If they lost him …
Reality has finally bitten David Horowitz as he announced that he is no longer a believer in the “neoconservative democratization project.” Or rather, that he never really was one. He certainly suppressed his scepticism quite well, as Lawrence Auster aptly put it. Horowitz, however, stopped short of saying how he was always at war with Eastasia.
Cynicism and joking aside, this is a welcome turn of events in several aspects. First, it might finally insert into the mainstream the notion of the existence of differences between cultures, peoples, and civilizations, differences that sometimes make them incompatible with one another. And that some are even patently malevolent and hostile to others.
Second, it will begin to dispel the delusion dominating American policy—making circles that the world can be shaped according to the American model and that this, instead of old-fashioned self-interest, should be the driving force of U.S. foreign policy. There is a quote from Stanley Kubrick’s “Full Metal Jacket” that perfectly captures such a mentality: .”..inside every gook there is an American trying to get out.” Kubrick did not prophecize, it is a malaise that has been in existence for quite some time now, one that predates the rise of neoconservatism. [LA replies: The “gooks” quote from a notorious America-despiser is a cheap shot that mars an otherwise worthwhile article. The Americans promoting democracy in the Islamic world do not see Muslims as “gooks” or anything like that.]
Third and perhaps most important, no longer will it be possible to force upon people the false choice between neoconservatism and transnational progressivism, two seemingly different roads that both lead to perdition. Nor will it be possible for those ideologies to maintain their current perceived strangleholds on anti-jihadism and anti-imperialism respectively which has permitted them to smear and defame those who oppose them from both left and right with near impunity. Common people will finally get a realistic, fact-based explanations for many of the things going on in the world, not oversimplified cliches and heated, emotional rhetoric full of gratuitous ideological labeling.
As you read this, you probably think I am being overly optimistic, that I am making too much from a statement of one man, and you may well be right. But it would not be the first time an individual statement swayed, if not public opinion, then certainly public debate. Remember Walter Cronkite’s editorial on Vietnam? If neoconservatism has lost Horowitz, it is likely to lose the entire American right. Hopefully, Horowitz will not stop at this one statement and will in coming days further elaborate on the moral and intellectual bankruptcy of neoconservatism as well as its separation from the real world, as well as introduce viable, reality-based ideas on how to confront the dangers our world is facing.