characterised by high levels of social homogeneity which impel citizens in these countries to make sacrifices for each other. So these countries have high rates of income tax for the middle-income groups and high rates of VAT which affect all classes of people indiscriminately. In comparison, America has higher marginal rates of income tax for the very rich and very low or nil VAT. What the left proposes is even higher rates of tax for the rich in America. D’Souza calls this ‘theft socialism’ (as in Venezuela) as opposed to what he calls ‘unification socialism’ of Scandinavia. He fears that socialism will ruin American society and economy as it did in Venezuela.
D’Souza argues that American socialism is more about identity politics than about class politics. So the blue-collar workers and the poor, natural constituency of the left, tend to support the Republicans in America rather than the Democratic Party. The latter appeals to the cultural minorities: women, students, blacks, Hispanics and LGBTQ. According to D’Souza, the intellectual roots of American socialism lies in post Marxism espoused by the likes of Herbert Marcuse. These cultural Marxists saw the realm of culture as a battlefield and saw the marginalised as foot soldiers of the revolution. They placed no hope in the workers in Advanced capitalist countries to bring about a radical transformation. Instead, cultural minorities would be the new proletariats.
So D’Souza’s case against American socialism is that it is not what it claims to be. Its underpinnings are in a version of Marxism and the course it proposes to take is a very dangerous one which may take America to Venezuela rather than to Scandinavia.
While the merits of this book are many, it is marred by its shrill tone, too much of the author's personal story and somewhat blind hero-worship of Donald Trump.
October 8, 2020
I picked up this book because I was interested in understanding why conservatives are so scared of “socialism” despite the immense popularity of most of the social programs in our Country. I was bitterly disappointed.
This book is a study in confirmation bias. D’Souza made no effort at all to convince the democratic socialist or progressive of his position. He came out of the gate insulting anyone on the left with ad hominem attacks, calling them fool, idiots, and worse. He is clearly speaking to an audience that already believes what he believes.
The book is almost entirely based upon logical fallacies. In nearly every chapter the author sets up straw men to knock down and does not address the actual arguments set forth by real life social democrats and progressives. I often had to set the book down to calm down before I could read his response to a completely fabricated “democratic socialists believe” or “the left wants to”. He also constantly does this incomprehensible thing where he claims to know what some historical figure would believe, and of course, surprise, surprise, it is always the conservative position. Wandering into the realm of fiction and pretending to speak in the voice of an historical person addressing modern problems is simply bizarre. Further, much of his argument is based on some alleged conspiracy that the left desires these policies to gain control of the population but fails to explain some reason for wanting to do that. He simply cannot comprehend that some people would simply want adequate food, shelter, and healthcare for everyone.
Although the book is allegedly about socialism, D’Souza often strays into unrelated territory. His attacks on climate change are simply bizarre; at one point he says it must not be true because Obama bought a house on Martha’s Vineyard. Likewise, his critique on the press for failing to adequately cover the story of a mentally unstable man who claims to have had a homosexual love affair with Obama left me scratching my head.
No one who reads this book will change their mind. If the reader already believed socialism was bad, they will still believe that after reading it. If they reader believed that democratic socialism might solve some of the problems of capitalism, nothing in this book will convince them otherwise. This book serves no purpose other than to line the pockets of Dinesh D’Souza and I very much regret contributing to that effort.
This book is a study in confirmation bias. D’Souza made no effort at all to convince the democratic socialist or progressive of his position. He came out of the gate insulting anyone on the left with ad hominem attacks, calling them fool, idiots, and worse. He is clearly speaking to an audience that already believes what he believes.
The book is almost entirely based upon logical fallacies. In nearly every chapter the author sets up straw men to knock down and does not address the actual arguments set forth by real life social democrats and progressives. I often had to set the book down to calm down before I could read his response to a completely fabricated “democratic socialists believe” or “the left wants to”. He also constantly does this incomprehensible thing where he claims to know what some historical figure would believe, and of course, surprise, surprise, it is always the conservative position. Wandering into the realm of fiction and pretending to speak in the voice of an historical person addressing modern problems is simply bizarre. Further, much of his argument is based on some alleged conspiracy that the left desires these policies to gain control of the population but fails to explain some reason for wanting to do that. He simply cannot comprehend that some people would simply want adequate food, shelter, and healthcare for everyone.
Although the book is allegedly about socialism, D’Souza often strays into unrelated territory. His attacks on climate change are simply bizarre; at one point he says it must not be true because Obama bought a house on Martha’s Vineyard. Likewise, his critique on the press for failing to adequately cover the story of a mentally unstable man who claims to have had a homosexual love affair with Obama left me scratching my head.
No one who reads this book will change their mind. If the reader already believed socialism was bad, they will still believe that after reading it. If they reader believed that democratic socialism might solve some of the problems of capitalism, nothing in this book will convince them otherwise. This book serves no purpose other than to line the pockets of Dinesh D’Souza and I very much regret contributing to that effort.
June 4, 2020
This book made me sooooo sad 😔 just thinking about all the incredible writers and stories that haven’t been published yet we get this? I will never get the time I spent throwing up over the each sentence back again. Save yourself and read something that can actually bring you joy...gotta throw up again just because I remember this book exists 🤮
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