May 11, 2005
David Horowitz: The Paul Revere of Fear?
David Horowitz's evolution from extreme left to extreme right is worth pondering as much for what it tells us about him as about the rest of the country.
He is a perfect symbol of the extremes to which Americans on the margins swing in times of war. While most remain in the middle, some swing left and some swing right.
In the 60s he swung left, aligning himself with the SDS and others of that ilk. Now in the war on terrorism he has swung right, aligning himself with the Old Right (i.e., the people who in the 50s believed that America faced an enemy within that was every bit as dangerous as the enemy without).
How one makes the transition from one extreme to the other is puzzling to me even after reading several of his books. Is there something about his personality that inclines him to reach for extremes? I don't know. Though we have corresponded numerous times I cannot even make an educated guess.
Oddly, while it is difficult to determine why an individual would swing from extreme to extreme, it is easier to determine why a country as a whole would. By now it is a commonplace that millions of Americans in times of danger and insecurity are susceptible to appeals based on the fear of enemies from within. From our earliest history this has been a pattern. When war with France loomed in the late 1790s High Federalists demanded a crackdown on sedition. In speeches on the floor of Congress they demanded that suspect aliens be rounded up and deported.
Horowitz's demands therefore sound a familiar and unfortunate ring. We've heard it before. And always in retrospect these appeals to our fears result in ill-considered public measures.
Why Horowitz wants to be this generation's Paul Revere of fear is beyond me.
He is a perfect symbol of the extremes to which Americans on the margins swing in times of war. While most remain in the middle, some swing left and some swing right.
In the 60s he swung left, aligning himself with the SDS and others of that ilk. Now in the war on terrorism he has swung right, aligning himself with the Old Right (i.e., the people who in the 50s believed that America faced an enemy within that was every bit as dangerous as the enemy without).
How one makes the transition from one extreme to the other is puzzling to me even after reading several of his books. Is there something about his personality that inclines him to reach for extremes? I don't know. Though we have corresponded numerous times I cannot even make an educated guess.
Oddly, while it is difficult to determine why an individual would swing from extreme to extreme, it is easier to determine why a country as a whole would. By now it is a commonplace that millions of Americans in times of danger and insecurity are susceptible to appeals based on the fear of enemies from within. From our earliest history this has been a pattern. When war with France loomed in the late 1790s High Federalists demanded a crackdown on sedition. In speeches on the floor of Congress they demanded that suspect aliens be rounded up and deported.
Horowitz's demands therefore sound a familiar and unfortunate ring. We've heard it before. And always in retrospect these appeals to our fears result in ill-considered public measures.
Why Horowitz wants to be this generation's Paul Revere of fear is beyond me.