Newt Gingrich
Dinesh D'Souzahttp://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/15/opinion/15dowd.html?src=me&ref=general
"The American slave was treated like property, which is to say, pretty well."
All,
All the most vicious racist/white supremacist monsters in the country are now crawling up out of the slime that is the eternal Pandora's box of American society and politics. The notorious Dinesh D'Souza a truly evil bigot and utterly insufferable immigrant's son (his parents are of South Asian origin from Bombay--now Mumbai--India!) who for the last 30 years rivals the KKK's David Dukes and other luminaries of the criminally racist rightwing for sheer madness and snarling venom is now guiding the mindless rhetoric of Newt Gingrich one of the most reactionary demagogues and self-rigtheous hypocrites/liars/conmen/assholes in the history of American politics. Dowd nails these scumbags and calls them out on their protofascist bullshit. These are the real enemies of not only our President but ALL OF US and if we don't seriously unite on a national level to beat these All American neo-Nazis and pseudointellectual skinheads back down into the sludge where they belong we will live to regret it. This is the kind of organized mass psychosis that must be aggressively confronted and defeated. If we don't take these madmen/women seriously as the rancid national force for the thoroughly racist/sexist/homophobic/imperialist rightwing totalitarianism that they are and represent we (and the President) will be destroyed by them. This is NO JOKE and the ominous signs are everywhere...
Kofi
P.S.-- For those of you who may not know who Dinesh D'Souza is please check out his ugly resume following the article below. I have always thought D'Souza was a "Goebbels-in-waiting" of the American right--seriously...
September 14, 2010
Who’s the Con Man?
By MAUREEN DOWD
New York Times
WASHINGTON
Harry Reid tweets Lady Gaga while Newt Gingrich is truly gaga.
The 67-year-old former speaker, who has a talent for overreaching, is more unbridled than ever. He’s decided he’ll do or say anything to stay in the game — even Palin-izing himself by making outrageous, unsubstantiated comments to appeal to the wing nuts among us.
The conservative who fancies himself a historian and visionary did not use his critical faculties to resist his party’s lunacy but instead has embraced it, shamelessly. He has given a full-throated endorsement to a dangerously irresponsible and un-Christian theory by Ann Coulter-in-pants Dinesh D’Souza.
Gingrich praised D’Souza’s article in Forbes, previewing an upcoming book called “The Roots of Obama’s Rage.”
Newt told The National Review Online that it was the “most profound insight I have read in the last six years about Barack Obama” and said D’Souza shows that the president “is so outside our comprehension” that you can only understand him “if you understand Kenyan, anticolonial behavior.”
Newt added: “This a person who is fundamentally out of touch with how the world works, who happened to have played a wonderful con, as a result of which he is now president.”
So the smear artists are claiming not only that the president is a socialist but that he suffers from a socialism gene.
“Our president is trapped in his father’s time machine,” D’Souza writes in Forbes, offering a genetic theory of ideology. “Incredibly, the U.S. is being ruled according to the dreams of a Luo tribesman of the 1950s. This philandering, inebriated African socialist, who raged against the world for denying him the realization of his anticolonial ambitions, is now setting the nation’s agenda through the reincarnation of his dreams in his son.”
Playing into the bigotry of birthers and haters who paint Obama as “the other,” D’Souza writes that the president was raised offshore, spending “his formative years — the first 17 years of his life — off the American mainland, in Hawaii, Indonesia and Pakistan, with multiple subsequent journeys to Africa.” The ominous-sounding time in Pakistan was merely a visit when Obama was a college student.
Gingrich, who ditched two wives (the first when she was battling cancer; the second after an affair with the third — a House staffer — while he was impeaching Bill Clinton), now professes to be a good Catholic. Evidently the first two wives don’t count because he hadn’t converted to Catholicism. He even had a big Catholic conversion Mass here with his third wife, Callista, celebrated by a retinue of eight priests and three bishops.
But he is downright un-Christian when he does not hesitate to visit the alleged sins of the father upon the son.
Some of Newt’s old conservative friends worry that he has gone “over the ledge,” as one put it.
If it wasn’t so sick it would be funny. It’s worse than a conspiracy theory because this conspiracy consists of a single dead individual. The idea that there’s something illegitimate about anticolonialism on the part of a Kenyan man in the 1940s, ’50s and ’60s is stupid. And it’s inconsistent to accuse a president who’s raining drones on bad guys in Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen of having an inherited anticolonial ideology.
It’s also really low. D’Souza and Gingrich are not merely discrediting the president’s father’s ideology. They’re discrediting his character and insinuating that the son inherited not just his father’s bad ideology but a bad character, too.
Newt has always displayed an impressive grandiosity. Who can forget the time during his Congressional heyday when he declared himself a “defender of civilization, a teacher of the rules of civilization, arouser of those who form civilization ... and leader ‘possibly’ of the civilizing forces”?
And he who thinks Obama is too messianic said in 1994: “People like me are what stand between us and Auschwitz. I see evil all around me every day.”
This fear-mongering is ugly. D’Souza and Gingrich employ the tactics the Bush administration used to get us into Iraq — cherry-picking, insinuation, half-truths and dishonest reasoning.
If the conservatives are so interested in psychoanalyzing father and son relationships, why didn’t they do so back when W. was rushing to avenge and one-up his father by finishing what daddy started with Saddam?
On their Web site, Callista and Newt tout “Gingrich Productions” and promote an apocalyptic movie with the same kind of scary music that Fox uses, suggesting that the Obama administration is weak in the war against “radical Islam.” The movie and the Web site are called “America at Risk.”
It’s Newt and D’Souza and their ilk who put America at risk.
