As nearly 200 young conservatives waited in an auditorium at George Washington University, Dinesh D’Souza talked with The Daily Caller in the minutes he had before his speech for the 2015 Young America’s Foundation conference last Wednesday, and discussed his thoughts on the election, immigration, and lessons he learned from his confinement in California.
In interacting with those also spending time in confinement, D’Souza learned how politicians and commentators, especially himself, should address pressing policy issues.
“A lot of the idealistic debates are BS. They’re diversions that take away from what really motivates people,” he said. “They [voters] sit around basically trying to figure out how to get money. … So, to me, the enlightening thing about being in that world is that it forced me to find out the way things actually are, not the way I want to see, but the America that is here now.”
D’Souza was sentenced to spend eight months in a community confinement center just minutes from his home in California for violating campaign finance law in 2012. He was allowed to leave the center during the work day to pursue employment. His time there, he said, changed his views on criminal justice, but not his overall worldview.
D’Souza also shared his thoughts on Donald Trump and immigration. On the former, the author sides with the New York business magnate’s supporters, who feel that his presence is positive to the race.
“It raises the interest level. It makes things more entertaining, and for now, that’s good,” he said.
On immigration, D’Souza’s opinion is much like Ann Coulter’s. He believes in a selective system, resembling the exclusivity of a golf club. The social contract of America’s government with her people, says D’Souza, allows her to choose who she wants to allow in, and who she wishes to keep out.
“There are immigrants who reflect a spirit of 1776 and there are immigrants who reflect a spirit of 1968. We need a lot more of the former, and a lot fewer of the latter,” said D’Souza.
You can read the full interview below:
What can we expect from your speech this afternoon?
Dinesh D’Souza: I’m going to talk partly about my experience in captivity hanging out with the convicts, so to speak, and I’m going to talk about a couple of the important lessons that I’ve learned. My confinement exposed me to so different a segment of American society. I mean, I was in a confinement center where very few conservatives go. I’m not likely to see George Will or Charles Krauthammer there. So after an initial period of just getting acclimated, I said to myself, “It’s a learning opportunity. Let me talk to people, let me understand the subculture that is operating here, the prison subculture.” And little did I know that would teach me a lesson about American politics.
And without giving anything away, what did it teach you? What would be the main lesson?
DD: Well, for 25 years, I’ve been inhabiting a conservative intellectual universe, in which I’ve been debating ideas back and forth, and you could say I’ve been an American idealist and I’ve participated in debates over liberty versus justice and equality of opportunity versus equality of results, and this is American politics from the 25,000-foot viewpoint. It’s engaging in ideas, but looking down into the world, trying to make the world conform to ideas. Now, the beauty of being in a confinement center was that my fellow convicts don’t see the world that way at all. They see the world from the ground up. And a lot of the idealistic debates are BS. They’re diversions that take away from what really motivates people. And people don’t sit around making decisions about liberty and justice, at least these people don’t. They sit around basically trying to figure out how to get money. And so they’re motivated by elemental human passions, and their view is that that’s how the world really works: clever people figure out how to disguise that by talking about ideals, so this is going to be, call it, the Machiavellian view of American politics. Machiavelli says about the ancients that they talk constantly about imaginary republics that have never been known to exist. In other words, they talk about the way things ought to be, instead of the way they actually are. So, to me, the enlightening thing about being in that world is that it forced me to find out the way things actually are, not the way I want to see, but the America that is here now.
Did this experience change any of your previously political views?
DD: It didn’t change my underlying philosophy. On certain topics, I would say I have a different view than I used to. For example, here in the federal system, between 95 percent and 99 percent of people who are accused of crimes are convicted. If you told me this a year ago, I would have said, “Yeah, that’s because 95 to 99 percent of people are guilty. Obviously the cops aren’t going to arrest people who are not guilty, and so it is undisturbing that the vast, vast majority of people who are accused are convicted.” But that statement is based on idealism. It’s not actually based on a real look about how the process works. When you look at how the process works, it is possible and highly probable that people who have done nothing wrong will get prison sentences. They get prison sentences because it is rational for them to plead guilty on plea bargains when they are facing alternative sentences that would destroy their lives. I’m a little bit less glib about that than I would be, so I have modified my thoughts about that and other topics. But mostly, I’ve modified my angle of vision so that I’m a little less pointy-headed than I used to be, and my defense of America today is not just a defense of America as it ought to be but a defense of America as it is, and it’s a defense of America the country, not a defense of the American government.
