Dinesh D'Souza Quote
THE FIRST DEMOCRAT The real founder of the modern Democratic Party was Andrew Jackson. Jackson, an orphan from Appalachia, rose from obscurity to become America’s most celebrated general and military hero after George Washington. He won the presidency by a landslide in 1828 and an even bigger one in 1832. His proteges dominated the Democratic Party for half a century, until the Civil War. During his lifetime Jackson was immensely popular with ordinary people, earning him the reputation of being the common man’s president. One might expect the Democrats—who even today purport to be the party of the common man—to embrace Jackson and acknowledge his paternity of their party. This, however, is not the case. So why do they distance themselves from Jackson? Why do progressives consider him such an embarrassment? Not only do many on the Left refuse to acknowledge Jackson’s founding role in the Democratic Party, they also want to kick him off the $20 bill where his face currently appears. Progressives want to see him replaced on the currency with the woman who ran the Underground Railroad, Harriet Tubman. To some degree, the progressive objective seems clear. Jackson, after all, owned some three hundred slaves during his lifetime. At one time he ran a plantation that had 150 slaves. So Jackson’s expulsion seems consistent with the general progressive antipathy toward slavery. The same antipathy explains the choice of Tubman, who was a female abolitionist. Moreover, Tubman was a woman. If the Democrats are going to place a woman, Hillary, on the presidential ticket, why not also have a woman, Tubman, on the currency? Even so, the proposal is interesting because Jackson was a Democrat—the founding father of the Democratic Party—while Tubman was a Republican. Admittedly progressives have no intention of highlighting that fact about Tubman; indeed it goes virtually unmentioned in the news reports. The progressive media is not comfortable with a female black abolitionist representing the Republican Party while a white male slave owner represents the Democratic Party.
THE FIRST DEMOCRAT The real founder of the modern Democratic Party was Andrew Jackson. Jackson, an orphan from Appalachia, rose from obscurity to become America’s most celebrated general and military hero after George Washington. He won the presidency by a landslide in 1828 and an even bigger one in 1832. His proteges dominated the Democratic Party for half a century, until the Civil War. During his lifetime Jackson was immensely popular with ordinary people, earning him the reputation of being the common man’s president. One might expect the Democrats—who even today purport to be the party of the common man—to embrace Jackson and acknowledge his paternity of their party. This, however, is not the case. So why do they distance themselves from Jackson? Why do progressives consider him such an embarrassment? Not only do many on the Left refuse to acknowledge Jackson’s founding role in the Democratic Party, they also want to kick him off the $20 bill where his face currently appears. Progressives want to see him replaced on the currency with the woman who ran the Underground Railroad, Harriet Tubman. To some degree, the progressive objective seems clear. Jackson, after all, owned some three hundred slaves during his lifetime. At one time he ran a plantation that had 150 slaves. So Jackson’s expulsion seems consistent with the general progressive antipathy toward slavery. The same antipathy explains the choice of Tubman, who was a female abolitionist. Moreover, Tubman was a woman. If the Democrats are going to place a woman, Hillary, on the presidential ticket, why not also have a woman, Tubman, on the currency? Even so, the proposal is interesting because Jackson was a Democrat—the founding father of the Democratic Party—while Tubman was a Republican. Admittedly progressives have no intention of highlighting that fact about Tubman; indeed it goes virtually unmentioned in the news reports. The progressive media is not comfortable with a female black abolitionist representing the Republican Party while a white male slave owner represents the Democratic Party.
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About Dinesh D'Souza
Born in Mumbai, D'Souza moved to the United States as an exchange student and graduated from Dartmouth College. He was a policy adviser in the administration of President Ronald Reagan and has been affiliated with the American Enterprise Institute and the Hoover Institution. He became a naturalized citizen in 1991. From 2010 to 2012, he was president of The King's College, a Christian school in New York City, until he resigned after an alleged adultery scandal.
In 2012, D'Souza released the documentary film 2016: Obama's America, an anti-Barack Obama polemic based on his 2010 book The Roots of Obama's Rage; it earned $33 million, making it the highest-grossing conservative documentary of all time and one of the highest-grossing documentaries of any kind. He has since released five other documentary films: America: Imagine the World Without Her (2014), Hillary's America (2016), Death of a Nation (2018), Trump Card (2020) and 2000 Mules (2022). D'Souza's films and commentary have generated considerable controversy due to their promotion of conspiracy theories and falsehoods, as well as for their incendiary nature.
In 2012, D'Souza contributed $10,000 to the Senate campaign of Wendy Long on behalf of himself and his wife, agreeing in writing to attribute that contribution as $5,000 from his wife and $5,000 from him. He directed two other people to give Long a total of $20,000 in addition, which he agreed to reimburse, and later did. At the time, the Election Act limited campaign contributions to $5,000 from any individual to any one candidate. Two years later, D'Souza pleaded guilty in federal court to one felony charge of using a "straw donor" to make the illegal campaign contribution. He was sentenced to eight months in a halfway house near his home in San Diego, five years' probation, and a $30,000 fine. In 2018, D'Souza was issued a pardon by President Donald Trump.