From book review of <i?Radical Son by David Horowitz [hat tip Doug]:

It would be easy to conclude that Horowitz went from A to Z this way because he’s superficial and unstable. Instead, as this moving, intellectual autobiography shows, his second thoughts about leftism emerged gradually as he experienced various aspects of the “Movement.” The catalytic episode came when he discovered that the Panthers had murdered a friend of his, but even then Horowitz was slow to convert, primarily because he was heavily enmeshed in what he now views as the quintessential leftist habit of judging politics by its intentions, not its acts.

I did not read the book – didn’t need to since I made my own journey and I’m not “there” anymore. Thought, unlike mathematics, can only be proven false by empirical evidence of implementation (which is why some ideas never die – the implementation always being at fault, explaining the persistence of collective themes). After the failures of the last century, it should not be surprising that the writing is positively weird, in the mind-numbing sense, as (some of) the modern radical chic insist on pursuing the theme that an inscrutable narrative is the proper starting point for any and all intellectual inquiry. It’s what’s in the interstitial spaces, it’s what we don’t see, it’s what’s not there – that we don’t understand because the particulate can never explain the organic whole. That’s a little off from intentions versus acts but not much – the Idea of it all as it translates into food on the table.

I have maintained for most of my adult life that possibly some ideas, such as nuclear disarming, may find a fruitful context in a chastened species several centuries down the road, but not in this world, not in my lifetime. I do not think that a socialist-inspired organizational or institutional structure will ever be one of those ideas unless mankind evolves into something different from what he is.