Good morning friends. I saw America the movie last night. It is a movie that distills the essence Americas promise and the experience of its people. It is superb and I strongly recommend it. America celebrates our nations exceptionalism. This exceptionalism is not innate to Americans.We are human and have been and will continue to be susceptible to the same frailties as are other peoples. What makes us different is that we live under a system of governance that was carefully constructed to restrain our weakness and reinforce our, in Lincolns wordsbetter angels The genius of our founding fathers was that they fashioned a Constitutional structure that both provided limits and checks on mans continuing tendency to abuse power while securing for the People rights and values that allow the dignity of the human spirit to flourish. Central to these values are self reliance, Liberty and entrepreneurial opportunity. DSOUZA takes on Americas critics head on. Primary among these is Howard Zinn, the author of the very influential Peoples History of the US. The central theme of Zinns history is that Americas greatness and wealth is not the product of honest effort, but theft: from the Indians, black slaves and workers. The film uses actual interviews and archival film clips to let Zinn and his disciples make their case. The power of Zinns history derives in no small part from the fact that his book is required reading on most college campuses. Students, being generally in search of perfection and utopian solutions are a demograhic that is particularly susceptible to Zinns revisionism. DSOUZA answers are effective.He points out that humans(white, black, yellow, red) have always achieved wealth aggrandizement by conquest. Slavery had been and remains endemic across the world and has been practiced by all races not just white people.What America introduced was a governing system under which mans entrepreneurial genius could create wealth by invention and free enterprise. What America did was fight a bloody Civil war to preserve a Republic based on liberty for all. To be sure the Constitution adopted in 1789 was not perfect. It was simply not possible to form a union with slave states at that time. But it contained powerful promise. The film includes footage of Frederick Douglass, first decrying America as racist in much the same tone as modern critiques do. But after meeting with Lincoln, he changed his view to full support saying with confidence that the Constitution contained language that washostileto slavery. The Civil war and Lincolns leadership produced new conditions that added the 13th and 14th amendments that more explicitly fulfilled Americas promise. DSouza in summary observes that our Revolutionary war was fought to establish America, the Civil War was fought to preserve her,WWII was fought to defend her and our present task its to fight to restore her against the the onslaught of those within who repudiate her.
Posted on: Mon, 14 Jul 2014 13:39:50 +0000
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