Bill Donohue on CHRISTIANITY IN THE CROSSHAIRS

 https://youtu.be/WURiamyA-V8?si=DoKZx3EJvDVdzfpw

Robert Knight on Don Lemon, Cities Church, Minnesota, and his book THE BATTLE FOR AMERICA'S SOUL

My Interview with Catholic League President Bill Donohue about the Minneapolis Catholic School Attack

 

My Interview with Washington Times Columnist Robert Knight about the Legacy of Charlie Kirk

David Joel Horowitz, R.I.P.

David Horowitz in his Simi Valley study, 2017. (Laurence Jarvik photo)

I learned of the death of David Horowitz in Colorado at age 86 a few days after it happened on April 29th, 2025. 

A college friend of mine warned me that he didn't like reading obituaries that were about the person doing the writing instead of the person who died, and I worried would happen which kept me from writing about David immediately. But now I don't care about that. So here goes: my attempt to give one person's perspective on David's passing. Others might have other points-of-view. 

It has taken me a while to write about it because so many different thoughts and feelings occurred since. I was conflicted because David was a complicated person to work for, something I did from 1992 to 1996. After I left his employ, he was nice to me in his autobiography, for which I am grateful. 

David was ill for years fighting cancer that had spread, but since he seemed a born fighter, I never thought that it would lick him. I guess it didn't occur that he was mortal, since he seemed like a force of nature, or even a supernatural being possessed of extra-terrestrial energy sources. I had never known someone with such energy and determination. While I was fighting writer's block, David was always writing on his laptop, even in the doctor's waiting room where I ran into him when taking my father for a checkup. He wrote on planes, in lobbies, everywhere and anywhere. David once told me his secret was that he published everything he wrote at least three times in different versions, that way the same material went a lot farther and reached more people. He could also get paid three times for it. In addition to his own writing, David simultaneously ran a publishing and activism empire, maintained a grueling schedule of public speaking and fundraising, and somehow had enough time left over to get married four times and father four children. When he died, it was reported that he had written fifty books. He had lived the lives of two, three, maybe even four men...

I read David's Destructive Generation (co-authored with Peter Collier) after it came out and was affected by what he had written. I still think it is his best book. His description of Leftist nihilism is something  obviously true but that I hadn't noticed until David pointed it out. 

Destruction is the aim of the enterprise. All the rest is just window dressing. Not only is the issue never the issue for the Left, as David repeatedly declared, The Revolution isn't really the issue either--the issue is just destruction of all that exists, to return to a Year Zero...in other words the goal is nothingness.

I visited David in 2017 at his home in Simi Valley in order to congratulate him on the election of Donald Trump as President, since he had worked hard to make it happen. When I arrived, David handed me a signed copy of Big Agenda: President Trump's Plan to Save America, his blueprint for the Trump administration. At the time, David was recovering from an operation and was walking with a limp. He seemed frail, but full of energy and determination. 

David told me he was working on several projects simultaneously and handed me a copy of the latest volume of his 7-volume series, The Black Book of the American Left detailing the horrors of the communists in America. But that wasn't all.

He spoke at length about his wife April's charity work with injured horses, for which he was proud to have help establish a charity foundation. He then took me outside, on a tour of their corral to introduced me to their horses.   

That was a side of David that I hadn't seen much during the years I worked for him--gentle, compassionate, and seemingly at peace. I had no idea that he was an animal lover. He also talked about his ex-wife and children, of who he was also extremely fond. Again, I hadn't seen the paterfamilias side of David before, only the crusader side. It was not long before David moved to Colorado.

We talked on the phone a couple of times after that, and exchanged a few emails, but I never saw David again.  

I did think about him a lot over the years, and came to the conclusion that his conversion to anti-communism was sincere. He was a best-selling author whose establishment career ended when he announced his support for President Reagan. His departure from the Left cost him not only friends, but also career opportunities. David told me that he never got a good review in the New York Times after publication of "Lefties for Reagan" in the Washington Post in 1985. His political heresy cost him millions in royalties, I'm sure.

And I have no doubt that the murder of his friend Betty Van Patter by the Black Panthers, and David's guilt for playing a part in that tragedy, launched him on the political trajectory which changed his life. He was obviously surprised that his old comrades and liberal friends sided with the Panthers, and excused the murder of his bookkeeper for political reasons.

In microcosm, David had personally experienced the history of Liberals, Socialists and Communists making excuses for murderous Communism since the October Revolution in Russia. No crime has been too horrible to be excused by those who remain devoted to the shining future promised by scientific socialists. Of course, David had been one of those Leftists himself, a "New Leftist" raised by "Old Leftist" parents. Old wine in a new bottle. As he wrote in his autobiography, he thought nothing of his parents hiding an East German spy in their family home. How different was that from families who hid members of the Weather Underground in the 1960s? Not very.