Dinesh D'Souza (born April 25, 1961) is an author and public speaker who once served as the Robert and Karen Rishwain Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.[1] He is currently the President of The King's College in New York City.[2]
D'Souza is a conservative writer and speaker and the author of numerous New York Times best selling books. He was born and raised Roman Catholic, but now considers himself an Evangelical Christian.[3]
Early life
D'Souza was born in Mumbai, Maharashtra, India, to parents from the state of Goa in Western India. He arrived in the United States in 1978, originally through a Rotary International program, attending Patagonia Union High School in Patagonia, Arizona, and then Dartmouth College, where he graduated Phi Beta Kappa in English in 1983.[4][5]
According to Boston Globe journalist Peter S. Canellos, in 1981, D'Souza published the names of officers of the Gay Student Alliance in an article for The Dartmouth Review, including the names of those who were still closeted.[6]
While at Dartmouth, D'Souza became the editor of a conservative monthly called The Prospect. The paper and its writers ignited much controversy during D'Souza's editorship by, among other things, criticizing the College's affirmative action policies.[7]
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Early career
After his time in Dartmouth, D'Souza moved to Washington, D.C., where he served from 1985 to 1987 as an editor of Policy Review, an influential conservative journal then published by the Heritage Foundation (and since acquired by the Hoover Institution).[5] In "The Bishops as Pawns", D'Souza theorized that U.S. Catholic bishops were being manipulated by American liberals in agreeing to oppose the U.S. military buildup and use of power abroad and actually knew very little about these subjects to which they were lending their religious credibility, writing:
Interviews with these bishops suggest that they know little or nothing about the ideas and proposals to which they are putting their signature and lending their religious authority. The bishops are unfamiliar with existing defense and economic programs, unable to identify even in general terms the Soviet military capability, ignorant of roughly how much of the budget currently goes to defense, unclear about how much should be reallocated to social programs, and innocent of the most basic concepts underlying the intelligent layman's discussion of these questions.[8]
In 1988 D'Souza left the magazine to serve as an advisor in Ronald Reagan's White House. He joined the American Enterprise Institute in 1989, where he was the institute's John M. Olin fellow, before later joining the Hoover Institution as its Robert and Karen Rishwain Fellow.[5]
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Personal life
In 1992, D'Souza married Dixie Brubaker, whom he first met during his time in Washington, D.C. They have one daughter, Danielle, and reside in Fairbanks Ranch, California.[5]
Prior to his marriage in 1992, D'Souza had relationships with two well-known female conservatives, Laura Ingraham, a nationally syndicated radio commentator to whom he was engaged but never married, and best-selling conservative author and commentator Ann Coulter.
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Opinions
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Human nature
D'Souza is a noted conservative, and defines conservatism in the American sense as "conserving the principles of the American Revolution".[9] In Letters to a Young Conservative, written as an introduction to conservative ideas for youth, D'Souza argues that it is a blend of classical liberalism and ancient virtue, in particular, "the belief that there are moral standards in the universe and that living up to them is the best way to have a full and happy life." He also argues against what he calls the modern liberal belief that "human nature is intrinsically good," and thus that "the great conflicts in the world…arise out of terrible misunderstandings that can be corrected through ongoing conversation and through the mediation of the United Nations."[9]
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Social policy and affirmative action
D'Souza challenges beliefs and projects such as affirmative action, and social welfare. In the book Illiberal Education, D'Souza argued that intolerance of conservative views is common at many universities.
D'Souza has often stated his belief that idealizing the rebellion against slavery is a source of disability among some African Americans. In his book The End of Racism he asserted that the "American slave was treated like property, which is to say, pretty well."[10] He speculates that slaves, to preserve a sense of dignity, in the circumstances of slavery, would by nature tend to be defiant. This defiance would become the central heroic reference for African-American slaves, restoring a degree of pride and dignity to all. But, he continues, the price of this would be the habitually ingrained attitude of defiance that is ultimately self-destructive. He extends his belief that these self-destructive habits still have a legacy today. D'Souza contends that the degree to which many slave descendants suffer from social and self-esteem issues is due to this concept.[citation needed]
D'Souza has attributed many modern social problems to what he calls the "cultural left". In his recent book The Enemy at Home: The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11, he wrote that:
The cultural left in this country is responsible for causing 9/11 ... the cultural left and its allies in Congress, the media, Hollywood, the non-profit sector and the universities are the primary cause of the volcano of anger toward America that is erupting from the Islamic world.[11]
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Multiculturalism and the greatness of America
D'Souza's book What's So Great About America (ISBN 0-142-00301-8) (Penguin, 2003), defends his adopted country against the criticisms that have been directed at it in the last couple of decades. In particular, he argues against the criticisms leveled by the Islamic world, domestic multiculturalists, those seeking slavery reparations, and especially America's left wing. Instead, he contends, Americans themselves are too critical and take for granted the blessings bestowed on them by living within the borders of the United States.[12]
He also takes this a step further and challenges the notion that all world cultures are equal. "If one begins with the multicultural premise that all cultures are equal, then the world as it is makes very little sense," he says. "Some cultures have completely outperformed others in providing the things that all people seek -- health, food, housing, security and the amenities of life."[12]
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Critic of feminism
D'Souza has also criticised aspects of feminism in Letters to a Young Conservative, writing that:
The feminist error was to embrace the value of the workplace as greater than the value of the home. Feminism has endorsed the public sphere as inherently more constitutive of women’s worth than the private sphere. Feminists have established as their criterion of success and self-worth an equal representation with men at the top of the career ladder. The consequence of this feminist scale of values is a terrible and unjust devaluation of women who work at home.[13]
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Jesus Christ
In a Christian Science Monitor article he indicated that "the moral teachings of Jesus provide no support for – indeed they stand as a stern rebuke to – the historical injustices perpetrated in the name of Christianity."[14]
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Nonbelief
D'Souza often speaks against atheism, nonbelief, and secularism. The most elaborate presentation of his views concerning these topics can be found in his book What's so Great about Christianity?, published in 2007.
To summarize his views, he is a proponent of intelligent design of the universe and in biology, and claims that intelligent design does not exclude the possibility of evolution. He argues that belief in the afterlife and in a supreme being are reasonable conclusions given the evidence available, and that atheists have misrepresented the case for Christianity on many fronts.
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Separation of church and state
In a Catholic Education Resource Center article he shared his belief on the separation of church and state: "Groups like the ACLU, with the acquiescence if not collusion of the courts, are actively promoting a jurisprudence of anti-religious discrimination. In a way the Supreme Court has distorted the Constitution to make religious believers of all faiths into second-class citizens." Some, including the ACLU itself, state that the ACLU has a history though of defending the free exercise rights of various religious groups, including those of Christians.[15][16][17] D'Souza argues that by enforcing the separation of church and state, the government unfairly promotes secularism.[18]
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Islam
Dinesh D'Souza stated that he has studied radical Islam for 3–4 years[19] and read the Qur'an[20].
