The Roots of Obama’s Rage

D'Souza has always been a breath of fresh air in today's mangled political discourse. Amid the pseudo-intellectual and outright fanciful commentaries from both the right and left, D'Souza injects an intellectual rigor, in-depth research and a cogent writing style in promoting his conservative perspective. As a centrist, D'Souza has been a important source of factual information and intelligent reasoning for the conservative side. And indeed in "Roots" he came through once again.

However in the chapter on economic policy D’Souza descends to over-simplification, calculated misrepresentation or naïveté. This chapter would have you believe that TARP, FinReg and stimulus spending were all engineered by Obama as part of a grand scheme to weaken post-colonial America. But the design of these policy measures were not conceived in the White House, but by a diverse group: Chris Dodd, Barney Frank, Paul Volcker, Tim Geitner and Henry Paulson (from an earlier administration). And I don't think you could argue that all these individuals share this anti-colonial viewpoint.

To demonstrate the `obvious' failure of stimulus he posits: Party A (taxpayer) gives money to Party B (Government). Party B now spends more, but Party A now spends less. Conclusion: No increase in economic activity--stimulus fails. Trouble is Party A is not a taxpayer, it is the Chinese. The Chinese give the US government money (i.e. buys our bonds) which is spent; current period economic activity/GDP must increase. Of course this has other rather negative consequences. But it is either a naïve or a purposely misleading to explain stimulus this way, one worthy of Glenn Beck.

Despite my disappointment in D'Souza in this section, I think this is an important book and would recommend it. There is enough substantive information here to overcome my misgivings.

I have always found Obama a bit of a mystery. How did he rise so quickly and with so little experience? No one including Mr. D'Souza, interpets history without some bias or filter so it will be interesting to see if D'Souza's hypothesis is able to predict future Obama behavior. The narrator was easy to listen to and I found the book had some interesting insights.

This book gives the listener a more international view of what "chip on Obama's shoulder" really looks like. Mr. Obama is an actual African-American. He is not an American Negro. He is unlike the offspring of Negro slavery. He is anti-colonial, and he considers America and its close allies to be colonial exploiters of the Third World, the home of his African ancestors. He wants to bring America down. The voters better wake up before the 2012 Election and make this guy a one-term president before he transforms America into a place where its citizens have to eat cold rice out of a small bowl with their fingers, while waiting for the occasional bucket of raw fish heads from our new Chinese masters.

Look up Andrew Ferguson review in The Weekly Standard in which he goes over the details D'Souza brings up and refutes them with transcripts, actual research into the original material (i.e., Obama's autobiographical works), and direct analysis of the author's conclusions. I'm embarrassed to say I bought into the notions of this book before I considered how terribly put together it might have been. Wish I could dump it for my credit back.

After reading this book I see Obama in a whole new light. I now understand the roots of Obama's thinking. Now his agenda makes perfect sense to me and is even more disturbing. Every time I hear Obama speak now, I know that I am really hearing his father who was a sad, bitter and wrong thinking man who held extreme resentments against western culture.

This information constitutes an important tale that must be told, something the mainstream media refuses to aknowlege.

Probably not, just because there are so many other good books to get to, but it was a lot of information I did not know about the history of Africa and British Colonialism. Was hard to turn off because it was so fascinating.

All of it was pretty new information to me. I cannot recall through out all of high school and college learning about British Colonialism and it's impact much beyond reading Heart of Darkness. So, in addition to D'Souza's perspective on how it has influenced Obama (based on Obama's biography), it was like one giant history lesson on how the rest of the world views Western Civilization and why. It was intriguing to say the least.

It took me a little while to get used to his style of speaking, but I enjoyed it once I did. I would listen to more book narrated by this reader. He really handled some difficult African names very well.

If I could have, yes.

Important, reveling, Interesting

Depends on the topic

Well read but not performed

Hardly the topic to make you either laugh or cry, but it does elicit an emotional response of incredulity or despair depending on your point of view.

Interesting facts, based on his own writings, about what motivates the president, which is important to know to understand the direction he is leading the country, and as he has been reelected where the USA society could ultimately end up.

D'Souza takes a step by step approach in explaining to the listener the background for seemingly illogical decisions made by and subsequently implemented by our President. After listening to this book, television and newspaper pundits as well as people on the street who routinely say, "for the life of me I can't understand why he did this or that" will now have a clear understanding of the Obama descisions.
Unfortunately, the listener will also gain knowledge about how truly destructive these decisions will be for the United States of America. Obama does not believe in American exceptionalism and has said so in speeches quoted in this book. His actions to counter our exceptionalism are outlined in detail by D'Souza. The author is also able to explain the background behind our President's active attempts to reduce our role as the world's policeman and those policies aimed at reducing our standing in the world.
In summary, very insightful.

I bought this audiobook after I saw Dinesh D'Souza on Glenn Beck. It is amazing how the pieces of the puzzle come together with the explanations presented in the book. I can understand that some will try to dissuade you to listen or read this book if they have an agenda to follow. The facts are the facts and Dinesh present the facts with a wise interpretation. Highly recommended.