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David Horowitz understands the left very well — 33 Comments

  1. What David Horowitz says is not a mystery to many of us everyday folks, but oddly enough it seems to be a mystery to many influential Republicans. It is precisely why many of us wanted a fighter, a general, and not a tinkerer to head up the ticket.

  2. It’s a good piece but nothing we haven’t all heard before: “We’ve got to learn to use the Dems own dirty tactics against them!”.

    As Ace and Neo and all of us have all said, that can’t work for our side because the Left controls the media and ” It’s the Media, stupid”.

    I like the idea ( as seen on Instapundit) of a few conservative billionaires buying up some women’s magazines and/or MSM newspapers

  3. he is the defector of today as were others i mentioned

    will he be taken out by a drone attack?

    [there is a reason i said it that way… ]

  4. carl in atlanta: “that can’t work for our side”

    Maybe, maybe not, but from my observations as a (former student) activist, the GOP and Right can’t be said to have failed at activism because they have hardly tried to play the activist game. And any activism they have tried, they have failed to sustain – that goes especially for the Tea Party, which looked like a legitimate activist campaign until they stopped as soon as they won a few elections. From experience, I know much of it comes down to temperament. There are many more naturally movement-oriented activists on the Left than the Right.

    I’ll say the obstacles to Right-side activism are insurmountable when the GOP and Tea Party actually make an honest – dedicated, creative, and intelligent – effort to master the obstacles. They haven’t yet.

  5. A Winning Strategy for Republicans
    1. Put the aggressors on the defensive.

    —-

    To this day, no Republican speaks like that (aggressively) about Democrats, and certainly no Republican who is a national figure and party leader

    This puts the GOP in the category — USELESS. If Rove, Ponnuru, Law, Rubio, Jindal, CPAC, National Review, the Establishment Republicans insist we co-opt Democratic caring, they are being defensive and not putting the aggressors on the defensive. There is little hope they will, can, change. The day the Republican establishment will make an issue of Detroit will be the day I consider taking them seriously. Until that happens, may the GOP die a quick death so that we might get on with the strategy.

  6. by the way, i know horowitz..

    some of his earliest start on the conversion road was as an anti feminist!!! where do you think i got a whole lot of the facts and such for feminist Crayola? Horowitz, and a few others, including myself were a big part of the mens movement!!!

    The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America’ written by David Horowitz is a interesting read

    “Underneath the ordinary surfaces of their lives, my parents and their friends thought of themselves as secret agents. The mission they had undertaken, and about which they could not speak freely except with each other, was not just an idea to them. It was more important to their sense of themselves than anything else they did. Nor were its tasks of a kind they could attend or ignore, depending on their moods. They were more like the obligations of a religious faith. Except that their faith was secular, and the millennium they awaited was being instituted, at that moment, in the very country that had become America’s enemy. It was this fact that made their ordinary lives precarious and their secrecy necessary. If they lived under a cloud of suspicion, it was the result of more than just their political passions. The dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima had created a terror in the minds of ordinary people. Newspapers reported on American spy rings working to steal atomic secrets for the Soviet state. When people read these stories, they inevitably thought of progressives like us. And so did we ourselves. Even if we never encountered a Soviet agent or engaged in a single illegal act, each of us knew that our commitment to socialism implied the obligation to commit treason, too

    i have been in the trenches of the same fight for as long as he was. (search for my moniker for old articles in the movement)

    The Horowitz family broke with the American Communist Party after the publication of Nikita Khrushchev’s Secret Speech in 1956. According to Horowitz,

    “The publication of the Khrushchev Report was probably the greatest blow struck against the Soviet Empire during the Cold War. When my parents and their friends opened the morning Times and read its text, their world collapsed — and along with it their will to struggle. If the document was true, almost everything they had said and believed was false. Their secret mission had led them into waters so deep that its tide had overwhelmed them, taking with it the very meaning of their lives.”

    i stopped following Horowitz when he veered off into Islamic stuff… to avoid a cold when you have cancer isnt a better way

    by the way, there is also a Daniel Horowitz who is a historian who writes and follows feminist history and anticommunism too.

    Daniel Horowitz, “Rethinking Betty Friedan and The Feminine Mystique: Labor Union
    Radicalism and Feminism in Cold War America”
    American Quarterly 48.1 (1996) 1-42

    Daniel is not related to him

    Reforming Our Universities is horowitz book on the changing of universities to produce people who have different thoughts than the patriots…

    here is David referencing Daniel

    David Horowitz’s Archives: Betty Friedan’s Secret Communist Past
    by David Horowitz
    from his blog
    http://www.newsrealblog.com/2010/10/28/david-horowitz%E2%80%99s-archives-betty-friedans-secret-communist-past/2/

    This article first appeared in Salon on January 18, 1999.

    Recently Rigoberta Mench麒s autobiography was exposed as a complete hoax. Now it’s Betty Friedan’s turn to be revealed as a feminist fibber.

