Posted on 05/10/2003 4:30:22 PM PDT by Chirodoc
Occasionally a book comes along that validates the old cliché about being so good that you can´t put it down. Dinesh D´Souza´s "Letters to a Young Conservative" is absolutely one such book. In it he writes a series of letters, thirty-one in all, to a fictional young undergraduate conservative named Chris. The premise is that Chris has written D´Souza after seeing him speak at his university. Chris is overwhelmed by the leftist politically correct atmosphere at his college and D´Souza comforts him by giving counsel on every imaginable topic in the realm of ideas. His arguments draw on nearly twenty-five years of street fighting within the conservative movement. This work is part of a series by Basic Books of established older masters offering advice to the young, and includes Christopher Hitchens´ outstanding "Letters to a Young Contrarian".
D´Souza´s book is a moving, exquisite pep-talk for all right-minded thinkers regardless of age. It is not an explosive tirade and instead is a series of quiet, rational arguments designed to illustrate that anything is possible if one is reflective and patient. The work is truly deceiving due to its accessibility and style. D´Souza is not verbose and writes highly comprehensible sentences. The clarity of the text is problematic as you may plow through a few pages before realizing that D´Souza has just written something quite profound. As a warning, you should not begin reading this hardback if you have vocational or personal interests that cannot be immediately neglected because the enlightenment the book issues is highly addictive.
The material is serious for the most part but there are a few occasions where the reader may find his or her self laughing out loud after ingesting the exploits of D´Souza and his college peers who worked at the samizdat, The Dartmouth Review. They were one of the first, if not the very first, alternative conservative college publications in the country and the militancy of the left at Dartmouth propelled D´Souza to their ranks even though he initially entered college as a liberal.
He and his friends bait the existing power hierarchy repeatedly but on no occasion so humorously as when they protest the university´s expenditures on the Gay Students´ Association. The Dartmouth Review viewed this as being inappropriate and discriminatory as it was awarding funds to individuals based on sexual orientation only. Their way of dealing with the quandary was quite novel to say the least.
D´Souza and peers, to illustrate the ridiculousness of such organizations, formed The Dartmouth Bestiality Society and even appointed a president and zookeeper. They then went to the dean to ask for support but the dean responded that no support was necessary as there was no interest in such activities at Dartmouth. The President of the Bestiality Society responded with, “That may be true, Dean Hanson, but it is because of centuries of discrimination! Those of us who are inclined toward animals have been systematically excluded and ostracized. Our organization will provide a supportive atmosphere in which people of our particular sexual orientation are treated with respect. At Dartmouth…let us put an end to beast phobia.” [p.28] Their method may be extreme but it teaches the moral that ridicule is a potent force when dealing with the absurdity that is multi-cultural theory and diversity in America. They may not have won the battle but nearly everyone held the Gay Students´ Association in a different light after their proposal.
D´Souza has some very original arguments in the book that should help the reader in dealing with the ever present emotional tirades thrown by liberals. This reviewer´s favorite chapter was the one on the temperament of conservatives versus that of liberals. The most important point in the book, and certainly the argument that the author most needed to make, is that conservatives are a far happier lot than liberals. This is due to the fact that we have already embraced the realities of our world and the inherent flaws within human nature. As we view ourselves as being part of a historical continuum, we do not attempt to wrestle with forces that cannot change so we accept our limited place in the scheme of things and never experience emotional meltdown when we discover that legislation cannot alter the flaws of humanity.
In contrast, liberals lead lives of perpetual outrage (or in the derailed words of the nonsensical, Gore Vidal, they fantasize about Perpetual Wars for Perpetual Peace). The liberal lives an eternal life marked by outrage as the real world never meets the fantasies that are their expectations. The byproduct of their attempted social engineering is failure alone. They are continually surprised and disappointed when their political policies do not generate a new version of man and woman. They, allegedly, desire a world devoid of racism, sexism and elitism but we conservatives acknowledge that such a place does not, and will never, exist. We accept the world as it is and then move on to lead our productive lives. The liberal continues to chase the dragon that is personality modification and is forever astounded that every time they try to chase Mother Nature out, they turn around to discover that she has rushed right back in.
