TheDC Interview with Dinesh D’Souza

[Calabrio]

TheDC Interview with Dinesh D’Souza, Part I
http://dailycaller.com/2010/10/09/thedc-interview-with-dinesh-dsouza-part-i/
By Jamie Weinstein - The Daily Caller

Prolific writer, world-class debater, and now president of The King’s College in New York City, Dinesh D’Souza is the author of the new book, “The Roots of Obama’s Rage,” a book whose thesis has stirred up heated debate among conservatives and liberals alike. In the book, D’Souza suggests that to understand Obama and the policies he is pushing as president, you have to understand the anti-colonial dreams of his father. These same dreams, D’Souza argues, are what motivate Obama today.

In an in-depth interview, D’Souza defended his thesis vigorously against tough push back by The Daily Caller. At the end of the interview, D’Souza raves that TheDC’s interview with him “is the very best interview. I mean, this is a very interesting exchange because you’re, I think in a very thoughtful way, raising key questions about the book and giving me a chance to engage them.”

Below you will find the first 10 questions of the interview. Come back tomorrow for Part II, where D’Souza combats what he considers the “single best piece of counter evidence against my theory” and talks about his ailing friend and debating partner Christopher Hitchens.

TheDC: What do you think is so powerful about the anti-colonial thesis in explaining Obama’s actions?

Dinesh D’Souza (DD): In understanding a man, you have to give a psychologically compelling account of what drives him. So, for example, let’s say one would hypothesize that Obama was a Maoist. Even if this was usually a valuable lens in explaining his policies, the question would remain, “Yeah, but how did he become a Maoist?” Maoism seems awfully remote from his actual life. So where did he pick it up and how did it have such a big influence on him?

So the point being that we need a theory that is rooted in Obama’s own history, and the beauty of it is that Obama has written extensively about his own history. He tells us where his dreams come from and he says in no uncertain terms that they come from his father. His father was, without a doubt, an anti-colonialist. This is reflected in his father’s writings, such as his 1965 article on African socialism.

So Obama’s father is a socialist but he fits the socialism into a larger anti-colonialism. And so this gives us a very interesting hypothesis to work with, mainly, that Obama has embraced his father’s anti-colonialism. And then the question becomes, how helpful is that model in explaining Obama’s actions and in predicting what he will do in the future? So that’s my starting point in approaching this thesis.

TheDC: And ultimately, where do you think he picked up this worldview more from, was it more from his father or his mother do you think?

DD: Well, so here’s what I would say. He picked up uncritical reverence of his father from his mother. So he got this idea of his father as the mythic figure, larger than life, the great man of Africa. This image of his father was greatly reinforced by a crucial incident that happened when his father came to visit him at the age of ten. Obama writes extensively about this incident in his book [Dreams from my Father]. It’s about when his father came to speak at his school, and the mesmerizing impact that he had on students.

So Obama had this reverence for his father but that reverence was shattered when he learned that his father was a very flawed man. He was an alcoholic, he got into multiple drunk driving accidents, he was a polygamist who didn’t look after his wife and children. So Obama discovered all that and it shattered him. He says it was as if the sky had changed color and animals could speak. So it shook that early, blissful, larger than life image of his father.

Obama now had to put these two facts together. What do you do with the great man of Africa that is a very flawed man? And Obama came up with, I think, a very plausible synthesis. He basically said, “Okay, flawed man, but great ideals.” In other words, Obama said, “I recognize my father was not perfect as a man, but it remains a fact that he was attached to the great liberationist third world cause of the second half of the twentieth century, namely anti-colonialism.”

NEXT: How is Obama’s worldview different from the liberal professoriate?

TheDC: You’ve written extensively in other books and articles that within academia itself there is this anti-colonialist worldview among the professoriate. How is Obama’s worldview different from what you would find in academia, where he spent a long time, or for that matter, from the worldview of Jimmy Carter?