Dinesh D'Souza debated Robert Spencer about Islam on March 1, 2007 at the Conservative Political Action Committee and labelled Spencer an "Islamophobe". D'Souza made the following points:
"In arguing his thesis Spencer locates all the violent verses in the Koran and all the hideous deeds performed by Islamic conquerors, especially in their early centuries of irredentist expansion. Then he links these to the words and actions of Khomeini, Bin Laden and today's Islamic radicals. Spencer is an effective polemicist."[21]
Spencer's "historical argument is dubious. It emphasizes violent passages in the Koran, while downplaying the passages that urge peace and goodwill. It applies a moral standard to Islamic empires that certainly could not be met by the Roman empire or the empires established by the Portuguese, the Spanish, the French and the British. In the Spain of Ferdinand and Isabella, for example, Jews had three choices: convert to Christianity, leave the country, or be killed. No Muslim empire legislated or systematically enforced such a policy toward its religious minorities."[21]
"Yes, the Koran says 'slay the infidels' but no Muslim empire actually did that. For example the Muslims ruled North India for two centuries before they were displaced by the British. The Mughal emperors could have killed the tens of millions of Hindus under their control, or at least forced them to become Muslims. They did nothing of the sort.[21]
"Spencer glibly jumps over entire centuries in linking, say, the savagery of the Ottomans in Constantinople with the savagery of Hezbollah in Lebanon or the Taliban in Afghanistan."[21]
Robert Spencer addressed Dinesh's claims mentioned above, in an interview after the debate.[22]
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Same-sex marriage
In an interview with Enter Stage Right he claimed that same-sex marriage did not work because "Marriage does not civilize men. Women do. This point is even evident in the gay community: it helps to explain why lesbians are generally much better than male homosexuals in sustaining long-term relationships. The reason that society privileges marriage and gives it a special legal status is because marriage is the only known incubator for the raising of children."[23]
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Abu Ghraib
With regard to the Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse, Dinesh asserted that the abuse to the prisoners was due to the "sexual immodesty of liberal America" and that Abu Ghraib reflected "the values of a debauched liberalism run amok." Dinesh also claims that had Charles Graner and Lynndie England been "professors at an elite liberal arts college, their videotaped orgies might easily have become the envy of academia. If they were artists staging these pictures in a loft in Soho they could have been hailed as pioneers and encouraged by leftist admirers to apply for a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts."[24]
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Media appearances
D'Souza has appeared a few times on CNN,[25][26] including on Glenn Beck. Other media appearances include ABC's Nightline, CBS's Face the Nation, Fox News Channel's Hannity & Colmes, MSNBC's Hardball with Chris Matthews, Comedy Central's The Colbert Report, and CNBC's Dennis Miller.[citation needed]
On November 30, 2007, he debated Tufts University professor Daniel Dennett at Tufts on whether or not God was a man made invention.[27]
During an interview on The Colbert Report on January 16, 2007, while promoting his book, The Enemy At Home: The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11, D'Souza blamed liberals for causing the September 11, 2001, attacks. He says they convinced the Carter administration to withdraw support from the Shah, which allowed Muslim fundamentalists to take control of the Iranian government. He also stated that the distorted representation of American culture on television is one of the main sources of resentment of the U.S by Muslims worldwide. D'Souza believes that while traditional Muslims are not too different from traditional Jews and Christians in America, in the media only liberal America is depicted, which by traditional standards is morally depraved; and this false image of America that is broadcast to the world both turns people in traditional cultures against America and is destructive to the traditional societies themselves.
Stephen Colbert, while keeping with his character, mockingly agreed and suggested that Franklin Delano Roosevelt's liberal policies such as social security and the New Deal also contributed to the September 11, 2001, attacks. D'Souza stated that Roosevelt had an indirect influence by allowing the Soviet Union to take over Eastern Europe during the Yalta Conference. This paved the way for the Soviet Union to invade Afghanistan, allowing Muslim fighters to gain influence there and take over the country. On January 17, 2007, Keith Olbermann ridiculed D'Souza's statements on The Colbert Report on his show, Countdown with Keith Olbermann in his "Worst Person in the World" segment.[28]
On September 10, 2008, D'Souza debated Christopher Hitchens at the Powell Symphony Hall in St. Louis, Missouri, on the merits of belief in a god. The debate was titled "God on Trial" and hosted by the Fixed Point Foundation (a self-professed Christian "think tank").[29]
On December 3, 2008, D'Souza debated Peter Singer at Biola University. The debate was hosted by the Fixed Point Foundation and is titled "Can there be morality without God?"[30]
On October 7, 2009, D'Souza debated Bart Ehrman at UNC-Chapel Hill. The debate was also hosted by the Fixed Point Foundation and was titled "God and the Problem of Suffering: The Debate." [31]
On April 7, 2010, D'Souza debated Christopher Hitchens at the University of Notre Dame in Notre Dame, Indiana. The debate was entitled "The God Debate at Notre Dame: Is Religion the Problem?" [32]
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The Enemy at Home
In early 2007, D'Souza published The Enemy at Home: The Cultural Left and its Responsibility for 9/11, in which he argues that the American cultural left was in large part responsible for the Muslim anger that led to the September 11 attacks.[11]
The book was criticized in major American newspapers and magazines and called, among other things, "the worst nonfiction book about terrorism published by a major house since 9/11"[33] and "a national disgrace."[34]
D'Souza's book caused a controversy in the conservative movement, invoking a barrage of attacks back and forth between D'Souza and his conservative critics who widely mocked the thesis of his book, that the cultural left was responsible for 9/11. In response to his critics, he posted a 6,500-word essay on National Review Online,[35] and NRO subsequently published a litany of responses from conservative authors who accused D'Souza of character assassination, elitism and pseudointellectualism.[36]
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Bibliography
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Books
Books authored by Dinesh D'Souza include:
1984: Falwell, Before the Millennium: A Critical Biography, Regnery Publishing (ISBN 0-89526-607-5)
1986: The Catholic Classics (ISBN 0-87973-545-7)
1987: My Dear Alex: Letters From The KGB (with Gregory Fossedal), Regnery Publishing (ISBN 0-89526-576-1)
1991: Illiberal Education (ISBN 0-684-86384-7)
1995: The End of Racism (ISBN 0-684-82524-4)
1997: Ronald Reagan: How An Ordinary Man Became an Extraordinary Leader (ISBN 0-684-84823-6)
2000: The Virtue of Prosperity (ISBN 0-684-86815-6)
2002: What's So Great About America, Regnery Publishing (ISBN 0-89526-153-7)
2002: Letters to a Young Conservative (ISBN 0-465-01734-7)
2007: The Enemy At Home: The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11 (ISBN 0-385-51012-8)
2007: What's So Great About Christianity, Regnery Publishing (ISBN 1-596-98517-8)
2008: Foreword, Conspiracies and the Cross by Timothy Paul Jones, Frontline Books (ISBN 1-599-79205-2)
2009: Life After Death: The Evidence
2010: The Roots of Obama's Rage, Regnery Publishing.[37]
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Articles
Articles written by Dinesh D’Souza include:
"Moon's Planet: The Politics and Theology of the Unification Church"
"Ten Great Things About America"
"How Ronald Reagan Won The Cold War"
"Technology And Moral Progress"
"We the Slaveowners: In Jefferson's America, Were Some Men Not Created Equal?"
