I welcome comments on the Black Book and will reply to as many as I am able. I especially welcome comments from the left which so far has pretended that this critique does not exist. This is a throwback to the Stalinist era, and I hope that there are some leftists with the integrity to attempt to meet an argument rather than stamping it out. I hope all commenters will treat the intellectual issues involved and not resort to name-calling and anti-intellectual rants.
David Horowitz
Dear Roy,
Thank you. And I hope that you find employment soon. Unfortunately the market is a ruthless punisher of companies that don’t observe its imperatives. Profit is just a measure of efficiency — lower costs, greater returns. You can’t blame corporations for trying to survive and thrive in a competitive environment. On the other hand if we didn’t have a government of ideological socialists systematically depressing investment opportunities, the trillion plus dollars investors are holding could be deployed to create the employment opportunities you are looking for.
Dear Mr. Horowitz,
I’d like to thank you for the great service you have provided the country by assembling these volumes on the dubious left. Now, as a conservative I’ve going through a real dilemma for so time now and I know that you are the one who can best address my concern. Namely, my family members and I have been struggling in recent years in maintaining employment, despite having college degrees and previous work experience. It seems that many of the companies we have worked for have found it more profitable to employ workers in other countries then to support us hard working American patriots. As a conservative I see these crony corporate capitalists as anti-American and, indeed, as progressives themselves in so far as they feel no obligation to supporting Americans and helping us hard working, law abiding conservatives like myself and my family, maintain a living in our communities. They, in fact, are destroying our conservative way of life by divesting from our families and communities. It seems that, despite calling themselves American business, they are solely interested in their own profit and will make such profit at the expense of preserving our American values of community, family, and Christianity. What is a conservative to do about this though? I’m at a loss because one the hand, I support any American’s right to pursue income in the free market, yet on the other, some are doing so in a way that is undermining our American way of life and making it so our American communities and families will have no future. In my conservatism the conservation of American values is crucial. It seems like the drive of some of these corporations, though, is not to conserve but rather to destroy and divest from our country. I bet they’d even employ our enemies if they thought they’d make more money that way!! Anyway, I hate to ramble, but I just need some real conservative advise as to how I can address and think about this problem.
Thank you and God bless you,
Roy
Dear Mr. Horowitz,
I was born in 1973, and raised by Canadian hippies. My parents had the Romantic dreams, the hair and the bus. I was brought up with their intense leftist/progressive philosophical biases permeating the food we ate, the music I heard-everything. I didn’t even ever question what was “cool” – it was my parents -me!
I began to come into my own in the 80s, perhaps as a result of the icons of that decade, perhaps because of something inside me that was individualistic, but still, I was leftist trained.
As I grew older I struggled in all of my endeavours, including friends, romance, school, life direction etc. until I was 35 or so. This was because of the contradiction I lived under; my personal values vs. my ‘trained’ ideology. I was mixed up and unhappy, and a failure. I thought I was mental, or that there was some evil force that was keeping me down. Probably it was ‘the man’, that corporate evil bogey.
But I knew really it was me, and so I changed myself.
Now that I have recognized the natural conservatism in me, I can make sense of how most events in my past went awry. I have grown settled, and have become more and more successful with my work, in the career I want, with a woman who is wonderful.
The only problem left (ha ha) is I now have no relationship with my family anymore. When we speak, it always ends in conflict. My parents are now divorced, but both still carry the Leftist torch ( perhaps somewhat dimmed)and they are cynical/angry people. My sister is an angry, militant leftist lesbian garden worker, my brother is fine, but focused on his family.
I feel often the desire to fight with them about how wrong they were/are, and how their leftism is the ball and chain that drags them down. I want them to interface with the knowledge and the Truth of conservate thinkers, such as yourself. I want them to take ownership for the hurt they have done. Me and our family. This never occurs though. They always posture that they are righteous, and that I am a disgrace to them.
What should I do?
Ps.
Your books have helped me understand my parents, especially ‘Destructive Generation’. Thank you profoundly Mr. Horowitz.
I would avoid political discussions with family. I would refuse to have them and just relate to them as family. You’re not going to change them. It’s sad, but you just have to accept that fact, and love them.
Mr Horowitz,
Whilst I do agree that leftism is destroying America, to assume that economic freedom and free speech will solve our problems is incorrect. As a conservative you have admitted this, regarding human nature as inherently flawed. While this is true there is in fact an act that can cure mankind of it’s selfish nature regenerating it’s mind it’s nature. This in turn will bring about a stable and prosperous community that will provide sufficient charity to each other at an individual level, making socialism redundant – it’s promised utopia already brought about through individualistic means.
