David Horowitz: Half (Or So) Right

I've offered some heavily qualified defenses of David Horowitz here in the past. I don't care much for the guy, but many of the things he says about academia have more than a little truth in them. There are fairly significant parts of the academy that are fairly significantly infected by indefensible intellectual fads like postmodernism. Postmodernism is associated with radical leftist politics far more often than not. The folks who advocate such views are decidedly illiberal, and reject most of what most of us think of as liberalism. For one thing, many postmodern leftists are skeptics, nihilists, relativists or neo-pragmatists about reason, and do not recognize a distinction between rational inquiry and persuasion/propaganda. Consequently, many such folks don't have any moral qualms about attempting to proselytize students. Disciplines like anthropology, literary criticism, communications studies, women's studies etc. contain many such people.

Now, before anyone flies off the handle about this, note that I've in no way asserted that all or even most people in the disciplines listed above are postmodern leftists. But the postmodern left tends to be over-represented in those disciplines. (Given that postmodernism is a total dead end, just about any representation would be over-representation...but we can ignore that point for now.)

Because of these facts, I've often offered heavily qualified defenses of Horowitz on this site. He's at least out there drawing attention to this problem, a problem that many academic liberals refuse to acknowledge.

HOWEVER...Horowitz himself is rather a nut.

I was just watching him give a talk at Duke on C-SPAN 2. He would manage to say something true through the froth now and again, but, well, even a stopped clock is right twice a day. Most of the stuff I'd seen from him in the past was not nearly this bad.

He stood on stage spewing mostly nonsense as some kind of bodyguard stalked back and forth behind him scowling hilariously. As students tried to ask very sensible questions of him, he would stonewall, double-talk, obfuscate, and yammer on ceaselessly until only those with above-average powers of concentration could even remember what the original question had been. He defended Ann Coulter by saying that she was a "satirist"...but then did enough verbal ambling about that he could come back later and hint at more substantial (and even more irrational) defenses of her. One student noted that Horowitz had claimed that he (Horowitz) had personally never called the academic left dangerous--but the student then produced a quote in which Horowitz did call them dangerous. (Note: I rather agree with Horowitz about this, though I also think that one has to be very careful about calling ideas dangerous.) Horowitz huffed and puffed and postured and launched into a long series of verbal gymnastics that amounted little more than misdirection. He might as well have just told the student his shoe was untied and run away. He clearly does think they are dangerous (he's probably right about that), he clearly said that they were, but he wouldn't admit it. Very weird.

That's a guy who has obviously kind of lost his marbles about this subject. He's right about a lot and he's wrong about a lot, and it's really too bad that somebody more intellectually honest isn't addressing this problem, because I suspect that Horowitz is doing more harm than good. I have no illusions about the radical academic left, and there's no love lost between them and me...but when I finally had to turn the channels, I was actually rather more sympathetic to them than I had been before I was exposed to Horowitz's screed. Not rational, but there it is.

So, let me say in no uncertain terms that you guys (e.g. Matt C? Rilkefan?) who have been admonishing me for being too soft on Horowitz were right.

You were right. I was wrong. The guy's a menace.

Though it is important to note that he happens to be right about some important things.