    (bet most of you dont know who he is referring to)

    Professor Horowitz documents that Friedan was from her college days, and until her mid-30s, a Stalinist Marxist, the political intimate of the leaders of America’s Cold War fifth column and for a time even the lover of a young Communist physicist working on atomic bomb projects in Berkeley’s radiation lab with J. Robert Oppenheimer. Her famous description of America’s suburban family household as “a comfortable concentration camp” in “The Feminine Mystique” therefore had more to do with her Marxist hatred for America than with any of her actual experience as a housewife or mother.

    so the same things i mention were well covered by David for years.

    ie. those who know how this works, say the same things, from the same knowledge base.

    Although Horowitz, the author of the new biography, is a sympathetic leftist, Friedan refused to cooperate with him once she realized he was going to tell the truth about her life as Betty (naomi) Goldstein.

    he knows of the highlander school, that history, and pete seeger
    Folk singer Pete Seeger, who has been a party puppet his entire life, is a celebrated entertainer and was honored recently at the Kennedy Center with a Freedom Medal by the president himself.

    he is, as i am, trying to get people to catch up

    after all they all forgot the things that got us to think the way we did… ergo my inclusion of a famous person the other day.

    new threads were started and as far as i know, no one looked it up… which is why i put long posts…

    So why the continuing lies? The reason is this: The truth is too embarrassing. Imagine what it would be like for Betty Friedan (the name actually is Friedman) to admit that as a Jew she opposed America’s entry into the war against Hitler because Stalin told her that it was just an inter-imperialist fracas? Imagine what it would be like for America’s premier feminist to acknowledge that well into her 30s she thought Stalin was the Father of the Peoples, and that the United States was an evil empire, and that her interest in women’s liberation was just a subtext of her real desire to create a Soviet America. No, those kinds of revelations don’t help a person who is concerned about her public image.

    If you believe that, there is a bridge I have to sell you. On the other hand, at least according to Friedan’s biographer, that’s exactly what Friedan has sold American feminists: “With ‘The Feminine Mystique,’ Friedan began a long tradition among American feminists of seeing compulsory domesticity as the main consequence of 1950s McCarthyism.” Well, perhaps it’s not American feminists Friedan has sold this bizarre version of reality to, so much as American Communists posing as feminists and unsuspecting young women whose only understanding of this past will come from their tenured leftist professors.

    which is why most dont know the details. they are not communists and dont read all that stuff, and are maybe fresh anti communists, and so havent read that stuff.

    but horowitz had, as did the other names i put forth to read, as myself also read that. its a whole world that the average person is unaware of…

    the same way that the average person is unaware of the world where guys trade baseball stats… they talk and recite tiny details of baseball games and the relationships between them till they sound like a convention of rain man people…

    in fact, if you are like me, a stranger in a strange land… you learn more about what people do than people learn!!!!! from trainspotters to copraphiliacs to the guy into suspension bondage at dawn on nj beaches and on and on and so on.

    to find one of those worlds and enter is strange.
    heck, its why the curio show of the freaky stuff is a hit on tv… people had no idea there were these death worshiping fun loving performing freaks obsessed with stuff that makes your skin crawl

    its the same with this kind of politics.
    which is why people like horowitz and so on are constantly trying to get people to read. there is way too much stuff for them to speak about, and the juciest stuff, if spoken, marginalizes your access to others. hence johah goldberg writing a very watered down book called liberal fascism… but most reading it thought it wasnt watered down…

    the idea is to keep the victims in ignorance as long as possible… because if you do, they will help yo udo that, they will not wake up. they will send those who try, away. they will avoid reading… they will not invest in themselves.

    after all, most people spend more time watching tv than working their own finances and lives… so is it any wonder this turns out this way?

  7. just to show:

    The Horowitz family broke with the American Communist Party after the publication of Nikita Khrushchev’s Secret Speech in 1956. According to Horowitz

    Gringo: Pete Seeger has repented.That it didn’t occur until decades after the 1956 Nikita Khrushchev speech is another matter

    After neo shows the wiki link that seeger like langston hughes and others, changed sides… but no one cares about those later years after they put their value into the socialist stuff… richard wright, langston huges, and many many more

    and in change conversations you brought up the death of Volkogonov, and koba the dread… referencing:

    Autopsy for an Empire: The Seven Leaders Who Built the Soviet Regime.

    but by far the longest post was
    Artfldgr Says:
    January 26th, 2010 at 1:15 pm

    its a post as to the history that communists, progressives, anti communists, feminist leaders, and so on all read and know… as horowitz shows, and so on

    too bad we all dont read the same books and get on the same page with the same knowing

    there i quoted khruschev
    Historians are dangerous and capable of turning everything upside down. They have to be watched.
    Nikita Khrushchev, First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, 1956[8]

    Maurice mentions horowitz in the same thread

    i wonder… if you expose people to the same literature and facts that turned others, would that help?

    of course!!! which is why i recommend the readings

    if your mind is your weapon

    leaving it unloaded of the strongest material is not what will achieve the desired end

    heck i remember them because in one of the threads Gofb compliments me highly

    Congratulations Artfldgr, that is the best and possibly most profound comment you’ve made in quite some time! I knew you could do it. Concise, relevant and very important.

    but that was in a thread with HUXLEY!!!

    and what i was saying was with schools, and like the 70% now getting core curriculum, even rickle said something

    If true, this is even worse than the health care takeover. By an order of magnitude.rickl

    yes it is…

    and it was way back
    Artfldgr Says:
    February 9th, 2010 at 3:36 pm

    where i detailed the historical games they played to game education…

    so we been dancing around the facts for a long time

    anyone actually know what was so bad about that secret speech that the people of the soviet union could not hear, but the west did?