Although murder had been well-established as a feature of communist regimes by the 1960s, it was only when such a murder struck close to home, to someone he knew, that David realized the nature of the forces he had been aiding as editor of Ramparts and fund-raiser for the Black Panthers.

Nevertheless, despite his political heterodoxy, David was loyal to his friends. His collaborator Peter Collier was like a brother, perhaps even a twin separated at birth. After Collier died, ending their writing partnership, David became more of an organization man, building up The David Horowitz Freedom Center into an institution which he planned to outlive him.

His relationship with liberal Democrat Ron Radosh was also quite tight, at least when I knew him. When I worked for David on the public broadcasting issue, he wouldn't allow a word of criticism of Radosh--even when I complained he was doing nothing to help us in our efforts to defund PBS and NPR. David said I couldn't expect anything because Radosh was a professor and I had to understand the constraints he was under. I didn't then, and don't now. But I did see that David was loyal to his childhood leftist friend from New York City. (Later, his loyalty to Radosh caused a breach between David and fellow anti-communist Diana West, after he published Radosh's negative review of her 2013 expose: American Betrayal: The Secret Assault on Our Nation's Character. The review accused her of promoting John Birch Society-like conspiracy theories about communists in the US government.)

However, David's loyalty to Radosh was in the end betrayed, when in 2021 Radosh (with co-author Sol Stern) denounced David -- in the same way he had earlier denounced West -- in a 2021 New Republic article titled "Our Friend David Horowitz, The Trump Propagandist:"  

In the arc of David Horowitz’s life as a writer and political activist, there is a recurring cycle: an attraction to the most extreme, pugilistic flank of an ideology, a period of reckoning and second thoughts, and then a relentless drive toward the violent fringes of another radical crusade. The stakes seem to increase with every fitful change of heart. With his Freedom Center battle tank, his Restoration Weekends, and his recent bestsellers, Horowitz has become one of the most effective propagandists for a destructive mass movement of millions of middle- and working-class Americans. Such a movement threatens our democracy far more than the campus-based radicalism Horowitz championed during his Berkeley and Ramparts period.

In that earlier era, he celebrated the burning of a bank by a student mob. Today he’s an intellectual pyromaniac who honors the MAGA mob that attacked the U.S. Capitol on January 6. Horowitz’s provocations are calculated to destabilize the electoral process. Perhaps most despicably, he has compared Democrats’ response to the Capitol insurrection with Hitler’s response to the 1933 Reichstag Fire, which the Führer used as an excuse to unleash his horrors on Germany: “The difference was that for Hitler,” Horowitz wrote, “the phantom enemy that justified his depredations was the Jews, while for the fascist Democrats it is ‘white supremacists,’ whose actual numbers are fewer even than the Jews.” But the only political tactic reminiscent of the rise of the Nazis is Horowitz’s (and Trump’s) big lie of a stolen election. It’s the historical equivalent of the Nazi’s claim that the Weimar liberals “stabbed Germany in the back” and lost World War I. Such rhetoric makes Horowitz an enemy of the open society and beyond the pale of rational political discourse.

Our old friend must be defeated on every political front on which he operates, a counteroffensive that should begin by investigating and exposing the Horowitz center’s fundraising scams and the potential abuse of its tax-exempt status. Horowitz will surely protest loudly that the leftist Democrats and traitorous Republicans are canceling his speech. (He already complains of that.) Of course, his free-speech rights should be protected, just as every other American’s are. But you don’t get to ignite warfare and take pride in “fighting fire with fire” and then cry foul when the other side fires back.

In other words, Radosh had declared his "old friend" David Horowitz an enemy to be eliminated. 

Some friend. 

Too late, David finally recognized Radosh for the enforcer he appeared to be:

 The real agenda of Radosh and Stern is to mobilize the IRS to investigate me and deprive me of the resources to criticize and oppose the tyranny descending on us from Washington. Like a pair of commissar wannabes they issue a call to war: “Our old friend must be defeated on every political front on which he operates, a counter-offensive that should begin by investigating and exposing the Horowitz Center’s fundraising scams and the potential abuse of its tax-exempt status.”

In the view of Daniel Greenfield, author of the article in which the above quote appears, and David's successor as CEO of The David Horowitz Freedom Center, Radosh was a totalitarian who had despicably denounced David to government authorities for the purposes of prosecution.  "New Left" and  "Old Left" and "Liberal" were revealed to have been semantic distinctions without a difference.  