"The Self Esteem Hoax"
"Two Cheers For Colonialism"
"Reagan Versus The Intellectuals"
"10 things to celebrate: Why I'm an anti-anti-American"
"God Knows Why Faith is Thriving"
"How Obama Thinks," Forbes, 9.27.10.[37]
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References
^ "Hoover Fellow Dinesh D'Souza Discusses Cultural Differences". dineshdsouza.com.
^ http://www.tkc.edu/abouttkc/president_pressrelease.html
^ http://www.tkc.edu/abouttkc/dsouza/president_blog.asp
^ "About Dinesh D’Souza". Dinesh D'Souza. Retrieved 2007-11-12.
^ a b c d "Dinesh D'Souza". NNDB. Soylent Communications. Retrieved 2007-11-12.
^ Peter Cannellos (2007-04-19). "Conservatives Sour on Rebel Media". Boston Globe.
^ Template:Cite news He first became known as a writer for the "Dartmouth Review," which was subsidized by several right-wing organizations not affiliated with Dartmouth.
^ 20 years of Policy Review, Policy Review, July 1997
^ a b D'Souza 2002
^ David Weigel (2010-09-13). "Newt Is Nuts!:Why is Gingrich pushing Dinesh D'Souza's crazy theory about Obama's "Kenyan anti-colonialism"?". Slate Magazine. Retrieved 2010-09-13.
^ a b salon.com/news, January 20, 2007
^ a b Thomas Sowell (2002-06-07). "What's So Great About America?". Capitalism Magazine. Retrieved 2007-10-01.
^ D'Souza, Letters to a Young Conservative, pp. 105-6
^ Atheism, not religion, is the real force behind the mass murders of history, Christian Science Monitor, November 21, 2006
^ ACLU Defense of Religious Practice and Expression
^ The ACLU fights for Christians
^ ACLU defends rights of all faiths
^ http://catholiceducation.org/articles/persecution/pch0114.htm
^ http://www.catholicity.com/commentary/saint-paul/00041.html
^ "Serge Trifkovic catches out Dinesh D'Souza", Jihad Watch, March 6, 2007
^ a b c d Dinesh D'Souza (2007-03-02). "Letting Bin Laden Define Islam".
^ YouTube clip of the interview
^ Q&A with Dinesh D'Souza
^ http://townhall.com/Columnists/DineshDSouza/2007/02/26/rethinking_abu_ghraib?page=full&comments=true
^ "Segregation now? Some still see racial divide on campus". CNN. Retrieved May 1, 2010.
^ Media Matters - "Distort D'Newsa" now a CNN analyst
^ "Daniel Dennett debates Dinesh D'Souza". RichardDawkins.net. 2007-12-01. Retrieved 2008-01-08.
^ http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16688755/
^ http://www.fixed-point.org/aboutus.asp
^ http://www.fixed-point.org/billboard/billboard.asp?ItemID=51
^ http://fixed-point.org/index.php/news/30-debate-at-unc-chapel-hill
^ http://www.nd.edu/~cprelig/nddebate/
^ Bass, Warren (January 14, 2007). "Incendiary". The Washington Post. Retrieved May 1, 2010.
^ The Enemy at Home: The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11 - By Dinesh D'Souza. - Books - Review - New York Times
^ The Closing of the Conservative Mind, Dinesh D'Souza, National Review Online, March 12, 2007
^ An NRO Symposium on The Enemy at Home on National Review Online
^ a b D'Souza, Dinesh, "How Obama Thinks", Forbes magazine, 9.27.10. Cited in Michael D. Shear, "Gingrich: President Exhibits ‘Kenyan, Anticolonial Behavior’", The New York Times "Caucus" blog, September 13, 2010, 10:02 am. Retrieved 2010-09-13.
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External links
Dinesh D'Souza at NNDB.
Dinesh D'Souza at the Internet Movie Database
Dinesh D'Souza Official Web Site.
Dinesh D'Souza blog at AOL (now inactive)
Q&A: Dinesh D'Souza on Life After Death by Paul Kengor
"What's So Great About Christianity" Interview with Christian author Timothy Paul Jones.
Audio interview with National Review Online
"The Controversialist", San Diego Reader, April 14, 2005 (profile on Dinesh D'Souza).
"Is Christianity the Problem?" debate between Dinesh D'Souza and Christopher Hitchens at The King's College, October 22, 2007.
"Is Christianity Good for the World?" debate with Michael Shermer at Oregon State University, October 15, 2007, Part 1, Part 2.
"God Knows Why Faith is Thriving", San Francisco Chronicle, October 22, 2006 (opinion article by Dinesh D'Souza).
"Equal Opportunity: The American Dilemma," debate between Dinesh D'Souza and Tim Wise at The Evergreen State College, November 21, 1996.
