Letters to a Young Conservative (1 of 2 free samples)

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COPYRIGHT
Letters to a Young Conservative by Dinesh D'Souza. Copyright 2002 by Dinesh D'Souza.
All Rights Reserved. Sharing not permitted.

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LETTERS TO A YOUNG CONSERVATIVE

Dinesh D'Souza

For Jeffrey Hart, who showed me the world


1 Conservatives vs. Liberals

Dear Chris,

Thanks for your letter. I'm glad you enjoyed my talk at your university. Can you believe the number of protesters who showed up? There were people from the International Socialist group, the Spartacus League, the Coalition to Save Humanity, even some jobless guys from the local community. Wow, did they create a ruckus! Apparently they were distributing copies of a pamphlet called "Who Is Dinesh D'Souza?" I didn't see the pamphlet until later, but I discovered from it that I am a racist, a liar, a stooge of the ruling class, and an enemy of the people. All of which I hadn't realized until I read the pamphlet.

I don't know whether you are aware this, but the protesters almost prevented me from speaking. When I arrived, they had already surrounded the building. They were screaming into bullhorns and carrying placards that read DINESH D'SOUZA: RACIST AGENT OF U.S. CAPITALISM AND IMPERIALISM. As I made my way through the demonstrators, behind heavy security, I gave the protesters the thumbs-up signal and told them, "Fight on, brothers and sisters." This seemed to make them angrier. One of them yelled, "You'll be lucky to get out of here alive!"

Despite the university's rule against bringing placards and bullhorns into the auditorium, the protesters managed to force their way inside. I am sure you found their gyrations on the stage quite a sight. My amusement over their antics subsided, however, when they began to disrupt my lecture with their shouts and chants. As you saw, the dean of the college had to warn the demonstrators to hold their fire until the question period, or else they would be evacuated. Only then did they quiet down and allow me to speak.

Undoubtedly the high point of the evening occurred near the end of my talk when the large, disheveled woman came rolling up the aisle shouting, "We don't need a debate! Stop this man from speaking!" My usual strategy in such circumstances is to try to calm the protester down and engage in a discussion, but this time there was no point. Finally, the woman was dragged from the room by the campus police. On her way out she yelled, "I am being censored! I am being censored!"

Yes, the American campus has become an interesting place for a conservative. I cannot blame you for asking, What has happened to liberalism? Where did it go wrong? Is this what liberals stand for?

Today, alas, it is. But in saying this, I am not describing liberalism in its original or classical sense. We need to understand the big changes that have come over liberalism. The term liberal, in its Greek meaning, refers to the free man, as opposed to the slave. Liberals were originally the partisans of liberty. The American founders, for example, were committed to three types of freedom: economic freedom, political freedom, and freedom of speech and religion. In their classical liberal view, freedom meant limiting the power of government, thus increasing the scope for individual and private action. The spirit of this philosophy is clearly conveyed in the formulations of the Bill of Rights: "Congress shall make no law . . . "

This classical liberalism underwent two dramatic changes in the last century: the revolution of the 1930s, and the revolution of the 1960s. The revolution of the 1930s, the FDR revolution, was based on the assumption that rights are not meaningful unless we have the means to exercise them. As Franklin Roosevelt himself argued, people who lack life's necessities are not free. Roosevelt believed that to give citizens true liberty, the government should insure them against deprivation, against the loss of a job, against calamitous illness, and against an impoverished old age. Thus the liberal revolution of the 1930s introduced a new understanding of freedom that involved a vastly greater role for government than the American founders intended.

The second liberal revolution occurred in the 1960s. Its watchword was "liberation," and its great prophet was Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Before the sixties, most Americans believed in a universal moral order that is external to us, that makes demands on us. Our obligation was to conform to that moral order. Earlier generations, right up to the "greatest generation" of World War II, took for granted this moral order and its commandments: Work hard and try to better yourself, be faithful to your spouse, go when your country calls, and so on.

But, beginning in the sixties, several factions--the antiwar movement, the feminist movement, the gay activist movement, and so on--attacked that moral consensus as narrow and oppressive. They fought for a new ethic that would be based not on external authority but on the sovereignty of the inner self. This is the novel idea that received its most powerful expression in Rousseau's writing. To the American founders' list of freedoms, Rousseau added a new one: inner freedom, or moral freedom. Rousseau argues that we make major decisions--whom to love, what to become, what to believe--not by obeying our parents, teachers, preachers, or even God. Rather, we make such decisions by digging deep within ourselves and listening to the voice of nature. This is the idea of being "true to yourself." It is the new liberal morality.

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