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[Order David Horowitz’s new book, America Betrayed, HERE]
The crux of David Horowitz’s new book, America Betrayed: How a Christian Monk Created America & Why the Left is Determined to Destroy Her, lies in two short sentences that are both a discovery and a diagnosis—simultaneously. He writes:
In the real world of American democracy, social and economic divisions are between the Cans and the Can-Nots, the Dos and the Do-Nots, the Wills and the Will-Nots. The vast majority of wealthy Americans, as a matter of empirical fact, are first generation and have created and earned what they possess. (p. 127)
Those who seek to destroy America, the Progressive left, have cast our nation in a narrative that constructs it as one of Haves and Have-Nots. The latter have been condemned to such a status, in their minds, by an oppressive faction that utilizes systemically racist, sexist, and bigoted institutions to keep racial and sexual minorities outside the domain of the ethical and the pantheon of the human community. These progressives, found in the Democratic party, are utopian idealists and supremacists who manufacture a false reality to ideate, like wishful-thinking children, a perfect future devoid of imperfections. This we may call The Utopian Fantasy from Nowhere. Its central premises and tenets are not tethered to empirical reality. Theirs is a collective consciousness creating reality to ideate and justify cruel and immoral means to reach a utopian end abstracted from, and devoid of, any reference to the frailty and fallen nature of the human condition. This makes it impossible to achieve permanent earthly bliss here on earth.
This worldview made it possible for the slaughter of 100 million people under communism because of a single fundamental principle: Utopian idealists and fundamentalists suffer from an infantilism born of adult-like children unable to accept the messiness of the world as they find it. They believe that via social justice initiatives that human nature can be fundamentally changed and programmed to produce predictable desired ends: equity, universal justice, and the eradication of all man-made inequities by radically remaking humanity by manufacturing a new type of man.
Horowitz recognizes the folly behind this because an inherently fallen human nature will eternally reproduce the very maladies it seeks to permanently eliminate by human beings who believe that the moral arc of the universe bends towards justice, that progress is inevitable if human nature (which progressives believe is perfectible) can be twisted like a piece of putty to fit the evasions, the visions, and the will to power of any social justice warrior and idealist. Horowitz fleshes out this thesis by way of a discussion of black nationalist movements, the politics of Barack Obama, and socialist/communist revolutionary Saul Alinsky, among others.
The view that all attempts to construct a perfect world from a fallen nature can only end in successive disasters, and that conservatives can only protect inalienable rights, and the rights guaranteed by our rational Constitution such as freedom of conscience to believe and act, we may refer to as, Horowitz’s View from Objective Reality.
Horowitz’s other major accomplishment in this slim book lies in his original connection of the legacy of the sixteenth-century revolutionary Protestant Reformist, Martin Luther, to America’s own unique version of constitutional republicanism, moral individualism, and respect for the sanctity of the individuals’ life and conscience regardless of personal theologies or lack thereof.
The Jeffersonian dedication to religious conviction as a matter of purely private concern between God and an individual’s conscience for which humans are accountable to God rather than priests is in three Lutheran axiomatic principles: first, the equality of all before the law; second, the freedom of all in matters of conscience; and third, the inalienable nature of the rights protecting these two.
America Betrayed is an exploration of how the formation of the American republic is antecedently indebted to a secularized version of Luther’s principles. The book is too breviloquent, the explication on Horowitz’s part too compelling and concise to give away his approach here. But there is much to recommend in his analyses of how freedom of conscience and expression, the separation of church and state, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution extended by the diversity of the sects created by Luther’s Reformation to “a universal community of believers in the values embraced by the Founders derived from Luther’s creed.”
In his new book, Horowitz aims to set the record on race straight once and for all. While listing all the ways in which America’s past was virulently racist, Horowitz denies that America was ever a racist country. I shall give a charitable interpretation of what he means by this and why his answers do have plausibility.
Horowitz does list the racist Presidency of Woodrow and his racist policies, the reality of Jim Crowe laws, anti-miscegenation laws that held sway in the United States until the historic Supreme Court decision barring such laws in Loving vs Virginia in 1967. Horowitz does mention that in 1958 ninety-five percent of Americans disapproved of interracial dating.
I would add that beginning in the 1900s there were countless race riots led by whites that targeted and killed blacks. They include the Springfield race riots (1908), the Atlanta race riots (1906), the East St. Louis Riots (1917), and the Tulsa Massacre (1921) which decimated what was known as the Black Wall Street in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Black-owned businesses such as banks, hotels and insurance companies were burned to the ground, blacks murdered.