"The American slave was treated like property, which is to say, pretty well."
--The End of Racism by Dinesh D'Souza, 1995
All,
All the most vicious racist/white supremacist monsters in the country are now crawling up out of the slime that is the eternal Pandora's box of American society and politics. The notorious Dinesh D'Souza a truly evil bigot and utterly insufferable immigrant's son (his parents are of South Asian origin from Bombay--now Mumbai--India!) who for the last 30 years rivals the KKK's David Dukes and other luminaries of the criminally racist rightwing for sheer madness and snarling venom is now guiding the mindless rhetoric of Newt Gingrich one of the most reactionary demagogues and self-rigtheous hypocrites/liars/conmen/assholes in the history of American politics. Dowd nails these scumbags and calls them out on their protofascist bullshit. These are the real enemies of not only our President but ALL OF US and if we don't seriously unite on a national level to beat these All American neo-Nazis and pseudointellectual skinheads back down into the sludge where they belong we will live to regret it. This is the kind of organized mass psychosis that must be aggressively confronted and defeated. If we don't take these madmen/women seriously as the rancid national force for the thoroughly racist/sexist/homophobic/imperialist rightwing totalitarianism that they are and represent we (and the President) will be destroyed by them. This is NO JOKE and the ominous signs are everywhere...
Kofi
P.S.-- For those of you who may not know who Dinesh D'Souza is please check out his ugly resume following the article below. I have always thought D'Souza was a "Goebbels-in-waiting" of the American right--seriously...
September 14, 2010
Who’s the Con Man?
By MAUREEN DOWD
New York Times
WASHINGTON
Harry Reid tweets Lady Gaga while Newt Gingrich is truly gaga.
The 67-year-old former speaker, who has a talent for overreaching, is more unbridled than ever. He’s decided he’ll do or say anything to stay in the game — even Palin-izing himself by making outrageous, unsubstantiated comments to appeal to the wing nuts among us.
The conservative who fancies himself a historian and visionary did not use his critical faculties to resist his party’s lunacy but instead has embraced it, shamelessly. He has given a full-throated endorsement to a dangerously irresponsible and un-Christian theory by Ann Coulter-in-pants Dinesh D’Souza.
Gingrich praised D’Souza’s article in Forbes, previewing an upcoming book called “The Roots of Obama’s Rage.”
Newt told The National Review Online that it was the “most profound insight I have read in the last six years about Barack Obama” and said D’Souza shows that the president “is so outside our comprehension” that you can only understand him “if you understand Kenyan, anticolonial behavior.”
Newt added: “This a person who is fundamentally out of touch with how the world works, who happened to have played a wonderful con, as a result of which he is now president.”
So the smear artists are claiming not only that the president is a socialist but that he suffers from a socialism gene.
“Our president is trapped in his father’s time machine,” D’Souza writes in Forbes, offering a genetic theory of ideology. “Incredibly, the U.S. is being ruled according to the dreams of a Luo tribesman of the 1950s. This philandering, inebriated African socialist, who raged against the world for denying him the realization of his anticolonial ambitions, is now setting the nation’s agenda through the reincarnation of his dreams in his son.”
Playing into the bigotry of birthers and haters who paint Obama as “the other,” D’Souza writes that the president was raised offshore, spending “his formative years — the first 17 years of his life — off the American mainland, in Hawaii, Indonesia and Pakistan, with multiple subsequent journeys to Africa.” The ominous-sounding time in Pakistan was merely a visit when Obama was a college student.
Gingrich, who ditched two wives (the first when she was battling cancer; the second after an affair with the third — a House staffer — while he was impeaching Bill Clinton), now professes to be a good Catholic. Evidently the first two wives don’t count because he hadn’t converted to Catholicism. He even had a big Catholic conversion Mass here with his third wife, Callista, celebrated by a retinue of eight priests and three bishops.
But he is downright un-Christian when he does not hesitate to visit the alleged sins of the father upon the son.
Some of Newt’s old conservative friends worry that he has gone “over the ledge,” as one put it.
If it wasn’t so sick it would be funny. It’s worse than a conspiracy theory because this conspiracy consists of a single dead individual. The idea that there’s something illegitimate about anticolonialism on the part of a Kenyan man in the 1940s, ’50s and ’60s is stupid. And it’s inconsistent to accuse a president who’s raining drones on bad guys in Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen of having an inherited anticolonial ideology.
It’s also really low. D’Souza and Gingrich are not merely discrediting the president’s father’s ideology. They’re discrediting his character and insinuating that the son inherited not just his father’s bad ideology but a bad character, too.
Newt has always displayed an impressive grandiosity. Who can forget the time during his Congressional heyday when he declared himself a “defender of civilization, a teacher of the rules of civilization, arouser of those who form civilization ... and leader ‘possibly’ of the civilizing forces”?
And he who thinks Obama is too messianic said in 1994: “People like me are what stand between us and Auschwitz. I see evil all around me every day.”
This fear-mongering is ugly. D’Souza and Gingrich employ the tactics the Bush administration used to get us into Iraq — cherry-picking, insinuation, half-truths and dishonest reasoning.
If the conservatives are so interested in psychoanalyzing father and son relationships, why didn’t they do so back when W. was rushing to avenge and one-up his father by finishing what daddy started with Saddam?
On their Web site, Callista and Newt tout “Gingrich Productions” and promote an apocalyptic movie with the same kind of scary music that Fox uses, suggesting that the Obama administration is weak in the war against “radical Islam.” The movie and the Web site are called “America at Risk.”
It’s Newt and D’Souza and their ilk who put America at risk.
