America: Imagine the World Without Her
Setting the stage for a presentation of their views, D'Souza and Sullivan provide counterfactual histories in which George Washington is killed during the Revolutionary War, or the country is divided following civil war, creating a world without America that would be vastly worse off. D'Souza identifies himself as an Indian immigrant who chose America, and has been impressed with what a unique force for good it is, something Americans have traditionally agreed with. He claims modern leftists are “telling a new story”, however, contradicting traditional veneration for America in order to “convince a nation to author its own destruction” and “unmake the America that is here now.” He then challenges several "indictments" made against the country and American exceptionalism, including sociology professor and activist Michael Eric Dyson's claim that “Thievery" was the “critical element” for “American empire” and historian and activist Ward Churchill's assertion that the US is the world's new evil empire, and says that 1960s Chicago radical Saul Alinsky, historian Howard Zinn, and others have promoted guilt and resentment regarding wealth inequality that has helped shape the political careers of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.
D'Souza argues that America's wealth has been created, not stolen. He says the $700 used to purchase colonial Manhattan from American Indians could buy many desolate parcels globally today, but that individual industry has made New York real estate worth billions. He states that in Europe, India, and elsewhere most countries have been founded on conquest, and observes that the American pattern of wealth creation hasn't been the universal norm. He cites examples like Arab historian Ibn Khaldun preferring looting to trade and says that merchants form Hinduism’s second-lowest social caste.
The film argues that American Indians exhibited this "conquest ethic" among themselves, and that most of the American Indian depopulation that occurred during European colonization resulted from the accidental transmission of plagues (which had earlier devastated Europe), not from an intent to wipe out a people. The film argues that modern American Indians have little interest in returning to their hunter-gatherer past. In an interview, Senator Ted Cruz compares the Texas Revolution to the American Revolution. Professor and Reconquista advocate Charles Truxillo is contrasted with an interviewed American of Mexican descent who says he has no desire to return to a poverty and crime ridden Mexico and instead wants to live the "American Dream".
D'Souza says that slavery impeded American development, rather than boosting it. The film argues that slavery was an omnipresent phenomenon for most of human history, but that its abolition was "uniquely Western", noting the rarity of a "great war fought to end slavery" like the American Civil War. According to the film the Declaration of Independence essentially says “liberty is the solution to injustice,” a “promissory note” cashed throughout history by Americans such as Martin Luther King, Jr.. C.J. Walker, the black entrepreneur and daughter of slaves who is regarded as America's first self made female millionaire, is cited as an example of the type of individual success story the American system allows that is ignored by historians like Zinn because it undermines their leftist narrative. Columbia University economist Jagdish Bhagwati is shown saying that the “world is embracing the free market,” for which there is “no reason for us to be apologetic.” The film attempts to outline how somewhat free enterprise and consumer "choice" rather than "coercion", have possibly raised living standards by making existing goods cheaper and creating new ones.
historical