Dinesh D'Souza's "America" sets out to disprove the view that America is the source of evil in the world, and he at least succeeds in clarifying the debate. What does it mean to say America is good or bad? Is anybody or anything all good or all bad? D'Souza definitely makes a case against the simplistic view that America is all bad.
One of his first targets is author Howard Zinn whose "People's History of the United States" is here characterized as an exercise in cherry-picking. For example, it is debatable to argue that the actions of Christopher Columbus and the Spanish conquistadors reflect on the reputation of the United States of America when they weren't even Americans. As a tonic to Zinn's view of America, D'Souza offers Alexis De Tocqueville's "Democracy in America," which takes a more rounded view of America both good and bad, coming out with a qualified thumbs up.
The way the world has always worked, says D'Souza, is conquest and imperialism; yet, if anything, America has been less inclined to follow the path of conquest and imperialism than the rest of the world. America has set itself a higher ideal, explicitly declaring that things should be different. Americans live up to that ideal as often and perhaps more often than they don't.
For example, D'Souza, who narrates the movie from beginning to end, says that every other continent had slavery before America (by which he always means the U.S.) existed. What is unique about America is that Americans held the ideal that all men are created equal and many Americans realized that it conflicted with the reality of slavery; so America fought a war with itself to free the slaves. Nitpickers will point out that this was not the only reason for the Civil War, but it was the reason for so many who fought that it determined that one outcome would be the abolition of slavery.
After World War II, the most powerful country left standing was the United States. While it arguably interfered in the affairs of other countries, it did not conquer them (as did other countries such as the Soviet Union). The United States invested tremendous resources in the Viet Nam War, but while this was arguably a wrong-headed endeavor, it was never the intention of the U.S. to conquer Viet Nam—just as it was never the intention of recent administrations to conquer Iraq; eventually letting them determine their own course was always in the plan. This is arguably a bad way to go about things from America's own point of view: why does this country keep liberating other countries—at great cost in blood and treasure—only to set them free? This policy works wonderfully on occasion (see Germany and Japan) but it also has been a terrible waste in some other cases. D'Souza does spend a good deal of the movie dealing with the charge that America conquered land from Native Americans and Mexico. Again, I think he has reset the terms for further debate more than demolished his opposition.
In his defense of capitalism and, more properly, the free market, D'Souza is most successful. He shows how the free market works when it is allowed to work, giving America the highest standard of living in world history. When the system is perverted, however, D'Souza does not turn a blind eye. The policies of the administration of President Barack Obama come in for a drubbing here. D'Souza already looked at the president's legacy at much greater length in his previous movie, "2016." Here he makes a memorable indictment of the motives behind the health care legislation known as Obamacare when he says that Obama made people think that it is he and the American people against the insurance companies, when it is really he and the insurance companies against the American people. (Who benefits, after all, when people are forced by law to buy health insurance?)
The movie also reenacts some historical events and portrays numerous historical figures both famous and less well-known. Don Taylor is impressive as Abraham Lincoln—better than many other Lincoln portrayers in the scores of dramas and documentaries that have featured the president. Other reenactors are good as well, particularly Janitta Swain as African-American businesswoman Madame C. J. Walker. Josh Bonzie is a little weak as Frederick Douglass, and I am afraid that his obvious wig does not help, though that is more the fault of the make up and hair department. The real Douglass had what later would be compared to an Afro, but he didn't look quite so much like Madame Pompadour as he does here.
And how could I forget the rendition of "The Star-Spangled Banner" by Madison Rising. (See their rendition without seeing the movie at www.madisonrising.com.) Their knock-out rock version of the national anthem kept the audience in the theater during the closing credits (even if we weren't quite sure whether or not to stay in our seats).
