[media-credit name=’LUKAS KEAPPROTH/Herald photo’ align=’alignnone’ width=’648′][/media-credit]Best-selling author and public policy analyst Dinesh D’Souza said Thursday to a crowd at the University of Wisconsin that current economic turmoil is indicative of, and even caused by, greater political and social issues.

“Capitalism is based on the principle of accountability,” D’Souza said. “I think one of the problems in our society is that partly through government and partly because of other reasons, we’ve lost that sense of accountability. Essentially, we can do things and we don’t face the consequences. The bailout is a perfect example.”

D’Souza addressed the moral anxiety he says both the left and the right have concerning capitalism.

A common argument against capitalism is that in recent decades, the gap between the lower and upper class has greatly increased. D’Souza said capitalism, in reality, is a positive force in society.

While the economic gap may have increased, everyone has improved economically, D’Souza said. Other traditional disparities such as life expectancy have also improved, and the gap between the upper and lower class in this area is very small.

D’Souza argues the value in capitalism lies in the fact that it takes advantage of an innately human quality: greed.

“You want to create systems, economic systems, social systems, that take human nature as it as and try to gain a better society,” he said.” Capitalism civilizes greed in much the same way that marriage civilizes lust. The greed is not in capitalism, the greed is in human nature and capitalism is saying, ‘OK how can we take human nature how it is and create a more productive society?'”

D’Souza addressed the liberal atmosphere of UW with a challenge for young conservatives on campus.

“The job of the conservative is to create an atmosphere here at UW-Madison in which the liberal sheep are not able to graze unmolested,” D’Souza said. “Go out and molest the sheep.”

The speech was hosted by Collegians for a Constructive Tomorrow, a student group that supports social and environmental issues from a free market standpoint. While the group is nonpartisan, their views align with those of the conservative party, making D’Souza an obvious speaker to sponsor.

CFACT president and UW senior James Hill was very positive about the speech. He said he identified most with D’Souza’s views on the shifting virtues of the American public.

“It’s true that scarcity makes people more humble,” Hill said. “It bothers me today that parents give their kids everything they ask for. It was really exciting to know that there are people who believe in getting what you work for, working for what you get.”

UW alumnus David Welther said D’Souza’s speech was engaging.

“Dinesh was very funny,” Welther said. “He presented his arguments in a very enjoyable way so maybe for some people that came here with a little bit of aggression towards his stance, maybe he won a few people over because he was so funny.”

At one point, a student asked about disparities between two of D’Souza’s books. The overwhelmingly conservative crowd made a bit of a mockery of the question as did D’Souza himself. D’Souza made some jokes about Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama and the student took his seat.

This was D’Souza’s second speech at UW in as many years — he spoke on campus in January of 2007.