“Every man on that transport died! Harry wasn’t there to save them, because you weren’t there to save Harry,” says Clarence, the angel in the Frank Capra Christmas classic “It’s a Wonderful Life.” His message, to protagonist George Bailey, is that one man’s life touches so many others that it’s hard to imagine how different the world would be if that one man never existed.

In a trailer for his new film, “America,” Dinesh D’Souza pays a similar mind game. The trailer, unveiled at CPAC yesterday, shows a montage of events and people which have made America the exceptional nation it has for 240 years. Then the film flashes back to a reenactment of a Revolutionary War battle, except in this version a round from a British musket finds its target. General George Washington, struck square in the chest, falls from his horse.

Can you imagine a world without America? The man currently residing in the White House once scoffed at the notion of American exceptionalism. Watch and decide for yourself.