    🙂

  8. anyone familiar with democide

    Democide is a term revived and redefined by the political scientist R. J. Rummel as “the murder of any person or people by a government, including genocide, politicide and mass murder.” Rummel created the term as an extended concept to include forms of government murder that are not covered by the term genocide, and it has become accepted among other scholars

    Democide is not necessarily the elimination of entire cultural groups but rather groups within the country that the government feels need to be eradicated for political reasons and due to claimed future threats.

    -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
    This also includes nonlethal acts that in the end eliminate or greatly hinder the group.

    -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

    In order to avoid confusion over which meaning is intended, Rummel created the term democide for the third meaning.

    The objectives of such a plan of democide include the disintegration of the political and social institutions of culture, language, national feelings, religion, and the economic existence of national groups; the destruction of the personal security, liberty, health, dignity; and even the lives of the individuals belonging to such groups

    now you all know whats being done to the main population of the US for over 50 years, and no one wishes to oppose it. in fact, we refuse to discuss it, and yet, you can find the definitions.

    demographic murder…

    what is it when you have law and agreements that allow race based votor cheating? you do not allow assimilation so that new comers destroy the old culture? how about abortion? death panels? affirmative action?

    horowitz work is about how they are using islam as part of the democide of western civ

    sad that the victims are too stupid to know they are victims
    and too distracted to care!!!!!!!!!!!!

    According to Rummel, “The more power a regime has, the more likely people will be killed. This is a major reason for promoting freedom.” Rummel concludes that concentrated political power is the most dangerous thing on earth.”

    Drones over U.S. get OK by Congress
    http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/feb/7/coming-to-a-sky-near-you/?page=all

    Confidential Justice Department Memo: Drone Strikes on American Citizens OK if…
    http://openchannel.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/02/04/16843014-exclusive-justice-department-memo-reveals-legal-case-for-drone-strikes-on-americans?lite

    removing one race from schools…
    hating one race under social justice
    hurting them in taxes
    removing programs where they can get taxes back
    redistributing their property
    favoring others in jobs over merit

    all of it is a form of democide..

    America’s Baby Bust
    The nation’s falling fertility rate is the root cause of many of our problems. And it’s only getting worse.
    http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323375204578270053387770718.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

    but i guess if we are having trouble with just getting the basics of global war games down… (after imagining that they stopped and we forgot)… how we going to stop the end result when there are articles now showing you cant stop it even if everyone woke up today and acted differently!!!!!!!!

  9. ya can read more at the university of hawaii
    anyone we know hang out there?

    http://www.hawaii.edu/
    http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/CHARNY.CHAP.HTM

    while a bit crazy in color and form… (i am guilty of that too)… it has a wealth of information and research and tables… and even research into why or what is helping prevent this from being general knowlege and so inform our choices

    ultimately, the US government commited democide against the american indians in that its way of preserving it, destroyed it. (now their idea of trying to get it back is destroying many too)

    How can we understand all this killing by communists? It is the marriage of an absolutist ideology with the absolute power. Communists believed that they knew the truth, absolutely. They believed that they knew through Marxism what would bring about the greatest human welfare and happiness. And they believed that power, the dictatorship of the proletariat, must be used to tear down the old feudal or capitalist order and rebuild society and culture to realize this utopia.

    -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

    Constructing this utopia was seen as though a war on poverty, exploitation, imperialism, and inequality. And for the greater good, as in a real war, people are killed. And thus this war for the communist utopia had its necessary enemy casualties, the clergy, bourgeoisie, capitalists, wreckers, counterrevolutionaries, rightists, tyrants, rich, landlords, and noncombatants that unfortunately got caught in the battle.

    -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

    But communists could not be wrong. After all, their knowledge was scientific, based on historical materialism, an understanding of the dialectical process in nature and human society, and a materialist (and thus realistic) view of nature. Marx has shown empirically where society has been and why, and he and his interpreters proved that it was destined for a communist end. No one could prevent this, but only stand in the way and delay it at the cost of more human misery. Those who disagreed with this world view and even with some of the proper interpretations of Marx and Lenin were, without a scintilla of doubt, wrong. After all, did not Marx or Lenin or Stalin or Mao say that. . . . In other words, communism was like a fanatical religion. It had its revealed text and chief interpreters. It had its priests and their ritualistic prose with all the answers. It had a heaven, and the proper behavior to reach it. It had its appeal to faith. And it had its crusade against nonbelievers.