Dinesh D'Souza (born April 25, 1961) is an author and public speaker who once served as the Robert and Karen Rishwain Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.[1] He is currently the President of The King's College in New York City.[2]
D'Souza is a conservative writer and speaker and the author of numerous New York Times best selling books. He was born and raised Roman Catholic, but now considers himself an Evangelical Christian.[3]
Early life
D'Souza was born in Mumbai, Maharashtra, India, to parents from the state of Goa in Western India. He arrived in the United States in 1978, originally through a Rotary International program, attending Patagonia Union High School in Patagonia, Arizona, and then Dartmouth College, where he graduated Phi Beta Kappa in English in 1983.[4][5]
According to Boston Globe journalist Peter S. Canellos, in 1981, D'Souza published the names of officers of the Gay Student Alliance in an article for The Dartmouth Review, including the names of those who were still closeted.[6]
While at Dartmouth, D'Souza became the editor of a conservative monthly called The Prospect. The paper and its writers ignited much controversy during D'Souza's editorship by, among other things, criticizing the College's affirmative action policies.[7]
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Early career
After his time in Dartmouth, D'Souza moved to Washington, D.C., where he served from 1985 to 1987 as an editor of Policy Review, an influential conservative journal then published by the Heritage Foundation (and since acquired by the Hoover Institution).[5] In "The Bishops as Pawns", D'Souza theorized that U.S. Catholic bishops were being manipulated by American liberals in agreeing to oppose the U.S. military buildup and use of power abroad and actually knew very little about these subjects to which they were lending their religious credibility, writing:
Interviews with these bishops suggest that they know little or nothing about the ideas and proposals to which they are putting their signature and lending their religious authority. The bishops are unfamiliar with existing defense and economic programs, unable to identify even in general terms the Soviet military capability, ignorant of roughly how much of the budget currently goes to defense, unclear about how much should be reallocated to social programs, and innocent of the most basic concepts underlying the intelligent layman's discussion of these questions.[8]
In 1988 D'Souza left the magazine to serve as an advisor in Ronald Reagan's White House. He joined the American Enterprise Institute in 1989, where he was the institute's John M. Olin fellow, before later joining the Hoover Institution as its Robert and Karen Rishwain Fellow.[5]
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Personal life
In 1992, D'Souza married Dixie Brubaker, whom he first met during his time in Washington, D.C. They have one daughter, Danielle, and reside in Fairbanks Ranch, California.[5]
Prior to his marriage in 1992, D'Souza had relationships with two well-known female conservatives, Laura Ingraham, a nationally syndicated radio commentator to whom he was engaged but never married, and best-selling conservative author and commentator Ann Coulter.
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Opinions
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Human nature
D'Souza is a noted conservative, and defines conservatism in the American sense as "conserving the principles of the American Revolution".[9] In Letters to a Young Conservative, written as an introduction to conservative ideas for youth, D'Souza argues that it is a blend of classical liberalism and ancient virtue, in particular, "the belief that there are moral standards in the universe and that living up to them is the best way to have a full and happy life." He also argues against what he calls the modern liberal belief that "human nature is intrinsically good," and thus that "the great conflicts in the world…arise out of terrible misunderstandings that can be corrected through ongoing conversation and through the mediation of the United Nations."[9]
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Social policy and affirmative action
D'Souza challenges beliefs and projects such as affirmative action, and social welfare. In the book Illiberal Education, D'Souza argued that intolerance of conservative views is common at many universities.
D'Souza has often stated his belief that idealizing the rebellion against slavery is a source of disability among some African Americans. In his book The End of Racism he asserted that the "American slave was treated like property, which is to say, pretty well."[10] He speculates that slaves, to preserve a sense of dignity, in the circumstances of slavery, would by nature tend to be defiant. This defiance would become the central heroic reference for African-American slaves, restoring a degree of pride and dignity to all. But, he continues, the price of this would be the habitually ingrained attitude of defiance that is ultimately self-destructive. He extends his belief that these self-destructive habits still have a legacy today. D'Souza contends that the degree to which many slave descendants suffer from social and self-esteem issues is due to this concept.[citation needed]
D'Souza has attributed many modern social problems to what he calls the "cultural left". In his recent book The Enemy at Home: The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11, he wrote that:
The cultural left in this country is responsible for causing 9/11 ... the cultural left and its allies in Congress, the media, Hollywood, the non-profit sector and the universities are the primary cause of the volcano of anger toward America that is erupting from the Islamic world.[11]
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Multiculturalism and the greatness of America
D'Souza's book What's So Great About America (ISBN 0-142-00301-8) (Penguin, 2003), defends his adopted country against the criticisms that have been directed at it in the last couple of decades. In particular, he argues against the criticisms leveled by the Islamic world, domestic multiculturalists, those seeking slavery reparations, and especially America's left wing. Instead, he contends, Americans themselves are too critical and take for granted the blessings bestowed on them by living within the borders of the United States.[12]
He also takes this a step further and challenges the notion that all world cultures are equal. "If one begins with the multicultural premise that all cultures are equal, then the world as it is makes very little sense," he says. "Some cultures have completely outperformed others in providing the things that all people seek -- health, food, housing, security and the amenities of life."[12]
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Critic of feminism
D'Souza has also criticised aspects of feminism in Letters to a Young Conservative, writing that:
The feminist error was to embrace the value of the workplace as greater than the value of the home. Feminism has endorsed the public sphere as inherently more constitutive of women’s worth than the private sphere. Feminists have established as their criterion of success and self-worth an equal representation with men at the top of the career ladder. The consequence of this feminist scale of values is a terrible and unjust devaluation of women who work at home.[13]
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Jesus Christ
In a Christian Science Monitor article he indicated that "the moral teachings of Jesus provide no support for – indeed they stand as a stern rebuke to – the historical injustices perpetrated in the name of Christianity."[14]
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Nonbelief
D'Souza often speaks against atheism, nonbelief, and secularism. The most elaborate presentation of his views concerning these topics can be found in his book What's so Great about Christianity?, published in 2007.
To summarize his views, he is a proponent of intelligent design of the universe and in biology, and claims that intelligent design does not exclude the possibility of evolution. He argues that belief in the afterlife and in a supreme being are reasonable conclusions given the evidence available, and that atheists have misrepresented the case for Christianity on many fronts.
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Separation of church and state
In a Catholic Education Resource Center article he shared his belief on the separation of church and state: "Groups like the ACLU, with the acquiescence if not collusion of the courts, are actively promoting a jurisprudence of anti-religious discrimination. In a way the Supreme Court has distorted the Constitution to make religious believers of all faiths into second-class citizens." Some, including the ACLU itself, state that the ACLU has a history though of defending the free exercise rights of various religious groups, including those of Christians.[15][16][17] D'Souza argues that by enforcing the separation of church and state, the government unfairly promotes secularism.[18]
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Islam
Dinesh D'Souza stated that he has studied radical Islam for 3–4 years[19] and read the Qur'an[20].