DD: Well, first of all, it is true that anti-colonialism is a powerful theme in academia, particularly elite academia, and in “The Roots of Obama’s Rage,” I write about two of Obama’s secret mentors. In other words, Obama got his anti-colonial outlook from his father, but his father wasn’t there. He had to learn chapter and verse of anti-colonialism from other people. He got the first dose of it from the former communist Frank Marshall Davis in Hawaii. He writes about Frank in his autobiography, Obama does, but doesn’t mention about the communism or the anti-colonialism.

Then he went to Columbia where he studied under the anti-colonial writer Edward Said. Said was a former representative of the Palestine Liberation Organization, author of books like, “Orientalism” and “Culture and Imperialism.” Probably the leading anti-colonial scholar in the world. Obama studied under Said, although he never mentioned Said in any of his writings or speeches. He also subsequently attended a fundraiser that Said spoke at for the Palestinians in Chicago.

Then Obama went to Harvard Law School where he studied under the leading anti-colonial scholar of legal studies, which is Roberto Mangabeira Unger. He became very close to Unger, he took courses from him, I named them through the book, and he stayed in touch with him all the way through the presidential campaign. In fact, Unger pretty much skipped town during the presidential campaign because some reporters were chasing him to interview him on his connections with Obama. Unger said [paraphrasing], “I’m a revolutionary and if it comes out that I’m connected with Obama, it’s going to hurt Obama. So I don’t want that to happen, so see you later.”

So what I’m trying to say here is that here are two people, Said and Unger, who have had an anti-colonial impact on Obama, through the professoriate, through the academy. Obama suppresses their names because he doesn’t want people to know that. So, yes, the theory that these are radical notions in academia, it’s correct that Obama was influenced by them…

But what I’m saying is the psychological roots of Obama’s commitment goes deeper….If you look at Obama’s personal history, the fact that his father was jailed in the Mau Mau revolt, the fact that his grandfather was put in a British detention camp and tortured, for Obama the anti-colonial wars are not academic wars. They are real wars that had a real impact on his family. So his commitment is sawed deeper than that of many tinpot anti-colonialists that we run into everyday.

NEXT: Doesn’t Jimmy Carter have a similar worldview?

TheDC: Unger and Said, do we know how close Obama was to them, besides taking a couple of courses? Do we know if they were close advisors of his during his time Columbia and then Harvard Law?

DD: We do know that David Remnick reports in his book “The Bridge” that Unger and Obama had stayed in touch from his days at Harvard until the presidential campaign. They communicated regularly and Unger gave Remnick a very detailed analysis of Obama’s personality and told Remnick the quote that I paraphrased for you, that basically, “I don’t want reporters to talk to me because I’m a revolutionary and if it got out that I’m basically friendly with Obama it would hurt Obama.” So that’s enough for me to suggest that these were more than casual professors whose classes he wandered into and walked out of.

TheDC: The other aspect of my question was how different is this from Jimmy Carter. Doesn’t he too express an anti-colonialist worldview? He has sympathy for Hamas, for instance. He visited with Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal in Syria. Obama has never gone that far. He hasn’t expressed any sympathy for Hamas.

DD: With Jimmy Carter, I think, you have to assess each person differently. Because I think in the case of Carter, I mean, there’s certainly no consistent anti-colonialism in Carter’s case. What you had when Carter was president was a combination of sort of weakness and buffoonery. In subsequent years, Carter seems to have developed, you might say, an uncritical soft spot for the Palestinians. He’s not consistently anti-colonial.

I don’t see Carter, for example, talking about the Brazilians, or discussing Indian anti-colonialism. It’s just basically that he thinks Israel is the bad guy. Now I think Obama would agree with him on that in that in the larger anti-colonial framework, Israel is the occupier, the unjust occupier, and colonizer of Palestinian and Muslim land. But I think with Obama, this is a far more well thought out thesis.