    -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

    What made this secular religion so utterly lethal was its seizure of all the state’s instrument of force and coercion and their immediate use to destroy or control all independent sources of power, such as the church, the professions, private businesses, schools, and, of course, the family.

    does that last list seem familiar?
    isnt that what is happening now
    isnt it what horowitz, myself, and lots of others keep warning about?

    its funny… but if your on the titanic, wouldn’t you think to stop some person who is trying to ignore the sinking by doing other things?

    of course any such person would defend what they are doing because that is their interest. but good think they are their own, and not at the fore of the public, who would adopt the distraction if given a choice and the distraction as a way out…

    the moves of the political class today in the left are for absolute power. they are breaking the power of the church to resist them… the power of the people to keep their rights. and on and on…

    its soviet…

    but we will wait till we have no way of pulling back

    and the reason is simple..
    too simple to be believed

    but, until its done and there is no chance of going back, the people who would stop it, will not.

    for as long as its not over, they think that it will change and they will not ahve to focus on things like which lifeboat…

    its always this way, from bibilical noah, to the Riga ferry, to now…

    they will not prevent the end
    because they dont want to be negative
    and to not have that end, you have to be negative enough to think you will have that end and its possible
    and since they are so anti pessimist, and so on, they will not accept the negative as an end and so will not prevent that end…

    if ya want i can go back and reference the previous mentions of this political process tool… but it wont matter… as it cant happen here, and its not happening and if we keep talking about what we will do in the next game, we dont even think.. what if there is no game?

    just think on that for a bit

    everyone is so keen on what to do the next time around, no one really wants to ask what are they doing to make sure there IS a next round…

    with 70% of the school children designing communist flags and the demographics about to flip. you can kiss your chance to do anyth8ing away… as your army went the way of the dodo through lots of democidal methods

  10. Thanks, artfldgr, for the primer on democide. I knew that was what is happening, but didn’t know what to call it. We ignore Horowitz at our peril. Start with his *Radical Son* and go on from there. He’s a fine writer, and he has the experience and perspective that urgently needs wider dissemination.

  11. Jonathan Last spoke with Norah O’Donnell and Gayle King on CBS This Morning about his new book, What to Expect When No One’s Expecting. Watch the video below:
    http://www.weeklystandard.com/keyword/What-to-Expect-When-No-One%27s-Expecting

    Book Reveals Left’s Dream of Child-Free America

    The Weekly Standard’s Jonathan V. Last’s new book What to Expect When No One’s Expecting: America’s Coming Demographic Disaster discusses the overpopulation alarmists’ false predictions, their true intentions, and the consequences all of us will pay for the unnecessary panic.

    Last points out that when Ehrlich wrote his book in ’68, the U.S. government and various interest groups were quick to respond:

    Groups such as the Ford Foundation and the International Planned Parenthood Federation pushed to introduce birth control and abortion in developing countries. When Lyndon Johnson signed the Food for Peace Act he required USAID officers to “exert the maximum leverage and influence” on the countries we were helping so that they’d cut down on their baby-making.[i] In 1972, the Club of Rome published a tract, The Limits to Growth, echoing Ehrlich’s forecast. (Among other things, the Club of Rome predicted that the planet’s oil reserves would be exhausted by 1992.) The movement was in such a lather that in 1967, Disney produced a movie for the Population Council, titled Family Planning. The movie, translated into 24 different languages and featuring Donald Duck, lectured viewers that if families didn’t drastically cut back the number of kids they had, “the children will be sickly and unhappy, with little hope for the future.”[ii]

    http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/02/05/New-Book-A-Child-Free-America

  12. The Childless Revolution – Madelyn Cain

    Pride and Joy: The Lives and Passion of Women without Children – Terri Casey

    Childfree and Loving It! – Nicki Defago

    Families of Two: Interviews with Happily Married Couples Without Children by Choice – Laura Carroll

    Two Is Enough: A Couple’s Guide to Living Childless by Choice – Laura Scott

    So many feminists and progressives working so hard to stop babies… after all, women who are never born are the future they say… no?

    We joke about creating an old-age community, although there is a part of me that thinks: Let’s do it. Let’s plan it now. I’ll get some paper, and we’ll make a list…

    Because now, as I help my parents navigate the trials and indignities of old age, I can’t help thinking, who will do this for me? Even if I can pay for top-notch care, it won’t come from a place of love and understanding of who I am and what is important to me.

    When my father learned he had cancer, I became his primary caregiver. During those two years, I kept wondering, who will be there when my time comes? Whom can I count on to fill my pillboxes, get the stains out of my shirts, bring home my favorite ice cream? As he lost strength, I wondered, will there be somebody to cut up my steak?

    Will someone step in and confront the hearing aid company that bilked my 79-year-old mother out of hundreds of dollars? Or the optometrist who pretended not to notice that her new glasses did not fit? She was always a formidable woman, and as I watch her nerve drain away, I think, who will speak for me when I lose my nerve?

