Horowitz’s total sell-out to the principle of multiculturalism

It’s even worse than I thought. In the David Horowitz article that I’ve discussed here and here, there is this amazing passage:

But today celebrating their new president are millions of Americans who never would have dreamed of celebrating their president before. Millions of Americans—visible in all their racial and ethnic variety at the Lincoln Memorial on Sunday—have begun to feel a patriotic stirring because they see in this First Family a reflection of themselves.

Why are these millions celebrating Obama and his family? Because he’s nonwhite, and they see him as a reflection of their nonwhite selves. This of course is an axiom of multiculturalism, that nonwhites must have a national culture, a national history, cultural role models, political leaders, and teachers that they can see as a reflections of themselves, i.e., they must have a culture and leaders that are nonwhite. Since nonwhites cannot relate to a historically white culture, the country must re-write its historic identity to adjust to nonwhiteness. Since they cannot feel patriotic toward a country and a government led by whites, the country must have nonwhite leaders who are celebrated because they are nonwhite, just as Horowitz is doing. Two paragraphs later he says, “Conservative values—individual responsibility, equal opportunity, racial and ethnic pluralism, and family—are now symbolically embedded in the American White House.” But Horowitz has just admitted that ethnic and racial pluralism leads to the race-conscious requirement that nonwhites have nonwhite leaders who “reflect” them, which also means that they must have a nonwhite culture that reflects them. Racial pluralism thus leads to the race-conscious, multicultural reconstruction of America. And Horowitz calls this leftist reconstruction of our country a conservative value.

For almost 20 years, I have been arguing that a significant increase in racial diversity in a formerly white society leads inevitably to multiculturalism. The entire mainstream conservative movement including Horowitz has always rejected this argument. They said that multiculturalism was just the work of leftists who wanted to harm America. They said the idea that nonwhites need to see themselves “reflected” in the culture was just multicultural propaganda. They said that America was a universal idea that transcended race. But now Horowitz not only agrees that nonwhites genuinely need to see themselves reflected by nonwhiteness, he announces that the reflection of nonwhiteness in the person of Obama is nothing less than the salvation of America:

What matters today is that many Americans [those “tens of millions” who “see in this First Family a reflection of themselves”] have begun to join their country’s cause, and conservatives should celebrate that fact and encourage it. What matters now is that the American dream with its enormous power to inspire at home and abroad is back in business.

During the Bush period, Horowitz repeatedly sold out his conservative principles, such as they were, because the fascist-style “patriotism” massed around the adored person of George W. Bush was more important to him than conservative principles, though of course Horowitz called this Bush-worship “conservatism.” And now, at the moment that Bush’s successor enters office, Horowitz has found a new “conservative patriotism” to hang his hat on: the “patriotism” of nonwhite masses adoring their nonwhite leader because he reflects their nonwhiteness.

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Bruce B. writes:

“They said that multiculturalism was just the work of leftists who wanted to harm America.”

Indeed they’re right. But you’ve just proven that they’re leftists. Great entry!

LA writes:

Thank you.

By the way, Horowitz’s 1,900 word article was quoted in its entirety at Powerline (an unprecedentedly long piece for that site, which posts all its text on the main page), as though it were holy writ, with the sycophantic introduction: “David Horowitz may not have seen it all, but he has seen more than just about all of us.” Imagine. Holding up this man who worshipped at Bush’s feet for eight years; this man who threw aside the conservative principles he had once stood for in order to keep backing Bush’s moves to the left, because, he said, moving to the left was the only way to keep the Republican party strong; this man who excitedly insisted between 2003 and 2007 (a period longer than America’s involvement in World War II) that Bush’s Iraq policy was succeeding even as it was heading deeper and deeper into catastrophe; this man who made a frenzied cause out of Bush’s utopian Democracy Project (the same Democracy Project which Powerline itself definitively refuted the day before it posted Horowitz’s article); this man who on the day Bush left office leapt from Bush worship to Obama worship—as a model of political wisdom! Apart from Horowitz’s genuinely profound and sensitively written insights into the psychology of the radical left, what stands out most about him in recent years is not how much he has seen, but how much he has gotten wrong—and with what passion he has gotten it wrong.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at January 21, 2009 09:40 PM | Send