Horowitz - The Black Book of the American Left Volume 2: Progressives

2013 by David Horowitz

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First American edition published in 2013 by Second Thoughts Books.

Manufactured in the United States and printed on acid-free paper. The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48 1992 (R 1997) (Permanence of Paper).

Book design and production by Catherine Campaigne; copy-edited by David Landau; research provided by Mike Bauer.

FIRST AMERICAN EDITION

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Horowitz, David, 1939

The black book of the American left : the collected conservative writings of David Horowitz / by David Horowitz.

volumes cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-886442-95-5 (hardback)

1. Social movementsUnited StatesHistory. 2. RadicalismUnited States. 3. Anti-AmericanismUnited States. 4. Horowitz, David, 1939 Political and social views. I. Title.

HX86.H788 2013

335.00973 2013000496

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

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Contents

INTRODUCTION TO VOLUME II

Progressives

A ll the volumes in this series of my collected writings called The Black Book of the American Left are about individuals who call themselves progressives. This volume focuses on the nature of the progressive outlook and its realworld consequences.

The progressive label is one that its adherents wear proudly. It appeals to their amour propre, identifying them as people who are forward-looking, therefore enlightened and modern. Progressive fits their sense of themselves as apostles of hope and change, in fact as a species of social redeemers. Consequently, the basic premise of their politics is that forward is necessarily a good direction, and that a fundamental transformation of social relationships is both possible and desirable. As an expression of this self-image, progressives commonly refer to themselves as being on the side of history, as though history was steadily moving towards beneficent ends. Inevitably, the term progressive has the added advantage of putting the best face on their collective achievements, although these have frequently entailed consequences that were destructive on an epic scale. It also leads them to make alliances both formal and informal with the enemies of the relatively enlightened democracies in which they actually live.

In addition to examining an outlook that leads to such regrettable results, the essays in this volume pay particular attention to the connections between progressive movements of the present and their antecedents in the past. Bearing these continuities in mind and retaining a sense of past results are essential to understanding the real-world consequences of the progressive faith.

No greater obstacle to clarity about current progressive movements exists than the habit of detaching them from their ideological antecedents, specifically those in the Communist past. A common attitude regards Communist ideas as pass, and any attempt to link them to present company as politically dangerous. But this lazy thinking (to put the best face on it) makes any understanding of contemporary progressives impossible. When they are in their own company, progressives themselves are not shy about their debts to Marx and his disciples. When they are in position to determine academic curricula, they give the Marxist tradition pride of place. Their politics are directly and self-consciously inspired by the intellectual traditionMarx, Hegel, Gramscithat produced the totalitarian results. Many of todays progressives, and certainly their teachers, were actively involved in supporting and defending the 20th Centurys totalitarian experiments and in opposing the anti-Communist cold warriors who helped to bring them to an end.

Progressives have an understandable interest in separating themselves from the destructive consequences of their past behaviors. But conservatives should not contribute to their efforts by referring to them as liberals, or regarding their own differences as merely policy matters that can be compromised and adjusted, rather than as the result of a philosophical divide that leads to consequences both predictable and tragic.

Part I: The Mind of the Left

The essays in this volume begin with an introductory section, The Mind of the Left, which re-establishes the missing connections between current progressive movements and their Communist predecessors. Through profiles of some of its prominent intellectual figures, this introduction traces the continuities between the Communist left of the Stalin era, the New Left that followed, and the contemporary left that emerged following the fall of the Communist empire.

These intellectual portraits are set in the context of the events of September 11, 2001, when Islamic jihadists launched a surprise attack on American soil, killing three thousand civilians. Progressives responded to this heinous assault by organizing protests directed not at the perpetrators but at their own country. The protesters opposed an American military response, and justified the enemys aggression by attributing it to root causes that could be traced to Americas imperial ambitions. Not all progressives joined the initial opposition, which was organized by a radical element. But a year later, as hundreds of thousands of activists poured into the streets to protest Americas war against Islamists in Iraq, the opposition spread through the entire progressive spectrum to include the leadership of the Democratic Party.

If an inability to grasp the lefts historical antecedents is one obstacle to understanding its behavior, a close second is the failure to appreciate the connection between its utopian and nihilist agendas. The belief in a perfect future inevitably inspires a passionate (and otherwise inexplicable) hatred towards the imperfect present. The first agenda of social redeemers is to dismantle the existing social order, which means their intellectual and political energies are focused on the work of destruction. Several passages in The Mind of the Left explore this theme.

Antagonism towards the existing social order inevitably leads to uncertain loyalties towards the body politic, and then to uncertain loyalties towards ones country at war. This is a subject that makes everyone uncomfortable, but cannot be simply ignored because of that. Along with the opening section, several essays deal with the issue of patriotism, including The Future of the Left, Spies Like Us, Spy Stories, The Lawyer Who Came in From the Cold, and The Left on Trial. Another, The Trouble with Treason, recounts my differences on this subject with conservative author Ann Coulter in her book of that name.

Between Past and Present

The essays in Parts II & III are arranged in chronological order and begin with the text of a presentation I made to an Accuracy in Academia conference in 1987, titled Activists Then and Now. It was written just after Peter Collier and I held our Second Thoughts Conference for former radicals. In this text I describe the continuities between the New Left and the then current left, stressing what I thought conservatives should understand about the protesters and probably did not. It is a theme that runs through the course of the present volume.