Luckily for David's legacy, President Trump was re-elected in 2024. David had lived long enough to see vindication. 

In conclusion, David Horowitz was a human being. Like any man, he had his flaws, and he made mistakes. Once he realized the errors of his youth, caused both by a communist upbringing and the trends of the 1960s, David fought the good fight. Not perfectly, but doggedly, with determination and persistence. With his last ounce of dying strength, he was writing until the end. And he lived long enough to see Donald Trump return to the Oval Office. 

He finished the race. He kept the faith.

30 Years After Publication, It's Time For This To Finally Happen...

Link to full text of "After the NEA" by Laurence Jarvik from the Summer, 1995 issue on Archive.org:

 AFTER THE NEA (Summer, 1995) 

View full text:

 https://www.researchgate.net/publication/393472091_After_the_National_Endowment_for_the_Arts#fullTextFileContent

We're Back.

 

A meme seen on X

When I stopped posting to this blog on January 16th, 2021, it seemed to me that it might never be possible to speak freely again in the United States of America.

The atmosphere of repression was thick. People who stated the obvious, that Biden had come to power in a putsch based on election fraud, backed by repression, were censored.

My own posts were flagged by Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube to name just three social media companies. I did not want to play whack-a-mole with internet censors, so decided to just stop posting, figuring that the censors would not go back in time to delete old stuff while they had to focus on suppressing new information.

That turned out to be pretty much the case, although sometime after Biden's inauguration Blogger took down a old guest post by a late friend, Dr. Terry Hinch, which discussed his conception of "Three Types of Faith" in the light of Mormonism. 

But they left this blog pretty much untouched.

It was a bizarre period, to say the least.

We had moved from Washington, DC to Florida in June, 2020 due to insane COVID regulations and BLM/Antifa riots that trashed our shopping centers and smashed windows on cars parked in the street. Our neighbors behaved like zombies from "Invasion of the Body Snatchers," decorating their homes with "In this house we believe..." and "Hate has no home here..." signs to show their loyalty (and fear), holding evening vigils in a traffic circle in memory of George Floyd, the neighborhood plastered with threatening flyers about "white privilege", and the DC city government clearly not interested in protecting the property or lives of its citizens. We were more upset with our liberal neighbors than the rioters or government.

We couldn't bear to drive through vandalized downtown DC on our drive south, so took the Beltway to avoid seeing the destruction to Washington's statues, monuments and buildings wrought by the coup--they had been sprayed with Antifa/BLM graffiti. The mayor had also painted BLM slogans on the street around Lafayette square and renamed the area BLM plaza, to let you know who was in charge, contemptuous of Supreme Court rulings preventing governments from endorsing political movements as a First Amendment violation.

It was squalid and depressing. The National Capital had been seized by putschists and the purported liberals went along as willingly--if not more so--than the "good Germans" who allowed Hitler to destroy Germany.

Florida was much better. Governor De Santis was doing a good job preserving as much liberty as possible, and his Covid restrictions were less draconian. We saw Trump stickers on cars and enjoyed Trump boat parades. I even had coffee at a local place decorated with a reproduction of President Trump's Oval Office. Free at last, in what De Santis called "the Free State of Florida."

I concentrated on publishing books through two hobby imprints, "Penny-a-Page Press" and "Washington Books." The thinking was that books might stand the test of time better than ephemeral internet postings.

I also set up a philosophical substack called Philosophical Investigations as an homage to Wittgenstein, but in the end there are some current events, artistic and literary works, and issues that don't rise to the level of philosophy that I wanted to discuss again.

I should mention that in the meantime I had also posted on X and Gab, as well as videos on YouTube and Rumble (and GabTV and Bitchute).  Censorship there ended after President Trump was re-elected, or so I thought. However, a recent post of mine was banned by X, I was forced to remove a recommendation that Israel use nuclear weapons in its current fight against Hamas and Iran, which X censors claimed violated policy. How anyone could hope to discuss military strategy without discussion of weapons systems still stumps me, but in any case I deleted my post the other day. Subsequently, I was denounced as a "terrorist" by an unverified account which posted my ID picture. I reported the post because I thought it might incite violence against my person--yet X community standards judges found nothing wrong with it. So I then "protected" my account against non-followers and unverified members, with the result that only a tiny fraction of the people who used to see my posts continue to see them...and also the protection keeps my comments from being seen by people who don't follow me. I preferred the previous system where one could choose to reach only verified users, but for some mysterious unexplained reason, X dropped that. My thinking then and now is that verified users might be more careful about what they post, since they can eventually be found. Yes, I had indeed paid to be verified myself...