I mean, here’s a simple thing. Just run a Google search on “Dreams from My Father,” the number of times the word “colonialism” occurs, or is discussed by Obama. Obama discusses colonialism in that book far more than he discusses civil rights. And that is a key clue to the fact that a lot of people have been projecting the civil rights model onto Obama, in a sense reading him into American history while ignoring Obama’s own history.

NEXT: How did Obama push his supposed anti-colonial worldview before he decided to run for president?

TheDC: After Obama returned from Kenya in the late 1980s after visiting his father’s grave, which you suggest is a very important moment in your book, you say he adopted his father’s anti-colonialism, he adopted his father’s hatreds and he was ready to make a difference in the world pushing his father’s anti-colonial vision. How did he go about doing that immediately after he returned to the United States? He certainly didn’t think that he was going to be president. I mean, that would be very hard to imagine at that point.

DD: I think that this was critical in his decision to not go the route of being a stable partner in a law firm and moving up the ranks but rather deciding, “I’m going to become a community activist. I’m going to go into politics. I’m going to rise up the ranks. I’m going to master the lexicon of power. I’m going to start, you know, teaching the Saul Alinsky manual. I’m going to start running for office.” In other words, “I’m going to try to figure out a way to get the levers of power into my hands.” And it’s very clear that Obama began an ambitious, although checkered, rise to power, starting with his activism in Chicago.

TheDC: You have long sections in the book discussing how Obama and his anti-colonialist vision have been manifest his administration’s policies, from the administration’s decision to go after Arizona for its immigration law, to financial reform, to the push for cap and trade, and so on. But aren’t these also just traditional liberal policies supported by almost everyone in the liberal establishment? Isn’t Obama’s base demanding these very policies?

DD: Well let’s look at some. It is true that there’s an overlap between the progressive agenda and the anti-colonial agenda, but the reason you can tell which one Obama is committed to is by looking at the cases which go one way rather then the other. Let’s say, for example, having high rates of taxes on the rich. I agree. The progressive wants to do that. So does the anti-colonialist. But it is when you look at the more revealing cases that you can make finer distinctions.

For example, let’s compare Al Gore environmentalism versus Obama environmentalism. Al Gore’s environmentalism is that the earth has a fever, a global warming. Therefore, we should all reduce our carbon footprint, and that includes America, China, India, Brazil, Mexico, everybody. We need to cut back because humanity is using too much.

That’s not Obama’s view. Obama’s view, if you listen carefully to his U.N. speech, if you follow the few key decisions — I mentioned the Petrobras decision. What Obama’s view is that we as America are consuming out of proportion to what we have. We should be consuming less so that the others can consume more. He agrees that there are bad environmental standards in places like Africa and Asia, but he thinks there should be global transfers of wealth to those countries so those countries do have access to more energy, so that they can develop. He also has done virtually nothing. China and India have virtually told him, “Forget it, we’re not that interested in any of these carbon standards. We need more carbon to grow.” And Obama essentially has said nothing about it except saying, “We really wish you guys would get with the program.” But otherwise he’s taken no steps whatsoever to influence carbon consumption in places like India and China, which has the largest carbon footprint in the world.

So anything that we did environmentally would be canceled out by what the Chinese are doing. Again, that’s something Al Gore would be concerned about. Obama isn’t because to my way of thinking, Obama is less concerned with whether the world is getting hotter or colder. I think he could care less. But he would like to see us consume less so that the rest can consume more.

NEXT: How are Obama’s Supreme Court picks indicative of his supposed anti-colonial worldview?

TheDC: Why would Obama not take bonuses away from the bankers? You know, they got their bonuses and that was a major concern with the Wall Street bailout. The guys who messed up still continued to get huge bonuses in large part because America bailed them out. Why wouldn’t Obama, an anti-colonialist who wants to sink the rich, push to strip them of their bonuses?

