Horowitz realizes his god is a savage god

On Fox News last Thursday evening David Horowitz passionately denounced the U.S. government for sending a half dozen uniformed federal agents in the middle of the night to bring in for “questioning” the man who made the “Innocence of Muslims” video. Instead of committing that disgusting act of tyranny, he argues, the Obama administration should have stoutly defended the man’s right to make that movie.

I agree with everything Horowitz said. But I cannot refrain from pointing out that until March 2011, Horowitz was equally passionate in his support for the Democracy Project and in his devotion to his hero George W. Bush, who said that the desire for freedom resides in every human heart and that all we had to do was give Muslims democracy and they would become like us. So passionate was Horowitz on this issue that he suppressed in 2005 a debate which his lieutenant Jamie Glazov had proposed between Glazov and myself about the Democracy Project.* Yet what I was saying then, and would have said in such a debate, was identical to what Horowitz is saying now—that if Muslim societies are given freedom they will use that freedom to choose tyrannical and jihadist governments. This is all discussed in detail in the March 2011 entry, “Horowitz turns against the Democracy Project.”

Earlier in his career Horowitz was a leading radical leftist—until he realized, to his shock, that radical leftism must result in inhuman tyranny. Then he became a leading “conservative” who promoted universal democracy and particularly Muslim democracy—until he realized, to his shock, that Muslim democracy must result in inhuman tyranny. Then in January 2009 Horowitz rejoiced at Obama’s ascension to the White House, writing on the day of Obama’s inauguration:

What matters today is that many Americans 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. What it means is that the race card has been played out and America can once again see itself—and be seen—for what it is: a land of incomparable opportunity, incomparable tolerance, and justice for all. Conservative values—individual responsibility, equal opportunity, racial and ethnic pluralism, and family—are now symbolically embedded in the American White House. As a result, a great dimension of American power has been restored. Will these values be supported, strengthened, put into practice? It is up to us to see that they are.

Then within a few months Horowitz realized that Obama was not leading a conservative resurrection of the American dream but was a hard leftist, and he became an Obama opponent.

How many false gods can a man worship in his life and then keep realizing that they are monsters? How many times can a man be one hundred percent wrong on issues of the greatest importance and still be taken seriously as a political intellectual? Horowitz has written about eight books in which he details his journey from radical leftism to “conservatism” and takes responsibility for his former embrace of leftist idols. When will he write a book in which he takes responsibility for his embrace of the Democracy Project and for his suppression of the truth in defense of that idol?

That said, Horowitz is far better than the unregenerate neoconservatives whom I described last night as “stone-cold ideologues without an ounce of intellectual conscience.”

_____

* And Horowitz’s spiking of that debate took place during the period when I was a regular contributor at FrontPage Magazine (see FP’s list of my articles published there), a year before Horowitz secretly blackballed me for my “racist” positions—positions which, in fact, I had been completely open with him about in our private correspondence going back years.

- end of initial entry -

Ed H. writes:

I could never understand why Horowitz expelled you from FrontPage Magazine over the likes of David Mills. Mills was a TV writer, he was the man behind that dreary mindless utterly predictable garbage that fills up the space between the commercial breaks on prime time TV. Mills was a grown man who publicly said he loved TV and that his happiest moments were spent in front of the boob tube. More to the point is the fact that Mills was offended by Auster and this seemed to fill David Horowitz with some kind of intolerable angst. The normal response would have been a hearty cathartic laugh as Life delivered one of those rare moments of release and understanding.

The left in America wasn’t represented by Lenin or Che. It really had the fat, featureless, buffoonish face of a TV-watching non-entity. But that’s not what Horowitz saw. In Horowitz’s mind it was a titanic struggle between David Mills and Lawrence Auster which was well nigh unendurable and which Horowitz could only resolve by betraying you. The only way to explain this is that despite all the mea culpas and public repudiations of his former radical leftism, Horowitz has many liberal household gods still arranged above his hearth. The titular deities called Mediocrity and Equality being, of course, set to the front and center.

LA to Ed H.:

Your comments have been so interesting and creative lately.

In this one, I was initially going to take out your remarks about Mills being a TV writer and fan, because they seemed irrelevant to your point. But in your second paragraph you made the TV aspect of Mills an integral part of the picture you were painting. It all worked.

September 25

Michael D. writes:

After learning about all the leading “conservatives” who used to be liberals, it reminded me of the current crop: Horowitz, Medved, Savage, Kristol, Krauthammer, and the rest. They call themselves conservatives but to me are smug liberals pushing another idea. I think many of these are Israel firsters who are only conservative in so far as our policy impacts Israeli funding. When the conservatives in Chicago have a discussion about Ron Paul the first thing they mention is “what about Israel”, even though these conservatives were born on the north side of the city. The fact that Rahm Emanual served in the IDF and not the America military is not a subject to be discussed.

LA replies:

If Kristol and Krauthammer were “Israel firsters,” would they have pushed Muslim democracy as their top priority, even though it has unleashed and empowered Muslim jihadism and put Israel in worse jeopardy?

If you know my site at all, you know that I’m not interested in the kind of crude anti-Israelism you’re pushing. So please don’t waste my time and yours.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at September 23, 2012 08:07 PM | Send