The act, ‘looking at yourself’ is a stripped down, modern and completely secular version of the teachings provided by the prophets and gurus through out the ages, teachings that have unfortunately been distorted and misinterpreted. For example the Christian/Judaic ‘I AM’ as well as the True/Inner self of the eastern religions have lost their true common esoteric meaning.
The act of looking at yourself is done as follows:
1. Close your eyes. Notice the symphony of sensations and thoughts about sensations rising and falling within you.
2. Notice that you can move your attention to one or another sensation or though at will.
3. Now use that same beam of attention to look for the feel of what you would call ‘me’ – a faint sensation that is what you feel like to yourself.
That’s it, you’ve done all that needs to be done to bring you home to the beauty and satisfaction that are to be found in a human life lived without fear. The first subtle effects of what you have just done will soon begin to appear. Pay attention.
A video guide to this act: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SbIJRtbxUZM
Anyone who does this act will be brought to sanity and stop pushing an agenda fueled by fear and its related emotions. Thank you for reading.
This is the right course, but it is a difficult one and if history is any judge too difficult for the vast majority of our species to follow it.
I welcome comments on the Black Book and will reply to as many as I am able. I especially welcome comments from the left which so far has pretended that this critique does not exist. This is a throwback to the Stalinist era, and I hope that there are some leftists with the integrity to attempt to meet an argument rather than stamping it out. I hope all commenters will treat the intellectual issues involved and not resort to name-calling and anti-intellectual rants.
David Horowitz
Mr Horowitz,
I have a deep respect for the extraordinary intellectual contribution you have made to the Right. I only recently discovered you and have been listening to several of your speeches online ever since. After I graduated college in 2003 as a ‘default liberal’, I have moved ever more right-ward and I share your trepidation about the future of the United States and the western world more generally if the intellectual confusion that is Leftist ideology gains full dominance in America. As a result, I have been thinking of ways to fight the Left and am convinced that the battle has to be strategic, long term and multi-pronged. After surveying the conservative thinkers I have been influenced by thus far, you stand out as one who not only perceives the nature of the threat, but also the need to actively fight this scourge with intense vigor. Not that of emotional outbursts, but rather of a broad and well thought out, calculated design.
It seems that most of the country sees the negative results of the Leftist influence as a series of unrelated events, the response usually being a shrug and resignation to ‘what is the world coming to?’ To those of us who follow national politics, we can weave the disparate elements together in a manner that may elude others, who, if they were made aware of the destructive character and depth of the threat, would support our objectives. In modern American history, the country has been rallied to great feats because of physical dangers to its survival which were vivid, easily definable and cast as an epic battle between ‘good and evil’. In our age, the major threat is ideological, by an enemy who instinctively understands the utility of subterfuge and shrewd obfuscation of its ultimate goals. That the threat comes from within our own natural citizenry has given the proponents of these ideas an almost infinite assumption of goodwill from their fellow Americans. As a further asset, the growth and acceptance of these ideas has been incremental in nature, lulling the nation into adopting what amounts to revolutionary concepts dressed in the garb of the highest aspirations and a relentless forward march of ‘progress’.
Our ideological ‘Pearl Harbor’ may very well have been the resignation of Brendan Eich as political views have now entered the realm of being firing offences. Unfortunately, not all observers, even those on our side, have assigned to this turning point the importance it deserves. While I agree with your observation in an interview that ‘one of the occupational hazards of being a Conservative is that you get very depressed because unlike those on the Left, you see the world as it really is’, I am reassured by the fact that (1) Republicans and Conservatives still get elected despite their opponents’ dominance of all major societal institutions (2) Much of the American public remains unaware of the ultimately dangerous events that are happening all around them on a daily basis (3) That the fight against the Left has been sporadic and only sustained in the political realm and even then mainly around the time of elections (4) Conservatives outnumber Liberals by a margin of almost 2 to 1 in most major polls and (5) The Left is engaged in a fight against objective reality. Were a more comprehensive and better organized approach adopted, I believe that we would see more success than we have been experiencing thus far.