    Kelly Flynn
    Who will care for the childless elderly
    http://health.heraldtribune.com/2012/10/17/who-will-care-for-childless-elderly/

    (add women to the end of the title, since i doubt that people who kicked dad out will care about dad later)

    you can talk about all the things that have to be done, but if the people are not their to do them, they pre-empted your ideas by removing your helpers before you ever knew enough of what was going on to even have those ideas yet!!! now your free to have them, nothing you can do to reconstitute the over 50 million gone..

    funny.. but if they were around… the left would not have won the previous election.

    but wait..
    the biggest knee slapping joke is on all those women!!!

    who worked really really hard to end 1.2 billion years of unbroken life, by claiming an eternal hatred of their mates…

    in 10 years the fliip happens and then there is no reason to keep charades up… which is why all of it is coming down

    too bad i couldnt convince anyone 25 years ago
    as my tune has not changed one note since then

    but we have to be exterminated to prove we are exterminated so that we will act to prevent the extermination we wont believe unless it happens

    talk about a universal gaffaw of monumental proportions…

    the great goof has won again!!!!!!!!!!!

    heck. the greeks are embarrassed still about the trojan horse… wait till what rag tag descendents feel when they realize what their own did to them!!!!!!!!!!!

    but until it happens its not worth stopping
    too many other more important things.. eh?
    🙂

  13. artfldgr:

    It’s generational genocide and it is self-inflicted by women, and men, acting with a freewill in pursuit of material, physical, and ego gratification. Perhaps they don’t see a value in human life beyond their own short, mortal lives.

    That’s on the inferior end. On the superior end, the women, and men, do not lead by example. They favor construction and maintenance of dynasties. Although, it’s not clear if that is limited to their biological progeny. It seems that it would not. That it would be insufficient to satiate their massive egos.

    It’s amusing to consider that the greatest proponents of evolution limit their acceptance to an article of faith: origin, while rejecting its objective principles as inconvenient and “harshing their mellow.” Then again, those principles do not necessarily pertain to a species, but to individuals or cooperatives.

    So, what is their motivation? Is it simply survival of the fittest or delusional egos seeking validation through exploitation of inferior egos?

  14. re: delusional egos

    Perhaps they are superior. They are, after all, winning. As they do every hundred years or so. They manipulate and control with great accuracy and extraordinary precision.

    Men and women voluntarily exchange their liberty, and progeny, for submission with benefits. It doesn’t help that women have learned to be critical of their principal, distinguishing responsibility: caring for a human life from conception to birth, or that men have learned to betray their principal, distinguishing responsibility: caring for the mother of their children. Women are becoming their stereotype of men, and men are rising to meet their expectations.

  15. The difficulty for right of center activism and left of center activism is the motivation. The left believes their vision is the correct vision for all of us and is ready to do anything to make the rest of us conform to their vision and make our business their business. The right is willing to force the rest of us to conform to their vision but only in the short and for limited goals and generally wants to return to minding their own business.

  16. pacific_waters,

    Then conceding the nation in order “to return to minding their own business” is a deliberate choice by the right. How very French.

  17. Sorry, but not enlightening in any way that I can see.

    I’ve heard all those arguments before.

    The Republican Party was in on the subprime mortgage scam, too. The GOP is now caving in and supporting the second massive amnesty and open borders.

    I’ve heard the refrain about blacks and the misery Democrats cause among them repeatedly, too. Blacks in those inner cities continue to suffer decades later from torching their own neighborhoods to protest something or other. What kind of people destroy their own neighborhoods?

    The majority of women want free stuff. And, they want to be able to dispose of men at will and take away their kids. Distressing, but true.

    Neither party represents my or my family’s interests. A pox on both. Politics isn’t the answer to anything.

  18. I read his piece yesterday. Unbelievably, for the first time since 9-11, I now REALLY understand what’s been going on as my country’s discourse turns ever more Kafka-esque. I keep looking for people to finally wake up and engage in some logical, results-based examination of issues, when the majority of people are reacting to simplistic, emotional cues. No matter how intelligent and educated they are. It’s kinda…you know….terrifying.
    I thought we in America were different. I thought that the vast majority of us were immune to the kinds of atavistic, herd behavior that causes entire Middle Eastern societies to believe that Israelis are poisoning their drinking water with chemicals that cause impotence and miscarriage; that results in riots in Greece of people who demand money that literally does not exist.
    Horowitz has nailed it. He is a magnificent writer; his book Radical Son should be required reading in any modern American history class. I just don’t know if “we” can do what is needed; even if we did, I don’t know if we could possibly be heard past the roar of the media and popular culture.

  19. It doesn’t matter what the tactics or message conservatives use. Unless or until they retake the media, they will always lose the debate because the media sets the agenda and frames the debate. And what was painfully obvious during campaign 2012 was that the Democrat party *owns* the media today.

  20. Shouting Thomas: “Politics isn’t the answer to anything.”

    I empathize and share the sentiment, but to paraphrase Trotsky, You may not be interested in politics, but politics is interested in you … very interested.

  21. I’m as much impressed with Mr. Horowitz’s acumen as anyone else. Unfortunately he, IMO mischaracterizes why the Republican establishment does not respond with emotion laden counter attacks to the ‘progressive’ democrats emotion based attacks upon the right.