DD: I say in the book multiple times, you know, “Did Rick Wagner deserve to be fired? Probably.” But, similarly, at any given case, you could say, “Was Obama right to attack the huge bonuses of this bank or that bank?” He might have been.

I’m after the big picture. I’m not trying to debate the merits this bailout or that criticism or this firing. I’m simply saying, look, if you listen to Obama in the broad, it’s rather interesting that the temperature of his voice rises when he’s talking about the rich elites or the big corporations. That’s what gets him going. The poor doesn’t get him going. Have you heard him speak animatedly about poverty or the inter-city? No. Those are not the causes that move the guy. Have you heard him speak passionately about Martin Luther King’s dream for a race neutral society, the colorblind ideal? No, he might occasionally refer to it, but it’s usually perfunctory and unimportant. It’s not part of his key agenda. So that’s what I’m trying to do. I’m trying to draw out the essence of the man and his priorities by looking at the logic contours of his allegiances.

TheDC: Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor, you say these choices for the Supreme Court also reflect Obama’s anti-colonial vision. But isn’t it a stretch to think that Obama knew of, for instance, Sotomayor’s “wise Latina” comment before he chose her? I mean that came out afterwards.

DD: I’ve worked in the White House and these candidates are extensively vetted and I’d be very surprised if it wasn’t a quotation that was distributed before as something that the White House should deal with. I could be wrong about that. Like everything, what I’m trying to do is I have an explanatory framework. I’m trying to apply it to see how well it explains the facts.

TheDC: You write in your book, “If Obama has his way, America would look a lot like Obama’s father wanted Kenya to look: government-run peasant cooperatives rationing land and natural resources in order to enjoy a modest self-sufficiency.” You really think that is Obama’s vision for America?

DD: I think Obama’s vision for America is, well, you could call it, “soft socialism at home, and impotence abroad.” So an expansion of federal power domestically and a contraction of America’s role in the world internationally. It’s kind of a scissors motion. The state grows bigger at home and the American state loses its standing on the global stage. Again, all you have to do is look at Obama’s actions to see that he is aggressively pushing both goals. If you don’t think he’s pushing both goals, then we just have a different understanding of the facts at hand. If you do see that he’s pushing both goals, you then have to ask, “Does the anti-colonial theory account for it?” And I think it beautifully does.

Tomorrow, check out the final part of TheDC’s interview with D’Souza, where he answers a question about what he considers the “single best piece of counter evidence against my theory” and discusses his recent communication with his ailing debating partner Christopher Hitchens.

This interview has been edited for clarity and readability.

 

[Calabrio]

TheDC Interview with Dinesh D’Souza, Part II
By Jamie Weinstein - The Daily Caller 8:56 AM 10/10/2010

Yesterday, TheDC published Part I of our interview with Dinesh D’Souza — the prolific writer, world-class debater, and now president of The King’s College in New York City — who is the author of the new book “The Roots of Obama’s Rage.”

In his new tome — which has inspired both passionate debate and vitriolic denunciation — D’Souza suggests that to understand Obama and the policies he is pushing as president, you have to understand the anti-colonial dreams of his father. These same dreams, D’Souza argues, are what motivate Obama today.

In Part II of our interview, D’Souza defends his thesis against what he calls the “single best piece of counter evidence against my theory,” and tells us about the recent conversation he had with his ailing debating partner, Christopher Hitchens:

TheDC: Let’s go to what I think is the most serious allegation in your book. I’ll just read the passage. Speaking about President Obama, you write, “His goal is not success in Afghanistan; rather, it is how quickly he can get America out. His anti-colonial strategy doffs a hat to political reality, but also ensures, win or lose, a prompt pullout from a war he doesn’t want to fight. Moreover, if America and NATO are seen to have ‘lost’ Afghanistan, that would be a good thing, because from the anti-colonial point of view, such a defeat would discourage colonial military expeditions in the future.” Is not the implication of this that Obama has increased American troops in Afghanistan, put them in the harm’s way, knowing that many will die in a mission he hopes they lose in order to discourage future American military expeditions? And if that were actually true, wouldn’t that make Obama not just radical, but evil?