Dinesh D'Souza debated Robert Spencer about Islam on March 1, 2007 at the Conservative Political Action Committee and labelled Spencer an "Islamophobe". D'Souza made the following points:
"In arguing his thesis Spencer locates all the violent verses in the Koran and all the hideous deeds performed by Islamic conquerors, especially in their early centuries of irredentist expansion. Then he links these to the words and actions of Khomeini, Bin Laden and today's Islamic radicals. Spencer is an effective polemicist."[21]
Spencer's "historical argument is dubious. It emphasizes violent passages in the Koran, while downplaying the passages that urge peace and goodwill. It applies a moral standard to Islamic empires that certainly could not be met by the Roman empire or the empires established by the Portuguese, the Spanish, the French and the British. In the Spain of Ferdinand and Isabella, for example, Jews had three choices: convert to Christianity, leave the country, or be killed. No Muslim empire legislated or systematically enforced such a policy toward its religious minorities."[21]
"Yes, the Koran says 'slay the infidels' but no Muslim empire actually did that. For example the Muslims ruled North India for two centuries before they were displaced by the British. The Mughal emperors could have killed the tens of millions of Hindus under their control, or at least forced them to become Muslims. They did nothing of the sort.[21]
"Spencer glibly jumps over entire centuries in linking, say, the savagery of the Ottomans in Constantinople with the savagery of Hezbollah in Lebanon or the Taliban in Afghanistan."[21]
Robert Spencer addressed Dinesh's claims mentioned above, in an interview after the debate.[22]
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Same-sex marriage
In an interview with Enter Stage Right he claimed that same-sex marriage did not work because "Marriage does not civilize men. Women do. This point is even evident in the gay community: it helps to explain why lesbians are generally much better than male homosexuals in sustaining long-term relationships. The reason that society privileges marriage and gives it a special legal status is because marriage is the only known incubator for the raising of children."[23]
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Abu Ghraib
With regard to the Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse, Dinesh asserted that the abuse to the prisoners was due to the "sexual immodesty of liberal America" and that Abu Ghraib reflected "the values of a debauched liberalism run amok." Dinesh also claims that had Charles Graner and Lynndie England been "professors at an elite liberal arts college, their videotaped orgies might easily have become the envy of academia. If they were artists staging these pictures in a loft in Soho they could have been hailed as pioneers and encouraged by leftist admirers to apply for a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts."[24]
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Media appearances
D'Souza has appeared a few times on CNN,[25][26] including on Glenn Beck. Other media appearances include ABC's Nightline, CBS's Face the Nation, Fox News Channel's Hannity & Colmes, MSNBC's Hardball with Chris Matthews, Comedy Central's The Colbert Report, and CNBC's Dennis Miller.[citation needed]
On November 30, 2007, he debated Tufts University professor Daniel Dennett at Tufts on whether or not God was a man made invention.[27]
During an interview on The Colbert Report on January 16, 2007, while promoting his book, The Enemy At Home: The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11, D'Souza blamed liberals for causing the September 11, 2001, attacks. He says they convinced the Carter administration to withdraw support from the Shah, which allowed Muslim fundamentalists to take control of the Iranian government. He also stated that the distorted representation of American culture on television is one of the main sources of resentment of the U.S by Muslims worldwide. D'Souza believes that while traditional Muslims are not too different from traditional Jews and Christians in America, in the media only liberal America is depicted, which by traditional standards is morally depraved; and this false image of America that is broadcast to the world both turns people in traditional cultures against America and is destructive to the traditional societies themselves.
Stephen Colbert, while keeping with his character, mockingly agreed and suggested that Franklin Delano Roosevelt's liberal policies such as social security and the New Deal also contributed to the September 11, 2001, attacks. D'Souza stated that Roosevelt had an indirect influence by allowing the Soviet Union to take over Eastern Europe during the Yalta Conference. This paved the way for the Soviet Union to invade Afghanistan, allowing Muslim fighters to gain influence there and take over the country. On January 17, 2007, Keith Olbermann ridiculed D'Souza's statements on The Colbert Report on his show, Countdown with Keith Olbermann in his "Worst Person in the World" segment.[28]
On September 10, 2008, D'Souza debated Christopher Hitchens at the Powell Symphony Hall in St. Louis, Missouri, on the merits of belief in a god. The debate was titled "God on Trial" and hosted by the Fixed Point Foundation (a self-professed Christian "think tank").[29]
On December 3, 2008, D'Souza debated Peter Singer at Biola University. The debate was hosted by the Fixed Point Foundation and is titled "Can there be morality without God?"[30]
On October 7, 2009, D'Souza debated Bart Ehrman at UNC-Chapel Hill. The debate was also hosted by the Fixed Point Foundation and was titled "God and the Problem of Suffering: The Debate." [31]
On April 7, 2010, D'Souza debated Christopher Hitchens at the University of Notre Dame in Notre Dame, Indiana. The debate was entitled "The God Debate at Notre Dame: Is Religion the Problem?" [32]
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The Enemy at Home
In early 2007, D'Souza published The Enemy at Home: The Cultural Left and its Responsibility for 9/11, in which he argues that the American cultural left was in large part responsible for the Muslim anger that led to the September 11 attacks.[11]
The book was criticized in major American newspapers and magazines and called, among other things, "the worst nonfiction book about terrorism published by a major house since 9/11"[33] and "a national disgrace."[34]
D'Souza's book caused a controversy in the conservative movement, invoking a barrage of attacks back and forth between D'Souza and his conservative critics who widely mocked the thesis of his book, that the cultural left was responsible for 9/11. In response to his critics, he posted a 6,500-word essay on National Review Online,[35] and NRO subsequently published a litany of responses from conservative authors who accused D'Souza of character assassination, elitism and pseudointellectualism.[36]
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Bibliography
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Books
Books authored by Dinesh D'Souza include:
1984: Falwell, Before the Millennium: A Critical Biography, Regnery Publishing (ISBN 0-89526-607-5)
1986: The Catholic Classics (ISBN 0-87973-545-7)
1987: My Dear Alex: Letters From The KGB (with Gregory Fossedal), Regnery Publishing (ISBN 0-89526-576-1)
1991: Illiberal Education (ISBN 0-684-86384-7)
1995: The End of Racism (ISBN 0-684-82524-4)
1997: Ronald Reagan: How An Ordinary Man Became an Extraordinary Leader (ISBN 0-684-84823-6)
2000: The Virtue of Prosperity (ISBN 0-684-86815-6)
2002: What's So Great About America, Regnery Publishing (ISBN 0-89526-153-7)
2002: Letters to a Young Conservative (ISBN 0-465-01734-7)
2007: The Enemy At Home: The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11 (ISBN 0-385-51012-8)
2007: What's So Great About Christianity, Regnery Publishing (ISBN 1-596-98517-8)
2008: Foreword, Conspiracies and the Cross by Timothy Paul Jones, Frontline Books (ISBN 1-599-79205-2)
2009: Life After Death: The Evidence
2010: The Roots of Obama's Rage, Regnery Publishing.[37]
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Articles
Articles written by Dinesh D’Souza include:
"Moon's Planet: The Politics and Theology of the Unification Church"
"Ten Great Things About America"
"How Ronald Reagan Won The Cold War"
"Technology And Moral Progress"
"We the Slaveowners: In Jefferson's America, Were Some Men Not Created Equal?"