In another “letter”, D´Souza provides us with a necessary distinction between libertarianism and conservatism. He labels this “the libertarian temptation” and it is one that this reviewer and many other conservatives wrestle with constantly. There is a libertarian temptation within many on the right and we find ourselves agreeing with libertarians on a great many issues and nowhere is this more true than regarding our hate for government intervention in the economy. His advice is to opt for conservatism as “[l]ibertarianism is a philosophy of government, but conservatism is a philosophy of life…on the question of how liberty is to be used, on the central question of what constitutes the good life, libertarianism is largely silent.”[p.11] Ultimately, conservatives do not believe in absolute freedom for every sphere of life. Freedom, to be guaranteed, must have some limitations and D´Souza recommends subordinating one´s natural libertarian impulses within the general framework of a conservative ideology.
One of the moments of levity in Letters… is when he instructs Chris on “how to harpoon a liberal.” Like David Horowitz, he is frequently harassed by audience leftists when he speaks. On one occasion, a student kept belching “sounds like Hitler” after every sentence that he spoke. He shut him up by saying “Look, if you keep this up, by the end of this talk you will have given Hitler a good name.”[139] During another speech, a student got up, yawned loudly, and began to leave the auditorium. D´Souza yelled after him that the bathroom was the third door on the right and that diarrhea is a very serious issue which should not be taken lightly – thereby triggering hilarity amongst his listeners.
The mental masturbatory practices of post-modernism and deconstruction are also attacked in this book. The two chapters on post-modernism and left-wing professors should be recited for college students weary of indoctrination from their instructors. D´Souza pokes fun of the pomposity of their intellectual output and quotes another source saying, of the post-modernists, that they give “bulls—t” a bad name. He describes the rationale as to why there are more leftists in the academy than there are left-hand turns at a NASCAR event by stating “…liberals tend to go into the academy because they care more about power… liberals prefer such fields as sociology and literary criticism because in these areas their theoretical perspective never has to meet the test of reality.”[p.114] This is very apparent in the speech codes and star chamber hearings that the left has constructed on their long march through the institutions of higher learning in our nation.
His chapter on immigration I was somewhat uneasy with, but I think that his suggestions for increased government controls on the type of people we accept is irrefutably true. Definitely something must be done. The status-quo is not acceptable. There is no moral reason why we can´t as a nation specify criteria for those we accept as citizens. D´Souza states that immigrants are not at fault for the social decline of this nation and they generally are patriotic towards our land assuming they have not been poisoned by political correctness and multiculturalism. This is an excellent point and I have personally discovered its truth. Through work, I have met many Nigerian families who avidly defend the United States and have told me that “in Nigeria we never had a chance to save for cars or homes because we had to save to put our kids through school.” In other parts of the world, schooling is far from a certainty for children. One Nigerian mother even illustrated western, not multi-cultural, pride by telling me, after I complimented her English proficiency, “I speak well and unlike you I speak the King´s English.”
D´Souza energetically addresses affirmative action and conveys numerous brilliant arguments against it to the reader. In the author´s view, whenever you raise the floor, meaning raise someone up by giving them an unearned place at a university, you are actually lowering the ceiling by disqualifying a worthier person from a non-privileged group. You can´t benefit one person without discriminating against another. Alas, the real lesson of affirmative action is that discrimination against one is discrimination against all. His best argument against it is that it demeans blacks by promoting rumors of their inferiority among the general population. D´Souza´s real world examples help to drive home the double standard that affirmative action may be a decorative euphemism but this euphemism translates into racism in practice.
This book is a recording of quintessential songs to be learned and sung by any who are a David beneath the boot of the leftist Goliath. This Goliath has the media as a sword and the universities and the public schools as his spear, but with the help of D´Souza, independent media outlets, and patriotic fervor, we may be able to stone this unruly Goliath back into the bronze age.
To comment on this article or express your opinion directly to the author, you are invited to e-mail Bernard at bchapafl@hotmail.com .
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