Ayers: America is bad; D’Souza: No, America is good

On Wednesday’s broadcast of “The Kelly File” on the Fox News Channel, host Megyn Kelly continued her series of interviews with former Weather Underground ringleader Bill Ayers.

The latest installment featured Kelly moderating a debate between Ayers and Dinesh D’Souza, the filmmaker behind the film “America,” over the United States’ role in the world and whether or not that role is for good or for bad. …

DebateAboutAmericaAyers: “I’m not proud to be an American and I don’t buy the American exceptionalism at all,” Ayers said. “And the reason I’m not proud to be an American is because the damage that we do around the world is so serious and so ongoing so if you look anywhere in the world — look all through Latin America, ordinary people on the street admire Cuba for one reason, they stood up to America, they stood up to kind of imperial advances.” …

D’Souza responded to Ayers argument by pointing how the United States has been reluctant to flex its muscle as a world superpower for its own gain, unlike he said other nations might, which lends itself to the notion that America is exceptional.

“Exceptionalism doesn’t mean a different moral standard apply applies. By and large foreigners who come to America, going all the ways way back to de Tocqueville – I’ve grown up in a different culture. I know America is exceptional because I see things in America that you wouldn’t see anywhere else in the world,” D’Souza said. “Right now if you took the power that America has as the world’s sole superpower and you gave it to Russia, or you gave it to China, they would use it far more expansively, more brutally and more to gain themselves. America is benign in the way it exercises its power. The American idea of wealth creation is being embraced in India, in China, all over the world. It’s lifting hundreds of millions of people out of poverty. So ironically this American formula that we are moving away from at home under Obama is being enthusiastically embraced all around the world.”

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