A Review of United States of Socialism. By Dinesh D’Souza.

All Points Books, 2020.

You really need to read the latest book by Dinesh D’Souza:

Socialism, says D’Souza, is the most discredited idea in history since slavery, but it is now being mainstreamed in America by the left and the Democratic Party. The policies of the left will destroy America just as they destroyed all the other nations socialism was tried in.

Misery, tears and tyranny define socialism he argues, and this book offers plenty of detail and documentation on this. He counts 25 socialist experiments since 1917: “Socialism has made everyday existence a living hell everywhere it has been tried, all over the world.”

Indeed, he grew up in a socialist India and came to the US in 1978 as a student, wanting to become an American. And the contrast could not have been greater. So he now bemoans the direction the country is taking. He demonstrates how those pushing the hardest for socialism in the US are also pushing the hardest to repudiate America’s founding principles. And there are no prominent Democrat leaders resisting this.

He reminds us that the socialist promises of a utopia for all are always coupled with an attack of the free market. But it is only the free market which has lifted the masses out of grinding poverty – never socialism. So his book seeks to do two things: point out the glaring deficiencies of socialism and the glaring successes of capitalism.

It is easy enough to do both simultaneously: simply look at and contrast East Germany with West Germany, or North Korea with South Korea. And it is easy enough to look at what socialism has done for Venezuela – even though Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez never speak ill of it.

One can also look at the Nordic countries, held up by folks like this as their model of socialism in action. The problem is, Scandinavia is not based on socialism at all. Yes, it involves the welfare state, but everyone pays for it. Also, corporations and the rich are not targeted nor vilified. These are in fact free-market nations. And these nations are quite homogenous as well, with little of our identity politics:

None of them preaches the politics of ethnic division. None of them exalts immigrants over natives, or illegal aliens over citizens. On the contrary, they preach the politics of ethnic unity. They stress the uniformity of Nordic culture. There is no “us” versus “them,” there is only “us.” The Nordics insist that immigrants adopt Nordic culture for themselves, and become very agitated—indeed lose their enthusiasm for immigration itself—when they don’t.

We have to say that these countries “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’.” Yet American and other socialists want to kill the goose but still expect the eggs to be laid.

Says D’Souza, “So the irony is that while the American left wants to move toward Scandinavian socialism, the Scandinavians have been moving away from it. The Nordics have learned from their experience with socialism.”

And D’Souza points out that today’s Western socialism is not merely about the economy but the culture. He calls this “identity socialism” – a mix of classic socialism with contemporary identity politics. They want to not only revolutionise the economy but culture and morality as well.

So he looks at the various socialist agenda items – not just the calls for all the “free” stuff and the war on capitalism, but global warming, the assault on gender and biology, making nations borderless, rewriting our textbooks and our history, and pushing all forms of intersectionality. He writes:

Today we are living with an identity socialism that seeks not only an economic upheaval but also a cultural upheaval. Its goal is forced cultural conformity: “Here’s our make-believe world that we are going to make you believe is real.” They want to bludgeon us into accepting their imagined community in which good is evil and evil is good, in which deviancy of every kind is normal and normal behaviour and feelings are rendered pathological, in which aliens are the true Americans and native-born citizens feel like aliens, an upside-down society where walruses can talk and pigs have wings.

And if you want to understand why the socialist left so utterly hates Trump, you must understand identity socialism:

For identity socialism there are not merely two opposing categories – the rich and the poor – but several: whites against minorities, men against women, heterosexuals against homosexuals and transsexuals and natives against immigrants. Whites, men, heterosexuals and the native-born are all bad, but nothing is worse than the combination of these four attributes. . . . The symbol of this evil – the totem himself – is of course Donald Trump.

As to a defence of capitalism, D’Souza says it has won the economic debate but still has moral objections raised against it, involving three main matters: inequality, fairness and greed. He says that these three arguments are really one, revolving around a central question:

“Who gets what? Or to put it in moral terms, who’s entitled to what? The arguments about equality and greed, which seem like separate arguments, are all reducible to the single argument about fair share and just deserts. That’s the heart of the issue, and the whole case against capitalism turns on that.”

We have to ask, ‘Who owns stuff in the first place?’ D’Souza discusses entrepreneurial capitalism. They take risks in order to meet – or create – the demand of consumers. Their profits “are nothing more than a measure of the degree to which they have effectively satisfied the wants and needs of others. Inequality, in sum, is here by democratic mandate.” He continues:

In life, as in business, our luck may be whimsical, capricious, even random in her dispensations. Even so, we have a right to try our luck, and then to enjoy its rewards or suffer its slings and arrows. Contrary to the Rawlsian mumbo jumbo, no one has the right to our rewards who did not assume the risks we did. This is the human predicament – nature’s bargain – and it is fair and just as anything we are likely to experience this side of Paradise.

Those who take risks and earn a profit have three options: they can spend it, invest it, or give it away. And plenty of wealthy risktakers have done all three. Charitable giving is a big by-product of wealth creation, and people are much more likely to wisely and carefully use their wealth than politicians and bureaucrats.

D’Souza closes his book with a chapter on the new cold civil war we are now in. The left’s big three megaphones are academia, Hollywood and the media. That is why they are so successful. They control the narrative. He describes their tactics and aims and then says:

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. If this seems like a far-out, fanciful picture, think of how close the left is to achieving its objective now.

While acknowledging his various weaknesses, he argues that Trump is our hope of not succumbing to the socialist nightmare which the Democrats have planned for us: “We’re not going back. I’m not saying that the GOP needs Trump clones; I am saying we need a new generation of leaders who can assimilate the things that Trump does so effectively, fearlessly and gleefully.”

All this is essential: “We would be content to be left alone, but the left has no intention of leaving us alone. They want us to submit to them. They want our children. And they want the country – they are ruthlessly dedicated to its takeover.”

As expected, D’Souza’s latest book is a must read. If you want to know why a Trump re-election in 2020 is absolutely essential, read this book. If you want to know why a Democrat win in 2020 will be utterly disastrous, read this book.

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