Dinesh D’Souza (DD): No, because I don’t think that he would see his actions that way at all. I think Obama would see his actions this way. My two big pieces of support before I go into this. First, is the interesting comments by General McChrystal about Obama. Namely, I’m not talking about the prudence of telling Rolling Stone all this, because that was insubordinate and the firing of McChrystal was warranted under the circumstances. I’m talking about what McChrystal and his aides actually said. They said, “We presented Obama with what we thought was the counterinsurgency plan, a plan to try to win in a tough situation, and Obama was disengaged, he was uninterested, basically he didn’t care.” Now why would a president not care about his top general’s game plan to win in Afghanistan? Well, the short answer is because he doesn’t want to win! That would be an excellent explanation for why someone is bored or disinterested.

Here’s a second point. I saw Bob Woodward a couple a days ago on television, “Larry King Show,” and he was talking about an incident involving Joe Biden and Obama. Now remember this is the power of a theory, okay, its ability to predict the future. Obviously I haven’t seen Bob Woodward’s book, I know nothing about this, but my theory was predictive, and Woodward confirmed it. Biden basically goes up, this is as Woodward is telling the story, Biden goes to Obama and says, “Hey Obama, if you have a surge, Afghanistan becomes your war. You’re going to have to win and if you lose you’re going to take the blame.” Obama’s reply, very revealing, in effect, “Joe, I don’t see things that way. I don’t define victory and winning and losing the way that traditional politicians do. I am using a different compass altogether. For me, victory isn’t measured by winning in the traditional sense.”

Now, what I’m trying to say is this is exactly what the anti-colonial view would predict. It would predict that Obama would define victory much more in terms of getting us out of there than in terms of having, let’s say, a pro-American democratic government in Afghanistan.

NEXT: Does D’Souza believe Obama would prefer that we lose in Afghanistan?

TheDC: Let me follow up on that. That quotation could show that he conceives victory — and I may disagree with this – but it may show that he conceives victory as trying to create a position from which America could withdraw in what he sees as a responsible way from Afghanistan. But it does not necessarily show that he’s looking to increase troops with the intent that America would ultimately be defeated and would thus be discouraged from fighting such wars in the future.

DD: No, no. Right. But…this reminds you of how Obama would analyze the situation. It’s not that he’s put more troops in harm’s way. Obama’s thinking, “I would rather not do the Afghanistan surge, but during the campaign I did make Afghanistan the good war, the contrast with Iraq, the bad war. Now I’m in a bit of a bind because I want to get out, but politically, I’ve made it my war, and here is my general who is proposing a surge, similar to the surge that worked in Iraq. How do I say no to him? I really can’t. It’s going to make me look really bad. So what do I do? I give him a partial surge and at the same time I announce the pull out. This way, we can try the surge, but the truth of it is, my main goal is to make sure we’re out of there in a year. So in fact I would be really happy if we could get out of there in such a way that we don’t do these kinds of neo-colonial military expeditions in the future. If we quote ‘win’ in the traditional sense, both in Iraq and Afghanistan, then it’s going to increase the appetite of Americans for more neo-colonial adventures.”

So this is a way of analyzing Obama’s motives that don’t impute to him any nefarious motives, that don’t imply that he’s trying to put Americans in harm’s way, simply says he’s bowing the political necessity and his main goal is to get out.

TheDC: But you think he’d prefer it if we lose?

DD: I don’t think he prefers that we lose. I think that to him that getting out is the definition of success and what happens over there is secondary. So in other words, let’s say you offered Obama some choices. We can stay in Afghanistan and stabilize the situation, or we can get out and win, or we can get out and lose. I think he would say, “I’d rather get out and win, but I would prefer to get out and lose to remaining over there because that would be the continuing neocolonial occupation that I don’t want.”

