Dinesh D'Souza entertained a largely conservative crowd Tuesday night at the Sanford Institute for Public Policy while giving his speech "Red America, Blue America and the Culture War."
D'Souza, who served from 1987 to 1988 as a senior policy analyst in the White House under former President Ronald Reagan, discussed issues ranging from outsourcing to the Crusades. He cited capitalism, foreign policy and rivaling moral codes as new sources of tension between liberals and conservatives.
While an undergraduate at Dartmouth University, D'Souza helped to found the Dartmouth Review, which became a leading voice in the rebirth of conservative politics on college campuses in the 1980s.
"The enemies of capitalism grant it works. In fact, one of their objections is that it works too well," he said. "The objection to capitalism is not in the name of efficiency. It is in the name of morality."
He added that outsourcing has proved to be the most successful anti-poverty program because it fosters productivity and replaces foreign aid and loans.
"Capitalism has been the greatest engine for long-term social equality," he said.
D'Souza traced the declining correlation between economics and voting behavior. Wealthy Americans no longer invariably vote Republican, just as the lower classes do not necessarily support the Democratic party, he said.
"Economics is no longer the basis upon which American politics turns," he noted.
In addition, D'Souza discussed foreign policy in the Middle East, Islamic fundamentalism and torture.
"Foreign policy is fundamentally about morality, but it's also about self-interest," he said. "Foreign policy is about making things better, not making things perfect."
He called the war in Iraq "a noble experiment" its attempt to establish democracy. Democracy has never existed in the Arab world, D'Souza said.
"There is a need to go back a little bit to the drawing board on the war against terrorism.... The loss has to be measured against what you're trying to do-the goal," he added.
From the perspective of Middle Eastern countries, America is viewed as a morally depraved society, he said. "It's one thing for America to be a sick, demented, depraved society. It's another thing to ram that down our throats threatening traditional Islam itself," D'Souza explained, speaking from the viewpoint of Islamic fundamentalists.
D'Souza noted that the argument about declining morals in America is a result of a massive shift in the source of morality.
Conservatives have an external moral code, referring to what is right and wrong regardless of personal opinion, D'Souza said. Liberals, on the other hand, look to their inner hearts for morality, he added.
"Liberalism believes in an external moral code when it comes to liberal values," D'Souza noted.
For example, liberals think that laws against discrimination should exist because discrimination is wrong, not because people necessarily oppose it, he said.
Although D'Souza was catering to a conservative crowd, the question and answer period exposed several opposing viewpoints in the audience.
"I don't necessarily agree with everything he says," freshman Rachel Wolf said.
She attended the program because she remembered D'Souza being a dynamic speaker when he spoke at her high school last year.
The speech was sponsored by the Duke College Republicans, Duke Political Union, Duke Conservative Union, Diya and the Hart Leadership Program.
D'Souza is currently the Robert and Karen Rishwain Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.
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