David Horowitz: Points in Time
One of the more difficult problems a reviewer faces when dealing with a Horowitz book is how not to go on indefinitely, for each new release takes its place in a qualifying continuum compelling awareness of the whole. In other words, Horowitz has reached the point in time in his career when, as T.S. Eliot said about literature in general in his seminal essay “Tradition and the Individual Talent,” a new work involves “the presence of the past.” “The existing monuments,” Eliot writes, “form an ideal order…which is modified by the introduction of the new (or nearly new).” The new not only reconfigures the present but alters our perception of the past as well.
At the level of Horowitz’s “individual talent,” we might propose, analogically speaking, after the publication of a veritable library shelf of books and pamphlets, that he is not only a writer but a literature, that is, he now constitutes his own tradition which each new production both adds to and revises. We know Horowitz as a committed political commentator anatomizing the left’s ideological control of the media, the electoral process, the common discourse and the classroom. From Radical Son to The Politics of Bad Faith to Unholy Alliance to The Professors to Indoctrination U to One-Party Classroom, and, indeed, a bibliography that spans more than 40 years and approximately the same number of books, including over a dozen which he co-authored, Horowitz has established himself as one of the major political authors of the era.
With the publication of his latest offering, A Point in Time, the third in a meditative trilogy following upon The End of Time and A Cracking of the Heart, the perspective has begun to shift. These are intensely personal volumes, lamentations on mortality, the inevitable dissipations of time, the futility of the quest for meaning and coherence, the losses that afflict us every step of the way on our journey toward the mausoleum that closes on every human purpose. But the lien between the personal and the political is clear. Reviewing A Point in Time in National Review Online, Bruce Thornton also remarks on the complementarity between the “the three volumes of memoirs laced with philosophical reflections” and “Horowitz’s other work, which focuses more practically on contemporary ideologies and the pernicious policies they create.”
Connecting to this earlier work, A Point in Time exposes how the redemptive quest of the “social redeemers” for an earthly paradise leads not to “the kingdom of freedom but the totalitarian state.” The kingdom of freedom is predicated on the assumption of a world beyond this one and a divinity without whom moral conduct has no guarantor. Right action is based upon individual choice to accept the existence of a moral domain that precludes the shedding of blood to attain a collective utopia. At the same time, this higher reality remains just that, an assumption, not an incontestable truth, rendering us — if I may quote Martin Heidegger, an otherwise unlikely authority — unbehaust, unhoused, roofless, insecure. Such is the human situation.
The question that Horowitz confronts is how best to come to terms with our condition, for “if the world is to be redeemed it will be one individual at a time,” certainly not one collective movement after another. But we must be prepared for the fact that the voyage on which we embark will be tempestuous, erratic, and not a little preposterous. “And what is the alternative?” he ruefully asks. Horowitz would probably agree that we are like the characters in the absurd Edward Lear poem, who “went to sea in a sieve.” The answer, if there is one, is to accept without cynicism or despair, so far as we can, the fragile adequacy of the narratives we construct to give shape and continuity to our lives, while avoiding the temptation to enlist in violent collective schemes of auto-transformation. It is, citing Peter Wood in his prefatory attestation to A Point in Time, to espouse “the fictions we cannot wholly believe or wholly escape.” This is what Horowitz has done in spades, determined “to embrace my own circular horizon and accept it.”
It is a beautifully written book. Read it.
“A Cracking of the Heart,” written on the occasion of the untimely death of his daughter Sarah, is a book of surpassing beauty, a lasting achievement, one that is itself an answer to some of the issues raised in “A Point in Time.” The first book achieved a kind of immortality for her; the second for himself, despite himself, since it is all the more poignant for its underestimation of his own accomplishments. I agree with David Solway that, taken together, these two books take Horowitz to a new level achieved by very few writers in our time.
Horowitz has done great work, I agree. And he has a great message.
However, he is a tree falling in the forest that no one hears. This is solely due to his earlier work. The same can be said for Roger Simon. Readers like you, David, may hear. But not the deafened hoi polloi of today’s America. Those brainwashed masses were indeed created by these same writers, and those masses now own our future.
With their 1960s harangues, young ardent and eloquent ‘useful idiots’ like Horowitz and Simon created the collectivist oligarchy America has now become. I was there when they did it. And they did it gleefully, consciously and artfully. They were the MSNBC anchors of their movement to destroy America.
I emigrated — did a John Galt — in 1969 rather than endure watching the brainwashing of my children and enduring the loss of the Republic — the former of which I prevented, and the latter of which has actually happened.
Now that there are no listeners, the 60s ‘useful idiots’ choose to grow up, become capitalists, small ‘r’ republicans, men of reason. But not MEN until they apologize to all of us from that era who were sneered at, smeared and mocked by them and their disciples, and for losing America.
I don’t blame the 1960s generation for the “brainwashed masses.” The 1960s generation, of which David Horowitz was a high functioning part, were the logical outcome of the populist-progressive tradition, in place since the late 19th century in the upper-class led turn away from laissez-faire capitalism in order to contain the immigrants and their labor radicalism. I wrote very briefly about the emotional problems that tradition entailed here: http://clarespark.com/2009/08/09/what-is-a-corporatist-liberal-and-why-should-they-frighten-us/, but my whole website deals with it, for instance http://clarespark.com/2009/08/25/t-w-adorno-and-his-funny-idea-of-genuine-liberalism/. Don’t blame Horowitz and Simon or their generation.