    He posits that Republicans are too polite. Certainly there is some truth to that for principled conservatives but politicians understand that politics is not softball but hardball.

    IMO, the greater reason is because the Republican establishment does not feel passionately about the issues Mr. Horowitz enunciates. The simple fact of the matter is that the Republican establishment does NOT support small government and/or social issues. They support the financial status quo and a more favorable business climate because that’s what their big donors value.

    The Republican establishment is beholden to its big donors. 66% of Romney’s financial contributions came from big donors. Undoubtedly that holds true for Congressional donors as well and politicians know which side of the bread gets the butter. That engenders the attitude that pragmatic considerations take priority over ideological concerns. Big donors on the right are not ideological “true believers” in small government or traditional social issues.

    On the other hand, as Horowitz points out, democrats are financially backed by ‘true believers’ such as Soros, Hollywood celebrities, unions, and corporate titans like G.E.’s Immelt and wall street ‘finaglers’, etc.

    Thus the circumstance arises that Horowitz describes so aptly.

    The Republican establishment needs conservative’s votes but do not share small government values, so they do the minimum necessary to be reelected, recognizing that if they sacrifice business concerns for small government/social ideological issues, the big donors will pull their donations.

    What the big donors fail to appreciate is that they are now living on borrowed time. That they fail to appreciate the deeper lessons of the 2012 election is an indication that their focus is too narrow, they literally can’t see the forest for the trees.

    And so they fail to appreciate their own long term self-interest.

    The left will not settle for running out of other people’s money, restricted to income. They will go after ALL the assets but will do so incrementally. The death tax will be raised and the eligibility lowered. Entire industries will be nationalized. The left does not believe in private property and will never be satisfied with the collapse of their theories, they will impose real tyranny because they believe that if they can only control things enough, they can perfect mankind and create utopia on earth. Having abandoned faith in an afterlife, they have no other recourse.

    Just as liberals are the left’s “useful idiots”, those on the left are Satan’s* “useful idiots”…for they justify forcing people to do what they see as the ‘right thing’ for “the people’s own good”. Which as CS Lewis pointed out is the most oppressive tyranny of all.

    Fanaticism always justifies its evil as regrettably necessary.

    Conservatives need the big donors contributions to win elections but until those donors awaken to the true nature of the threat they face, they will continue to place short term financial gain ahead of restoring the very system that has generated the opportunities that have brought them the wealth they value. Once they ‘get it’, the elected Republican leadership will respond with all the emotion anyone could desire.

    * the “dark side of the force”, call it what you will. Evil exists.

  22. Geoffrey Britain:
    Your remarks are a great response to Neo’s “postscript to…” of Feb 4.

  23. Don Carlos,

    Thank you for the kind assessment. I’m sure neo is well aware of my views, which I have detailed before on this blog. I do not offer my view as criticism of neo’s feelings which I share, its disheartening and counter productive for disagreement on the right to devolve into animosity. I perceive any disagreement between neo and I, to be one of emphasis rather than any substantive disagreement.

    As an addendum to my prior comment, I inadvertently left out of my analysis of Mr Horowitz’s article another important factor in why Republicans fail to respond with emotionally compelling argument.

    Conservatives, in the main, arrive at their positions through the process of deductive logic.

    As many know, deductive logic begins with ‘premises’, that are assumed to be true, such as the self-evident truths in the Declaration. Those premises determine what else must be true, if the premises are true.

    The unalienable rights, granted by our creator of Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness, the concept of private property, the Bill of Rights, etc are some of our foundational premises.

    Deductive logic provides absolute proof of your conclusions, IF your premises are correct. The premises themselves, however, remain unproven and unprovable, they must be accepted on face value, or by faith, or for the purpose of exploration.

    When challenged, conclusions and positions that have been arrived at through deductive logic require explanation through reason and logic. Thus the ineffective Republican response that Horowitz laments.

    Liberals arrive at their positions through the process of inductive logic.

    In the process of induction, you begin with some data, and then determine what general conclusion(s) can logically be derived from those data.

    Typically, liberals observe life’s essential unfairness, as we all do from an early age but liberals, thinking inductively, conclude that something must be responsible for this unjust state of affairs. They then look for the responsible party and currently that in their view is capitalism and those on the right. Liberals consistently fail to consider whether the universe’s essential unfairness is absolutely necessary and if that is so, then overall a positive good.

    Notice that little logic is spent in examining their rationale, that is because inductive logic is precipitated by an emotional response to a perceived injustice. Thus the cliche of the “bleeding heart liberal”.

    Deductive logic is processed by the left side of the brain, where linear logic, mathematical aptitude analytical and objective, etc. reside.

    Inductive logic is processed by the right side of the brain where creative, intuitive, subjective emotion based thinking reside.

    Typically, people favor one side or the other, though a small percentage more or less integrate both sides.

    It is my contention that much of the political disagreement extant is due to left and right brained people arguing past each other.

