David Horowitz praises white America—for turning itself into nonwhite America

FrontPage Magazine has inaugurated a regular feature, “From the Pen of David Horowitz,” edited by David Swindle, the purpose of which is to memorialize Horowitz’s wise sayings about politics.

Yesterday’s entry is a passage from Horowitz’s 1999 book, Hating Whitey, in which Horowitz declares that white Christian America’s greatest and most noble achievement has been to open itself to nonwhites and non-Christians:

The creation of America by Protestant Christians within the framework of the British Empire [sic] was historically essential to the development of institutions that today afford greater privileges and protections to all minorities than any society extant. White European-American culture is a culture that the citizens of this nation can take enormous pride in, precisely because its principles, revolutionary in their conception and unique in their provenance, provide for the inclusion of cultures that are non-white and non-Christian (and which are not so tolerant in their lands of origin). That is why America’s democratic and pluralistic framework remains an inspiring beacon to people of all colors all over the world, from Tiananmen Square to Haiti and Havana, who have not yet won their freedom, but who aspire to do so. This was once the common self-understanding of all Americans and is still the understanding of those who have been able to resist the discredited and truly oppressive world-view of the “progressive” left.

As those familiar with my autobiography Radical Son know, I once occupied the other side of the political divide. My views on race, however, have remained entirely consistent with my previous commitments and beliefs. I opposed racial preferences in the 1960s and I oppose them now. Then I believed that only government neutrality towards racial groups was compatible with the survival of a multi-ethnic society that is also democratic. I still believe that today.

Where my views have changed is in the appreciation I now have for America’s constitutional framework and the commitment of the American people to those ideals. America’s unique political culture was indeed created by white European males, primarily English and Christian. It should be obvious to anyone with even a modest historical understanding that these antecedents are not incidental to the fact that America and England are the nations that led the world in abolishing slavery, and in establishing the principles of ethnic and racial inclusion. Or that we are a nation besieged by peoples “of color” trying to immigrate to our shores to take advantage of the unparalleled opportunities and rights our society offers them.

While Horowitz states over and over the idea of openness toward nonwhites, let’s look at the passage where he states it most fully and definitively:

White European-American culture is a culture that the citizens of this nation can take enormous pride in, precisely because its principles, revolutionary in their conception and unique in their provenance, provide for the inclusion of cultures that are non-white and non-Christian (and which are not so tolerant in their lands of origin).

So white European-American culture is good, and the main reason it is good is that it includes non-white and non-Christian cultures. The greatest thing about the white European-American culture, for which whites should feel the most pride, is that it allows itself to be progressively changed into a melange of nonwhite, non-European, non-Christian cultures and peoples. What is best about white America is that it turns itself into its own opposite.

Now think about the fact that Horowitz’s vision—assertively pro-America, with the defining thing about America being the fact that it includes ever greater numbers of non-white and non-Western peoples and their cultures—presents itself as the “conservative” vision today, as distinct from the leftist, anti-American vision which Horowitz opposes.

Think of the choice between left and “right” that Horowitz offers us.

On one side, the anti-American left, which openly declares its intention to end white Christian America, by changing America into a nonwhite, non-Christian country.

On the other side, the pro-American “right,” which openly declares its intention to end white Christian America, by changing America into a nonwhite, non-Christian country.

- end of initial entry -

LA writes:

I sent a version of the above comment to FrontPage Magazine and it’s awaiting moderation. It will be interesting to see if they post it.

Jeff W. writes:

They posted your comment.

I posted this comment below it, which is awaiting moderator approval:

“Steve Sailer has said that the future U.S. will look like a cross between Brazil and the Ottoman Empire. That’s good news and bad news. Bad news: Sharia Law. Good news: Salsa music!”

LA replies:

The comments on Horowitz’s article can be seen here.

Kristor writes:

It is true that the cosmopolitanism of the West is one of our strengths, as compared with other cultures. But as with anything, we must be moderate about it, or it will kill us, and thus itself. If we are to be cosmopolitan, our first loyalty must be to our own patrimony; one must be peculiarly oneself in order to recognize and interact with others. We can’t become utterly un-Western and remain Western cosmopolitans.

As with any aspect of life, the problem lies first in recognizing that there have to be limits to cosmopolitanism, and second in determining what those limits should be. The problem we now face in the West is that the culture seems to have decided that there are no limits anywhere, that everything without exception is up for grabs, totally plastic, a mere matter of convention, and thus of reinvention. I cannot but think that this complete unmooring from reality is due originally to the nominalist rejection of transcendental truth. From that first step, the rejection of religion and then of all authority—even, finally, the authority of the physical world, of biology and economics—follow inescapably.

Ironically, skepticism of the sort that flowered in nominalism,—in Descartes, Hume, Nietzsche, and Russell—is, along with cosmopolitanism, one of the key distinguishing features of Western culture, and one of the great advantages we enjoy over our competitors. And, as with cosmopolitanism, skepticism unbounded leads to disaster.

Freedom unlimited is just chaos, and death; is the death of freedom. The Limit is the sine qua non of being, of potential, and of value.

LA replies:

Read Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice, which shows what happens to a man when he loses the sense of limits, or the energy and will to maintain limits: self-dissolution.

Paul Gottfried writes:

For this stroke of brilliance, I forgive all your diatribes against me. You have fully captured the character of neocon patriotism in this commentary.

Mark A. writes:

Horowitz truly supports the transvaluation of traditional American values. And this man claims that he has moved beyond his radical past?

C. writes:

Neither you nor Horowitz address (here) a unique fact of the formation of the American system of government. The American Revolution is the only government-changing revolution in the history of the world that was led by the upper class. The colonial system put an artificial limit on the political heights to which the meritocracy could rise. And they were taxed without the kind of representation that their peers—English gentlemen—had. But I’ll grant you: it’s possible that this is irrelevant to Auster’s and Horowitz’s analysis of the genesis of American policy. I think it’s relevant, but maybe not.