As an insight into my own evolution, I have been influenced by thinkers including Dennis Prager, Thomas Sowell and Milton Friedman along with several others. I am convinced that any successful struggle against the Left must include an effective strategy addressing electoral politics, the media, academia, the legal and scientific community, government bureaucracies and the broader American culture more generally. The lack of systematic Conservative resistance, or any countervailing resistance of the Right in many of these categories is striking and I have never fully understood why this is the case.
I would very much like to get more specific views from you on how to go about resisting and ultimately defeating the Left and have already given the matter serious thought. I will stop here and would simply request that you point me in a direction of your writings or any other resources where I may continue this inquiry as I have briefly outlined above. Thank you.
Congratulations Publius on surviving the “modern” education. The depiction of your intellectual journey reminds me of Lao Tzu’s axiom…..”Learn to unlearn your learning.”
If I could recommend one literary work to reinforce David’s ideas it would be Dostoevsky’s..” Demons”- also sometimes translated as “The Possessed”. Here he recognizes the malignancy of Russian Nihilism at its earliest stage before it goes on to become Soviet Communism.
Dear Publius,
Thank you for your thoughtful and insightful letter. Yes this is going to be a long struggle and yes conservatives have great assets in the struggle (though I wish more had clear-headed views like yours), and yes it will take place on my fronts and requires many strategies. I have written quite a lot addressed to your concerns and on July 28 Regnery will publish Take No Prisoners which is a kind of summary statement of how I believe conservatives can effectively fight the left which has now swallowed the Democratic Party. We are putting up a website at http://www.takenoprisonerscampaigns.org in the next few days which should have some helpful materials. We will also be launching a campaign at the Truth Revolt site to get conservatives to stop calling leftists, socialists, communists and aspiring totalitarians “liberals,” which merely provides them with camouflage and serves their malevolent cause.
Mr. Horowitz,
Thank you so much for specifically addressing the many labels that have been attached to the Left. This has been on my mind. Even after reading many of your books (whose insights have affected my life and views profoundly) and many other excellent books on the subject of how Marxism, the Radicals, are influencing the downfall of the American way of life, I remain very confused about how to refer to the Radicals, using only “one” label. Yes, we must make it clear in our labeling so that more people can begin to understand what is happening.
It is said that many are now accustomed to only understanding “slogans, jargon, etc”, we must take back the language of clarity to reach people. All of the books I’ve read continue to swing back and forth between multiple labels, the public will never understand specifically the correct “name” of what we are up against. And it has been much on my mind that Republicans specifically need to be more accurately vocal about the labels to educate the public. Also, are we fighting against an end game of National Socialism, European Socialism, Facism? The “third way”?
Thank you for your heroism, the labor and striving to educate us with your valuable books, and your biography Radical Son, which is a treasure to read a second time.
Thank you.
Mr. Horowitz,
A brief PS this morning as I’ve just finished reading the Open Letter to John Kerry. Re your new site, “take no prisoners” campaign and clarification of labels and taking back the clarity of language to truthfully educate the public. Perhaps there would be some merit to taking back the label for Republicans/Conservative’s use: “Un-American” and applying it to those in the administration that have never been loyal to the U.S.
It has been exhausting to listen to Harry Reid repeated claims that those supporting values on the right are Un-American. This should be our slogan, the Republican’s slogan to use.
David,
I would like to recommend to you an essay written in the 1970’s by a Russian mathematician and scholar by the name of Igor Shafarevich. Shafarevich was a friend and collaborator of the late, great Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. In fact, Shafarevich was in Solzhenitsyn’s apartment when the KGB forcibly kidnapped and exiled Solzhenitsyn out of the USSR in 1974. They were working on a collection of religious essays called-“From Under the Rubble”.
One of the essays(by Shafarevich) is titled “Socialism, Then and Now”.
The author traces the ancient roots of what we now call socialism back through the centuries. He takes his study all the way back to the Assyrians of the Fertile Crescent.
He proposed that the “socialist impulse” was really a deep seated rebellion against God that has been with humanity from the beginning.
To have your essay stand out as particularly profound in a collection of philosophical/religious articles compiled by Solzhenitsyn is an accomplishment in itself.
But Shafarevich’s viewpoint is the most archetypal and penetrating analysis of the deepest roots of the socialist/communist/progressive mindset that I have encountered. It’s a shame that it remains obscure to American traditionalists. If you get a chance to read it, I think you will recognize your idea of progressivism as a secular religion dressed up in more ancient clothes.
Thank you. I’ve been aware of Shafarevich’s essay for a long time, but never found time to look it up.