NEXT PAGE: D’Souza on Trump
Where do you see we would need to make a bold change in the way America’s government is working currently?
DD: The change I’m trying to help with now is the change of mobilizing the team that could actually make that happen. So before you even identify the change you want, you actually have to bring about the conditions for that to happen. And that means not only creating a political majority, but it also means countering the left in the cultural institutions where it has become very strong: the media; the entertainment, which includes Hollywood and Broadway, the universities, the elementary and secondary schools — these are cultural beachheads in which the left has become very powerful and so, in my career, I’ve been mostly a writer and speaker, but today I’ve been spending most of my time trying to build some alternative institutions that will take on the left in its areas of strength.
Which political candidate would you say has the ability to effectively take on the left in the way you’re talking about?
DD: I don’t know the answer to that, and the reason I don’t is because I’ve kind of taken a vow to assiduously stay away from the internecine Republican fight. That’s not my fight. I’m viewing it with amusement and interest. I think for example that the presence of Trump is, to me, very positive, because it raises the interest level. It makes things more entertaining, and for now, that’s good. It also points to real weaknesses in the Republican Party. Our party has got way too many hang-dog losers in it, and many of these people are professionals, and they are making decisions about where the money goes. I mean you’d think that they’d be a little chagrined about their record of continuous failure, but that doesn’t seem to demotivate them at all. So, we need to think differently, organize differently, argue differently, create new institutions. There’s a lot of work to be done. I’m an optimist but also a realist.
Critics of the GOP say that in order to regain power, the party needs to changes its positions on social issues, such as same-sex marriage. Do you think the party needs to abandon its traditional positions to win elections?
DD: I do think that social conservatism will be more effective if it is argued in a different language. So, for example, I would argue less in terms of individual hot-button issues and more in terms of the set of virtues that is essential in a productive and patriotic society. We need to have citizens who are frugal, industrious, ambitious, creative, innovative, honest and kind. It’s hard to argue that our society would be worse off if our citizens were more that way. Well, those are all the core conservative values, and sometimes if you just focus on some of the hot-button issues, you miss the larger picture, which is that we’re trying to form citizens. I’m a social conservative as much as I’m an economic conservative, but I don’t speak that kind of social conservative lingo, which I think is off-putting, particularly to young people.
What should the GOP do about immigration?
DD: The immigration debate is framed right now as a debate pro- or anti-immigrant. We can’t win that debate, certainly not if the Republican Party is seen as the anti-immigrant party. I mean, we’re an immigrant country, for God’s sake. The debate has to be shifted from a debate that is “yes” or “no” on immigration to a debate about what kind of immigrants we want, and how many immigrants we want. There’s nothing untoward, insensitive or bigoted about those questions. Every society is a civil community established by a social contract of the people who are in it. That group is like a club, and it has every right to establish criteria for new members, the same way a golf club can decide what kind of people it wants to take in. We in America can decide how many more Americans we want to take in and what kind of people they can be. There’s nothing wrong with us saying, “We’d like to have a few more doctors or a few more engineers — whatever we need we should take in.” I think the Republican Party should become the champion of a sensible immigration policy and focus the debate on who those people should be. There are immigrants who reflect a spirit of 1776, and there are immigrants who reflect a spirit of 1968. We need a lot more of the former, and a lot fewer of the latter.
Readers can expect a new book from D’Souza in the fall, called “Stealing America,” and viewers a new movie, which will be an expose of Hillary Clinton and a secret history of progressivism, in the summer of 2016.