Well that was another incentive to start blogging again. At least on my own blog I could say what I like, and then forward it to others, and edit comments myself.

So here goes, we'll see how long this iteration of the blog continues.

I am grateful to President Trump for standing up for true free speech, and just hope this time he can make it stick...

My thoughts will follow in subsequent posts. 

Dan Scavino Just Shared This Video On Twitter...

Rudyard Kipling's "If" illustrated with pictures of President Trump:

Ann Corcoran: Antifa Gunman Arrested in Florida Plot

He surely is not a lone wolf, but is the first evidence of Antifa’s evil plans to lure angry Trump patriots to state capitals in the coming days so they can begin the revolution.

Remember Antifa/BLM/Insurgence USA are all revolutionaries. They don’t give a rat’s you-know-what about Biden or Harris, it is revolution they want.

As I said last night, stay away!  The events at the US Capitol were a trap, don’t be so dumb and let them do it again.

Read all about it here: https://fraudscrookscriminals.com/2021/01/16/antifa-revolutionary-arrested-planned-attack-on-patriots-at-floridas-capitol/

AT: The Cult of Trump?

 What's the story behind our fervent support of Donald J. Trump? Answer: Trump is nothing more than an avatar, an embodiment of a large segment of the American people who have been marginalized and abused. That is why he is so "loved" by so many. That’s also why he’s "hated" by so many others.

Notice that the people who love him now didn’t necessarily care for him prior to 2015 and some are still uncomfortable with his lifestyle and personality. On the other side, the people who hate him now were once his biggest supporters; he embodied a successful life to them. He was king of the New York tabloids and had a monster TV show on NBC, hardly conservative bastions.

Why the sudden and dramatic turnaround? Because when Donald Trump rode down that escalator and began promoting "normal" ideas without equivocation (Don't call them "conservative" because at this point it's not about liberalism vs. conservatism, it's about normal vs. crazy), he ceased to be Donald Trump and became us. Me. You. All of us who have seen the decline of this country accelerate exponentially these past ten years and are worried sick about it. Donald Trump the person is not the target. Donald Trump the symbol is.

Read all about it here: https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/01/the_cult_of_trump.html

AT: Amazon Goes Mad

The dubious legality of Amazon's action raises two possibilities about the role of Amazon's lawyers in this affair, both of which are disturbing.

The first is that the censors did not ask the lawyers, but simply did it or overrode legal cautions.  This would mean that the company's employees are out of control and indifferent to the welfare of the company itself, answerable only to the demands of their woke religion.  Note, in particular, that cutting off Parler was of no benefit to Amazon, which bore no responsibility for Parler's supposed failure to police its users.

The second is that the lawyers gave them the go-ahead on the grounds that the legal profession is now so corrupted that no court would dare to find for Parler, however meritorious its case.  (The courts' refusal to hear about election fraud supports this theory.)  Also, just as lawyers who tried to represent Trump were bullied and intimidated, Amazon might feel certain of its ability to prevent Parler from obtaining adequate representation.

Take your pick of these possibilities, but either creates big business risks for Amazon.

Read all about it here: https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/01/amazon_goes_mad.html 

AT: Our Mounting Orwellian Nightmare

 President Trump clearly stated his own beliefs on a thousand occasions — President Biden should do so as well, but he won't.  He uses the Orwellian tactic of disguising his beliefs in gibberish, and this is not because he's going daft, as he well may be.  He'll speak of "expanding Obamacare" rather than socialized medicine.  He'll talk of "defense partnerships" rather than abandoning control of our military.  And on the environment, it's not even possible to tell what he wants, but he wants $400 billion to do it.  Once again, "the defence of the indefensible."

The coordinated effort to impeach and convict the president is nothing less than a propaganda campaign, and the associated suppression of free speech on social media and elsewhere is the beginning of a dangerous national decline.  It's not possible to say where it will end, but we must be entirely clear about what is happening.  A progressive government will attempt to further limit free speech, assembly, religious expression, gun rights, access to employment, and other basic liberties.  Progressives have already threatened conservatives with prosecution and imprisonment for the "crime" of denying anthropogenic global warming and for questioning the result of the 2020 election.  What's next?  The persecution of every American conservative in the same way that Gen. Flynn was persecuted?

It's a fine line between federal prison here in America and Dachau in Germany, and one can transform into the other in a matter of weeks.  It did so in Germany in 1933, just five weeks after Hitler became chancellor.  Don't think it can't happen here.  It begins with "the defence of the indefensible" — and that is already well underway.

Read all about it here: https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/01/our_mounting_orwellian_nightmare.html