I see your point but refuse take it.
“The evil of the fathers goes down yea to the seventh generation” as I recall.
That does not preclude the 2nd through the 7th from responsibility for their own evil. The ‘boomers’ shat on our plates, and they ought to pay for it.
I have a David Horowitz problem too, and mine is likely less generous then yours. I simply do not buy the idea that there is a former left. There is a left, and it is a left whether it is reformed or not.
We shouldn’t be surprised by this. I recall a very recent discussion David Horowitz gave where he said that education in the US was doctrinal in the years from the early 1800′s to the early 1950′s. Then in the 1950′s a new model of thinking in the Universities came into existence using the methods and tools of rational science under-girding the Social Sciences, History etc.
This of course is nonsense. Which schools were doctrinal in the years of the last Century and a half – Engineering Schools? Medical Schools, Agricultural Schools? There were Schools of Religion but calling them Doctrinal is silly.
As a friend of mine said – well the McGuffey readers were doctrinal. Oh no they weren’t. They were moral stories. The Doctrinal Readers are in our public schools today extolling homosexuality. The readers were thought of as doctrinal because the authors were religious.
There are indeed conflicts of idealism and rationality in our Culture, but it is the left that is doctrinal. We shouldn’t be fooled on this question by the new Conservatives who repeat the same errors of doctrinal consistency and purity the left, of which they are a part, and why David Horowitz is one of them.
David Horowitz is turning one idealism in for another – they are both left, they are as doctrinal as always. Let us put it this way. When we see the left’s social sciences, or the Global Warming Hoaxes, or the use of Darwinism to obscure real science and evolution – who would and should object? The answer is complex but no political/ideology group has real skin in the game.
It was more specific than you imply. It wasn’t a “logical outcome of the populist-progressive tradition”, although the specific approach leveraged progressivism as an enabler.
It resulted from a very deliberate and specific strategy by marxists to undermine, de-stabalize, and effectively overthrow western civilization.
I don’t call it a plan, although there have been many plans along the way. No plan could have survived 60+ years, only a strategy could.
The strategy is now clear. Take over the media. Take over the education system. Corrupt the governors and bureaucrats. Balkanize the country (i.e., by race, faith, sexuality, occupation, economic strata, geographic regioin, urban vs rural, family structures, etc., etc., etc.). Buy the support of the balkanized groups and make them dependent on the state. Insert leaders who mouth the words of freedom but who implement the policies of tyranny.
It’s the second or third most successful political strategy in world history, and it is now in direct life-or-death conflict with one of the other two; Constitutional Democracy in alliance with free-market Capitalism.
In 2012, we will know the winner.
“…the 60s ‘useful idiots’ choose to grow up, become capitalists, small ‘r’ republicans, men of reason….”
Nope, they’re still idiots, know-it-all, got-all-the-answers idiots. They’ve just moved from the Loony Left to the Wacky Right.
Though I thoroughly enjoy Horowitz’s books mentioned, as well as ‘Reforming Our Universities..’ (if the ‘OWS’ lemmings had read this book in college, I’d wager the majority would have had a real, economically essential degree), this style book from Horowitz doesn’t interest me.
I agree completely with pelaut’s comments.
This and other books dealing with Horowitz’s personal side are very good, I’ll bet.
Horowitz, Milton Friedman, Mike Savage, David Zucker, Pat Caddell, Dennis Miller, Orwell, Ronald Reagan etc., have made 180′s in their political/religious (C.S. Lewis for starters) pedigree have to acknowledge, as we all do, our entire body of work, contributions.
As much as I appreciate Horowitz’s latter impressive efforts, his earlier actions encourage me to not read ‘Point in Time’.
Clare Spark attempts to brush blame aside for their radical behaviors but those mentioned were adults for goodness sake. A majority of books I’ve referred to for Conservative values, beliefs and constructs were available in their youth as well!
Those who think Horowitz has never taken personal responsibility for his destructive youth have obviously never read his work.
In any event, he has spent decades atoning for early errors by a relentless pursuit of truth and decency.
Anyone who denigrates converts, especially those converts who, having seen the light, dedicate their lives to sharing it, is a fool and an ingrate.
Many of the greatest and most effective conservative writers have been converts of one sort or another. And no wonder. They understand things the ever-pure cannot really know.
Marilena, as I and others expressed in detail, I do appreciate Horowitz’ books, message.
Though I’m no fan of the ‘born-again’ Christian, Conservative (insert others here) storyline.
So go right ahead and call me a fool or ingrate. You’re obviously someone who has NO power of persuasion I.e. your ‘reasoning skills’ are lacking.
‘Ever-pure’? I and pelaut didn’t come off as sanctimonious in our posts. Though ‘you in the know’ sure sound like such a person. JMO.
If I wish to read/see people righting themselves spiritually, financially in a myriad of ways, there’s always the 700 Club.
1 more thing.. Horowitz’ ‘youth’. You make it sound like Mr. Horowitz was a kid when changing his political stripe.
He didn’t entertain such a thing until his mid-30′s and didn’t go public until his mid-40′s/ mid 1980′s.
Nonetheless it’s nice having a ‘political Serpico’ when reading his political, educational books, speaking engagements.
Thanks Mr. Solway. Looks like another must-read by the great David Horowitz.