  24. Geoff, so true that what goes on now are left & right brained individuals talking past one another.
    It makes me despair of ever finding common ground. However it makes me admire former liberals (like so many of us here) who have matured to become left brained individuals later in life. I wonder too, can the conversion process be hurried along or does in require it’s own time frame of maturation. For sure we know it hasn t
    ever occured for Clintons, Biden or the Kennedys, or apparently they are just to drunk on power & a healthy dose of contempt for their fellow Americans who want freedom !

  25. Geoffrey Britain,

    Thus my disappointment with the Tea Party’s failure to deliver on its early promise of a virally spreading, proselytizing populist movement.

    The Tea Party had a real opportunity to reform the GOP from within, but they got lazy.

    As we discussed in the prequel thread, the GOP isn’t the Tea Party. However, the GOP to its credit was willing to open its doors to the Tea Party and allow the Tea Party to use the GOP brand and assets. In return, the Tea Party was supposed to generate a growing populist movement for the GOP that would counter the Dems populist movement and deliver votes and a popular base on the ground.

    The GOP upheld its side of the bargain. The Tea Party did not.

    A Tea Party that delivered on its promise, thus armed with voters, base, and movement would have been empowered to reform the GOP from within by using Tea Party assets as a viable alternative to wean the GOP from its dependence on big-money donors. Or at least empower the GOP with new leverage to negotiate terms with those donors.

    However, the Tea Party that failed to deliver on its promise, provided no alternative to the GOP, and the GOP has no choice but to maintain its course.

    The Tea Party is now merely squatting in the GOP’s house without paying its rent. Yet the idealist Tea Party continues to demand the GOP change course despite not offering the GOP the necessary means to change course.

    The Tea Party had its chance to really make a difference if they had only earned their keep in the GOP by aggressively building their populist movement. Instead they got lazy as soon as a few of them were elected to office.

    It’s not too late yet for the Tea Party to deliver on its side of the bargain, but they need to get to work – Karl Rove et al are already warning the Tea Party they either need to pay their rent or move out.

  26. Geoff-
    I too base my occasional disagrements with neo on degree, usually not on substance.

    Eric-
    Are you active in a TP, or are you on the outside looking in? Sounds like the latter, especially when you charge the “TP” has a seat at the GOPer table, which it most assuredly does not.
    I can tell you every TP that I know of consists totally of volunteers, usually otherwise employed or retired, and these TPs subsist on very little cash. My TP has a cash balance of $1000.
    The high-viz TPs like Tea Party Patriots are effective at raising cash (its their main job!), but make no mistake, they do not speak for the TPs like Priebus speaks for the RNC and thus for the entire party. Each TP is an autonomous entity, and therein lies the movement’s great weakness.

    My TP has a well-attended monthly meeting (>100) but it can only afford to use a public library conference room of limited availability where fund-raising is strictly Verboten. We have made serious local impacts but do not kid ourselves that we can reach beyond that to the state or national capitols. This incrementalism discourages me; we do not have the time left to reverse the current flow of events, and we lack a Joan of Arc (who would, like the TPs, be totally villified by the media).

  27. Eric-
    Sorry I didn’t see your earlier comment that you are not in any Tea Party. I suggest you wet your feet before staking out a position on Tea Parties.

  28. Geoffrey – very well said.

    When we think of Democrat political tactics, we automatically associate it with lies, distortions and misleading propaganda, so the idea of getting down in mud with them to fight back is distasteful, or as Horowitz put, we are to polite to engage in that manner.
    But, I think if we disassociate the tactic from the mud, we might be on to something. The tactic is appealing to emotion and personalizing the issue. You can do that without resorting to lies and deception. The true history of progressive policies is one of absolute failure.
    I’m thinking of mini add campaigns using memes with themes like “It didn’t Work then, It Won’t Work Now”, or “Chicago Before Democrats, Chicago After Democrats”.
    Just a thought.

  29. The Left hasn’t seen war yet on their home grounds. At this rate, they will though, since now civil war is inevitable.

    More and more people are waking up to the realization that politics isn’t going to get them anything, not even freedom. More and more they are coming to hate their enemies. While the Republican leadership are stuck in their bubble, the workers on the front are seeing the Leftist evil and cruelty first hand. Some will find the spine to fight it, others will only find it when the tyrannical boot lands on their child’s head and crushes it. But no matter, sooner or later it will be as it will be.

    While many Republicans didn’t get that this was a war between Good and Evil, some of us somehow picked on it. Perhaps because we understood the Left more than anyone else. Fix your own home before trying to fix a foreign country’s problems. That had a point, it was just a point truly pointed at the Left’s traitorous and corrupt heart.

    It will not take a lot of work to mobilize all the class envy and hatred the Left cooked up, and direct it using COIN and insurgency methods against the Leftist alliance. It just takes a spine. But a spine will come soon enough, after the Left flays the skin and meat from America’s bones.

  30. “When we think of Democrat political tactics, we automatically associate it with lies, distortions and misleading propaganda, so the idea of getting down in mud with them to fight back is distasteful, or as Horowitz put, we are to polite to engage in that manner.”

