Horowitz at Heritage Foundation: “The communist party IS the Democrat Party!”
On Tuesday, former Marxist-turned-conservative icon David Horowitz spoke
at the Heritage Foundation to mark the launch of what will be a ten-volume
compendium of his writings on leftism, The Black Book
of the American Left. In his wide-ranging speech, Horowitz
described his transition from left to right, and discussed the shortcomings of
a conservative movement unwilling to deal with the ugly realities of what the
American left represents.
Horowitz began by
distinguishing the David Horowitz Freedom Center from other think tanks,
instead characterizing it as a “battle tank.” He labeled himself “monomaniacal”
in his focus on the left and its relation to communism. “There are hedgehogs
and foxes. The foxes know many things. And the hedgehogs know one thing. I am a
hedgehog,” he joked.
“My parents called
themselves progressives,” Horowitz explained with regard to his communist
parents. “The agenda was a Soviet America...the slogan of the communist party
in those days was peace, jobs, democracy. Sound familiar?”
That was the theme
of Horowitz’s speech as he continued: how the communists had taken over the
Democratic Party. “The communist party is the Democratic Party,” Horowitz
stated. “In The Great Gatsby, [F. Scott] Fitzgerald describes the rich
as people who break things and leave them for others to clean up. That is a
wonderful description of the left.” Horowitz, who began as a radical Marxist,
said that the modern left had learned stealth from their failures in the 1960s:
“The left have learned from the 1960s...we in the 1960s didn't want to pretend
to be Jeffersonian democrats...That's why we failed in the 1960s. That's why
they've succeeded now.”
But the right,
Horowitz pointed out, has failed to acknowledge that reality. On Obamacare, for
example, Horowitz railed against the language used by the left: “single-payer.”
Instead, he said, “it is communism,” pointing out that it was state ownership
of the means of production. He added, “The left hate the Constitution because
Madison designed it to thwart them.”
Horowitz then
analyzed what he claimed were the four features of the leftist mentality.
First, he said, the left and right are on opposite sides of the “fundamental
divide of the modern age”: the left believes that human beings are inherently
good and infinitely malleable, and so can be shaped by proper state guidance.
Conservatives, by contrast, believe that human beings are responsible for
social problems, and concentrating power in the hands of humans is dangerous.
Second, Horowitz
said, the left are characterized by the belief that “history is a forward
march.” Obama, Horowitz claimed, is a deep believer in this concept, all the
way down to his carpet in the Oval Office, which assures those who enter that
the moral arc of the universe bends toward justice. “Leftism is a
crypto-religion,” he explained. “They see themselves as a savior. People who
believe that redemption will take place in this life and I will be a part of
it, that's Hitler. That's Mao...That's the American left.”
Third, Horowitz
said that the left was characterized by “alienation from this country... What
weakens America is actually good.” Horowitz cited the Obama administration’s
eager withdrawal from Iraq as evidence of that proposition: “Obama betrayed
every American who gave their life for the people of Iraq.” He also slammed the
Obama administration with regard to Benghazi: “Benghazi is the most shameful
act in the history of the American presidency.”
Finally, said
Horowitz, the American left “lie. And it's not like politicians spinning...you
cannot be a leftist without lying about the most basic strategic facts about
who you are.”
Horowitz summed up
pessimistically: “We are within reach of a totalitarian state in this
country…These are very very dark days for this country.” But, Horowitz held out
hope: “there's been an earthquake on the conservative side since I switched
sides...the tea party is the earthquake. The best thing that Republicans can do
is stop the fratricide.”
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