So I’m not saying Obama wants to lose. I’m saying Obama wants to get out. That is his definition of success. What else happens over there, is it a Taliban takeover? Is it a treaty with the Taliban in which a power sharing between [Afghan President Hamid] Karzai and the Taliban? I think that to Obama is the second issue. It’s not the priority. The priority is withdrawal.

NEXT: D’Souza responds to what he considers the “single best piece of counter evidence against my theory.”
TheDC: Drone attacks. You can’t say drone attacks are a political necessity. So under your view of Obama, of how Obama views the world, the fact that he has increased drone attacks above the levels of George W. Bush — and he’s even approved the targeting of an American citizen, Anwar Al-Awlaki hiding in Yemen – doesn’t seem to conform to your thesis. As I said, this is certainly not a political necessity. His leftist base is very upset, especially about the targeting of Awlaki – in fact, I’m not sure anyone was actually demanding this. Isn’t this something that an anti-colonialist would not do?

DD: This is perhaps the single best piece of counter evidence against my theory. And my explanation for it would be to say that Obama has justified those attacks in his mind by making a critical distinction. If he were to think of this as prosecuting a war on terror, then the enemy combatants who are striking against America would in his view be resisters of American imperialism.

Therefore, Obama makes a critical distinction. He says, “This is not a war on terror. We’re not fighting a war on terror. We’re not fighting a war against Islamic radicals. We’re fighting a war against common criminals. These are kind of like, these are the international equivalent of guys who hold up a grocery store or rob a bank. And of course when people do that there are laws and we should have the police go after them.”

So two categories. On the one hand a war in which imperial America is fighting against anti-colonial resisters — that would be a very difficult one for Obama to justify. Obama justifies it by saying, “Okay it’s not that kind of a war. Basically there are international outlaws that are bombing and killing American citizens, they’re violating human rights if you will, and we’re sending cops to get them.” And that is very much the public rhetoric of the Obama administration in replacing the Bush rhetoric on the War on Terror.

So, yes, I think it is a counterargument. I recognize its weight. But I don’t think it overturns the theory. In fact, it’s interesting that Obama has made some important rhetorical maneuvers to allow him to do stuff like that, which take it out of the context of war and make it essentially a police action.

TheDC: Under your anti-colonialist narrative, you write that Obama supports so much spending by the U.S. government in order to burden the United States financially with the goal of hampering American actions abroad and forcing the rich into shouldering an increasing burden of America’s tax bill. But isn’t Obama just supporting policies like the stimulus that Larry Summers and other liberals support and believe, however misguidedly, will ultimately lift America out of its current financial downturn?

DD: I do think there are arguments that go back to the 1930s about how Keynesian stimulus can help produce a recovery. But my point is that Obama’s spending is by no means confined to the $800 billion stimulus or even the bailout but rather massive increases in spending in a lot of other areas – education, health care.

So when you look at the, you know, the $13 trillion debt, and you begin to compute the interest portion of that debt and you look at level of that debt held by the Chinese and the leverage that gives the Chinese over America’s economy. When you see economists say things like, “Well, they can’t ask for the debt because we can’t pay, hahaha,” then you realize that this is a country that has been top dog since World War II, now beginning to sound like a loser.

NEXT: D’Souza talks about his friendship with debating partner Christopher Hitchens
TheDC: But the difference, as I gather from what you wrote in the book, is that Obama supposedly thinks this is a good thing while his advisors believe these polices will end up helping America get out of the precarious economic position we are in.

DD: I don’t think I ever say that he thinks it’s a good thing.

TheDC: Well you do write that he’s in the Oval Office “cheering them on and grinning in triumph.”