    This is a similar weakness to the Left’s distaste with guns. Killing people by starving them via their socialist economic techniques or using a for profit abortion doctor and eugenicist organization like PP, is okay in their view. Shooting someone with their own gun, they’ll tolerate to protect themselves. Allowing other people the same freedom, they don’t tolerate. Somehow, the same method, used by different people, disgusts them: killing.

    Republicans and enemies of the Left are humans too. They have human problems too. They have mental stupidities where they attach a morality to a method, when they should have remembered that it is not guns that kill people, nor is it the source of evil.

    Violence is stigmatized by society. Only bad and evil people use it. That makes it so that good people are ignorant of it, so that bad people are the only ones that can use violence, with the hand, the club, the rock, or the bullet to get what they want. The ability to recognize the difference between verbal and physical violence, and how people get what they want using them, is critical. One does not learn self defense to violent murderers by using verbal violence, for example.

    A world where evil controls the reigns of power, is about the same living standards as a Leftist controlled world.

    “The true history of progressive policies is one of absolute failure.”

    The true history of progressive policies is one of absolute tyranny and enslavement of humanity. The failure came about when the slaves rebelled and killed their masters using violence.

    “Conservatives need the big donors contributions to win elections but until those donors awaken to the true nature of the threat they face, they will continue to place short term financial gain ahead of restoring the very system that has generated the opportunities that have brought them the wealth they value. Once they ‘get itE the elected Republican leadership will respond with all the emotion anyone could desire”

    I don’t disagree with G’s conclusions, but I would like to state that many of the wealthy individuals fear the Left’s goon squads and political assassination tactics. They have been conditioned to respond in a polite manner, as a way to avoid being harassed and having their families surrounded by SEIU thugs. This is an intentional conditioning, one I’ve seen used many times to several successes.

    Civil war is inevitable not because people don’t want to fight. Civil war is inevitable because people want to fight, but have been neutered. It’s not just the candidates, the people themselves have been corrupted and made to fear tyranny’s hand. Those who have money and donate to the GOP, have even more reason to be afraid than anybody else. The Left protects their own, and scorches the skin off anyone they think is in their way. It is not the same as the US Marine’s motto, but it is close. To avoid civil war, the US would have had to have the slaves fight for their own freedom via elections or violence, but that was technically the same as a civil war. To avoid the future civil war, people will have to resolve their differences using politics. Since the Left treats politics as a different way to wage war, that’s rather impossible. One cannot end a war with an election, only win or lose one.

    “We got to learn to use the Dems own dirty tactics against them!”

    Not quite right.

    “There are many more naturally movement-oriented activists on the Left than the Right.”

    That’s not the primary reason. The Left sustains their movements via funds. It is money that is the sinews of war. Tea Party can’t sustain itself on fumes, because it needs to pay their members to march, as a day job, which they don’t. Some of the reasons why the Left gets money from grassroots is because it was funneled through those grassroots. The billionaires like Soros pays the members to march and maintain organizations like SEIU or PP or some other Leftist child sex slave trafficking orgs, and these organizations mobilize, tax, and route the money as donations. The super majority of Leftist funding comes from large donors, at its source. Obama nationalizes GM, gives money to unions, who then taxes the workers, who then contributes money to Obama. Essentially the Left donates money from itself, to itself, using power to seize the sources of production.

    Female genital mutilation is also inflicted on women by other women, and maintained by every generation of women. The thing is, that’s not the cause. The cause is external to those groups, because it is the tyrannical boot forcing people to do it or be destroyed. It’s all too easy to look at America and say people failed because of their choices. It ignores the greater evil at work. Which is that they were never given a choice to begin with by their tyrants. Those who don’t recognize the existence of such things in the US, also have no desire to fight against them, so they will be used by them sooner or later.

    “What kind of people destroy their own neighborhoods?

    The majority of women want free stuff. And, they want to be able to dispose of men at will and take away their kids. Distressing, but true.”

    The nice thing about Leftist propaganda is that it sometimes works on their enemies, even though most of the LEft’s modern propaganda is pretty low on the quality quotient.

    “I thought that the vast majority of us were immune to the kinds of atavistic,”

    No one is immune to propaganda weapons. That’s like saying you’re immune to nuclear weapons. It is the ignorance of the power of propaganda weapons that leads people into thinking they are immune.

    When people feel demoralized and don’t wish to partake in America’s political process, they are a war casualty of the Left’s mobilization of propaganda weapons. The fact that they don’t even realize this, is another problem. The solution is not to take part, of course. The solution is to recognize who the enemies are, and whether they are evil or honorable. Then plan your actions out from there. A declaration that everyone is evil, or that everyone is good, or that everyone is mistaken, is the same as judging incorrectly 100% of the time.

    People would be wise to look for historical examples of propaganda in action, specific Jim Jone’s cult, brainwashing, and the various hypnotic regression therapies used a few decades ago. The ones that implanted false memories of child abuse in women.

    Don’t ever think humans are immune to such weapons. Even with decades of resistance to interrogation training, one is never immune.

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