"The Self Esteem Hoax"
"Two Cheers For Colonialism"
"Reagan Versus The Intellectuals"
"10 things to celebrate: Why I'm an anti-anti-American"
"God Knows Why Faith is Thriving"
"How Obama Thinks," Forbes, 9.27.10.[37]
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References
^ "Hoover Fellow Dinesh D'Souza Discusses Cultural Differences". dineshdsouza.com.
^ http://www.tkc.edu/abouttkc/president_pressrelease.html
^ http://www.tkc.edu/abouttkc/dsouza/president_blog.asp
^ "About Dinesh D’Souza". Dinesh D'Souza. Retrieved 2007-11-12.
^ a b c d "Dinesh D'Souza". NNDB. Soylent Communications. Retrieved 2007-11-12.
^ Peter Cannellos (2007-04-19). "Conservatives Sour on Rebel Media". Boston Globe.
^ Template:Cite news He first became known as a writer for the "Dartmouth Review," which was subsidized by several right-wing organizations not affiliated with Dartmouth.
^ 20 years of Policy Review, Policy Review, July 1997
^ a b D'Souza 2002
^ David Weigel (2010-09-13). "Newt Is Nuts!:Why is Gingrich pushing Dinesh D'Souza's crazy theory about Obama's "Kenyan anti-colonialism"?". Slate Magazine. Retrieved 2010-09-13.
^ a b salon.com/news, January 20, 2007
^ a b Thomas Sowell (2002-06-07). "What's So Great About America?". Capitalism Magazine. Retrieved 2007-10-01.
^ D'Souza, Letters to a Young Conservative, pp. 105-6
^ Atheism, not religion, is the real force behind the mass murders of history, Christian Science Monitor, November 21, 2006
^ ACLU Defense of Religious Practice and Expression
^ The ACLU fights for Christians
^ ACLU defends rights of all faiths
^ http://catholiceducation.org/articles/persecution/pch0114.htm
^ http://www.catholicity.com/commentary/saint-paul/00041.html
^ "Serge Trifkovic catches out Dinesh D'Souza", Jihad Watch, March 6, 2007
^ a b c d Dinesh D'Souza (2007-03-02). "Letting Bin Laden Define Islam".
^ YouTube clip of the interview
^ Q&A with Dinesh D'Souza
^ http://townhall.com/Columnists/DineshDSouza/2007/02/26/rethinking_abu_ghraib?page=full&comments=true
^ "Segregation now? Some still see racial divide on campus". CNN. Retrieved May 1, 2010.
^ Media Matters - "Distort D'Newsa" now a CNN analyst
^ "Daniel Dennett debates Dinesh D'Souza". RichardDawkins.net. 2007-12-01. Retrieved 2008-01-08.
^ http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16688755/
^ http://www.fixed-point.org/aboutus.asp
^ http://www.fixed-point.org/billboard/billboard.asp?ItemID=51
^ http://fixed-point.org/index.php/news/30-debate-at-unc-chapel-hill
^ http://www.nd.edu/~cprelig/nddebate/
^ Bass, Warren (January 14, 2007). "Incendiary". The Washington Post. Retrieved May 1, 2010.
^ The Enemy at Home: The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11 - By Dinesh D'Souza. - Books - Review - New York Times
^ The Closing of the Conservative Mind, Dinesh D'Souza, National Review Online, March 12, 2007
^ An NRO Symposium on The Enemy at Home on National Review Online
^ a b D'Souza, Dinesh, "How Obama Thinks", Forbes magazine, 9.27.10. Cited in Michael D. Shear, "Gingrich: President Exhibits ‘Kenyan, Anticolonial Behavior’", The New York Times "Caucus" blog, September 13, 2010, 10:02 am. Retrieved 2010-09-13.
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External links
Dinesh D'Souza at NNDB.
Dinesh D'Souza at the Internet Movie Database
Dinesh D'Souza Official Web Site.
Dinesh D'Souza blog at AOL (now inactive)
Q&A: Dinesh D'Souza on Life After Death by Paul Kengor
"What's So Great About Christianity" Interview with Christian author Timothy Paul Jones.
Audio interview with National Review Online
"The Controversialist", San Diego Reader, April 14, 2005 (profile on Dinesh D'Souza).
"Is Christianity the Problem?" debate between Dinesh D'Souza and Christopher Hitchens at The King's College, October 22, 2007.
"Is Christianity Good for the World?" debate with Michael Shermer at Oregon State University, October 15, 2007, Part 1, Part 2.
"God Knows Why Faith is Thriving", San Francisco Chronicle, October 22, 2006 (opinion article by Dinesh D'Souza).
"Equal Opportunity: The American Dilemma," debate between Dinesh D'Souza and Tim Wise at The Evergreen State College, November 21, 1996.