DD: Right, he’s cheering these things on, but why? For two reasons. One is I think an anti-colonialist would take special relish in the fact that you’re able to spend like a drunken sailor and stick the rich guys with the tab. It’s kind of like going to a restaurant, eating for free, looking at your enemy across the table and sending him the bill. That is a gleeful moment.

And second, I do think that it does tame American arrogance. I mean, this is something that others have written about including [Brad] DeLong [and Stephen S. Cohen] in the book, “The End of Influence,” which I cite at the end of the chapter. So it is true that a country that loses its economic might is going to be less powerful around the world. So what I’m saying is Obama might think that, hey, that is actually, you might say, a desirable outcome. It’s going to tame American arrogance. But that doesn’t mean he seeks the outcome in that it is going to tame American arrogance. But that doesn’t mean he seeks the outcome. There is a difference in saying, “This outcome is occurring and I can see the benefit of it,” and saying, “I’m trying to make America economically weaker.”

TheDC: Let’s move away from your book for a few final questions. Your debating partner Christopher Hitchens is obviously now suffering from a terrible illness. Have you spoken with him recently?

DD: We’ve spoken, leave emails, and I would say he’s a dear friend of mine. And not only have we done multiple debates but we’re very collegial. We’ll often have drinks or dinner before or after our debates. I’ve known Christopher Hitchens for 25 years. My first debate with him was at Georgetown in the late 1980s, so we have a lot in common that goes beyond our philosophical or theological differences. We both are interested in literature and politics and history. Of course, my heritage is from India and his is from Great Britain — his ancestors weren’t very nice to mine and this is why I’m sometimes not very nice to him when we do our debates. But, no, I’m genuinely fond of him and really hoping that he is able to beat this. And I’ve told him that if he gets back on the stage — we’re scheduled to do a debate in February — that he shouldn’t expect any mercy.

NEXT: D’Souza comments on the brouhaha surrounding Newt Gingrich’s comments about his book
The DC: What do you think about the hostile reaction surrounding the comments Newt Gingrich made pushing your anti-colonial thesis of Obama?

DD: Well, the Gingrich comment was, to me, very gratifying because what he said was that this was a really insightful look at Obama that brings a fresh perspective that he hadn’t seen, a uniquely fresh perspective. And that’s really what I’m trying to contribute.

I’m not saying the other theories about Obama are wrong. I’m simply saying they’re inadequate. I mean, does anybody think that the prevailing theories — A) Obama is a Muslim, B) Obama is not really an American or C) Obama is a socialist — I mean, these are the prevailing theories and they clearly have serious flaws. Now, they’re not flat out wrong, in the sense, that if you take the socialist theory, Obama’s father was in fact an African socialist, but he fitted socialism into a larger framework of anti-colonialism. So I’m saying the anti-colonial idea is a really helpful way to round out the picture on Obama.

TheDC: Before this book came out, your previous two books were religious in nature. Do you expect to write more on religious issues in the coming years, especially now that you’re president of a Christian college, or are you going to focus more on political books like this one?

DD: For the last several years, my goal has been to keep one foot in the, you might say, religious philosophical debate and one foot in the secular cultural and political debate. I do want to point out that none of my books are religious in a sense that they rely on revelation or sacred scripture or the Bible. They address topics of religious significance like, “Is there a God? Is there life after death?” But they address them in a completely secular and rational way.

So in other words, my book which is called, “Life After Death: The Evidence,” is an attempt to discover if there is life after death by looking at near death experiences, looking at the latest findings in modern physics and brain science. In no way is it an effort to say something like, “What does the Bible say about the afterlife?” It is rather an argument on the basis of reason alone. So, yeah, I’m now interested in writing a book on, “Does the presence and magnitude of suffering in the world undermine the argument for the existence of God?” Again, it’s a secular inquiry. It has a long philosophical and historical pedigree and tradition behind it.

But I’m also actively writing in the world of politics as well. I’m giving some thought to what I should write after my book on Obama.


This interview has been edited for clarity and readability.