As we have come to expect, you get into trouble by inartfully re-stating someone else’s words for your benefit. What if you had understood Horowitz to have said something like this: Among the features of human, personal and cultural rights, norms and benefits available to the mostly European and Christian people who created the American polity, was the notion that those rights, norms and benefits were available to other people, too, not just to themselves. I suppose that’s a fair reading of what you quote from Horowitz. (Maybe not. Maybe I’m too generous to Horowitz. I don’t know him. And you tell me he’s a hugely wrong, so why would I invest any time learning his clap-trap?) If Horowitz meant something like what I said, does it change your analysis, which you believe leads inexorably to the proof that Horowitz’s “right,” along with all parts of the “left,” necessarily requires the replacement of European-ness and Christian-ness in their roles in American society?

LA replies:

You write:

Among the features of human, personal and cultural rights, norms and benefits available to the mostly European and Christian people who created the American polity, was the notion that those rights, norms and benefits were available to other people, too, not just to themselves. I suppose that’s a fair reading of what you quote from Horowitz…. If Horowitz meant something like what I said, does it change your analysis, which you believe leads inexerably to the proof that Horowitz’s “right,” along with all parts of the “left,” necessarily requires the replacement of European-ness and Christian-ness in their roles in American society?

You’ve just agreed with my point. Horowitz very plainly said it in the passage I quote. The way that white Christian America fulflls itself is by including (via immigration) all the nonwhite , non Christian peoples in the world. He’s saying that the greatest thing about white Christian America is that it puts itself out of existence.

Now I know that you have nothing against that outcome. You’re a secular liberal with no loyalty to the white race and its nations. That’s not the issue here. The issue is what Horowitz said and whether I have read him correctly. I have, and so have you, though you’re reluctant to admit it.

Richard Hoste writes:

The difference between neo-cons and the left seems to be over whether the white man should have a nice eulogy.

Donna E. writes:

I am concerned that most of the people I know that profess to be Christians don’t seem concerned with the huge migration of (all) non-white people groups. Open borders are the downfall of any society. I am teaching spanish speaking people to (attempt) to speak English. The will never think in English so they will more than likely keep their own traditions and never assimilate into our way of life (which is dying by the hour). Our “leadership” in the FEd and St governments refuse to keep English as the language of the land so we are daily losing our culture and most don’t have a clue that it is happening or else they don’t seem to care.

LA writes:

The issue is much bigger than language. Consider all the America haters who do speak English. The Hispanic activists speak English. Most of the Muslim activists and jihadists in America speak English. The people spreading sharia speak English. You MUST go to a deeper level of this issue.

E. writes:

Excellent.

Horowitz is a disaster for our side. We should send him back to his leftist origins.

Terry Morris writes:

Jack Hampton writes in reply to your comment at FP:

Jack Hampton permalink

Why do I smell a real racist.

ROTFL!!

LA replies:

All I did was spell out what Horowitz was saying. I don’t think I expressed an opinion about it. But when it comes to immigraton, simply uttering, without approval, the factual statement, “Our policies are turning us into a nonwhite country,” is a racist act.

Terry Morris replies:

Yeah, but see, ol’ Jacko has a highly developed, keen sense of smell about these things. As he explained to Roebuck, he developed it during his years as a law enforcement officer arresting White Supremacists. Hint, hint.

Richard H. writes:

You are exactly, precisely correct. Horowitz never really became a conservative, even though he likes to call himself that. he’s never even gotten to the center, much less the right. That fact was attested in his reaction to you two years ago when he hung you out to dry in a cowardly fashion. He also proves it by publishing Dershowitz, a radical left-winger if there ever was one.

Much of the country’s populace thinks they are conservative. When you get the to details (where the Devil truly resides in this) you find the country is overwhelmingly leftist. Public education has done its dastardly work very well.

LA replies:

“Much of the country’s populace thinks they are conservative. When you get the to details (where the Devil truly resides in this) you find the country is overwhelmingly leftist.”

Yes, It’s in the interests of both sides to believe that the so-called conservatives are conservative. It’s in the interest of the left, because that keeps the leftist troops in a torment of fear and loathing of the evil right. It’s in the interests of the conservatives, because without the belief that they are conservative, what would they be?

Thus contemporary U.S. politics rests upon the shared illusion that non-conservatives are conservatives. In reality, they are liberals who have some conservative positions.

But who am I to talk? Mencius Moldbug says (or at least he used to say) that I’m really a leftist.

October 15

LA to Paul Gottfried:

Thank you, that’s very kind.

Paul Gottfried replies:

I never view allies with whom I feud in the same way as I do my enemies. In any case you may have been the only person on the planet who noticed that Horowitz was pushing as an expression of patriotism what is an essentially leftist and even revolutionary view of America the Universal.

LA replies:

Thank you, but that’s been my analysis of neoconservatism going back, as I remember, to the early ’90s, and constantly repeated in my writings—that neoconservatism is an ideology which seems conservative but really is liberal. For example, neoconservatism loudly promotes and champions America, so it seems patriotic and conservative. But the “America” it champions is not a concrete country but a universalist idea of equality. Insofar as what neoconservatism champions is a universalist idea of equality, it is a form of liberalism, not conservatism.

However, it’s also the case that even today, few people understand this, even when it’s directly explained to them. They can’t take in the idea that neoconservatism is a form of liberalism. But unless one understands it, contemporary American politics cannot be understood, it’s like a shadow play on the walls of Plato’s cave.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at October 14, 2009 10:43 AM | Send