The racial harm inflicted by whites against blacks in the United States as systemic and mainstream is indisputable. As part of our celebration of our unprecedented republic we can celebrate that our nation is no longer bigoted and systemically racist. We can celebrate that the core principles of our founding documents enabled moral progress. Today, there are no freedoms and rights enjoyed by white Americans not equally enjoyed by blacks.
A charitable interpretation of Horowitz’s view that America was never a racist society is that he means that metaphysically speaking, racism was never endemic to the authentic spirit of America. This means that, given the ideals of equality enshrined in our Founding documents which declare unequivocally the inalienability of the rights of all human beings who were made equal by their Creator, racism was morally offensive to the constitutive spirit of America.
My view is that Horowitz means, also, that even amid racist acts committed against blacks that there were always moral rejoinders and remonstrations against the overtly racist factions that sought to deny blacks full membership in the American republic. This would include the nefarious motives of those who wished to destroy the founding principles of America that, at core, were anti-racist. That people violated these core tenets of equality among all persons is, in effect, a violation of their own moral personalities, and not as Horowitz believes, the spirit and essential character of America.
If interpreted in this manner, then in America Betrayed Horowitz has written a magnificent American mythology that pays tribute to the nation’s commitment to racial equality and justice for all.
Blacks Jews where slaves 10 times native Americans and Chinese as orental treated by wasps bad but they come from Jewish religion before Catholics was created so hate took over because they paid for slaves lost their money for their freedom some slaves made by slave owners bought a female slave mates with her Arabs with caravan sold blacks to England and America so thus Blacks did have it bad but others did also so Jews assimilated but harder for blacks sports got them out so Star Trek changed to asept each other Ahora and Kirt kiss
Thanks, Jack Kerouac
Martin Luther King on Mt Rushmore ??? How woke is that!? I thought David Horowitz hated communists.
I’d say “nice try,” but am not sure that applies, here.
Thank you, Professor Hill and Mr. Horowitz. Absolutely, Martin Luther left for us a legacy of natural law-natural rights, as did many other great historical minds, such as Marcus Tullius Cicero. Coupled with natural law-natural rights is the concept of happiness (Greek: eudaimonia–flourishment). Indeed, the Western tradition has promoted–apparently until recently–moral and intellectual growth, and natural law-natural rights. This promotion has prevailed all under a broader concept of the individual matters, as long as a neighbor is not harmed. Sadly, we seem now to be on a trajectory where many of our self-anointed elites appear to seek a world once described by the Roman poet Virgil…”to rule mankind and make the world obey.” Thus certain “elites” who “know better” rule (or try to), rather than eternal truths enlightening our paths. Finally, perhaps also consistent with Virgil’s ancient vision, the future vision of many “elites” also seems to be built upon a kind of flawed eternal refrain, especially given the nature of man–a creature capable of both good and bad. Thus, human progress is possible, but not utopia. Yet, sadly, utopia continues as the constant quest,
Dr. Hill seems to doubt Horowitz’s stance regarding racism against blacks, but his concern does not extend to racism against other groups.
Racism is endemic to human beings, who naturally prefer to live amongst those who are like themselves, sharing language, culture and history. This is good and acceptable for all races, except whites. That language, culture and shared history correlate strongly with race is undeniable, but whites alone eliminated race as a barrier to inclusion. White racism is not “systemic and mainstream,” but black racism is. Even so, preference for one’s own is good and natural. And whites alone among all the races often define “one’s own” in ways that do not exclude other races.
As for the race riots mentioned, they are all over 100 years past and their histories are infected with anti-white animus used to depict blacks as innocent victims of innate (or “systemic and mainstream”) white evil. I am sick of the victimization of blacks narrative. Blacks must stop elevating “victims” of whites as role models and heroes. Justice is not “social.” Please do not read that statement to mean whites are perfect or have no guilt, but the truth is that wherever blacks live in western societies, they cause tremendous problems with astronomically high rates of financial dependence and violent crime against other races.
Blacks have been welcomed to become “westernkind.” Many have done so, and I welcome these as my brother and sister Americans. I am sorry to report, however, that these brothers and sisters are usually exceptions to the rule, and they often admit as much.
The KKK was the antifa of that era. Let’s fix this first sentence below.
I would add that beginning in the 1900s there were countless race riots led by white DEMOCRATS that targeted and killed blacks. They include the Springfield race riots (1908), the Atlanta race riots (1906), the East St. Louis Riots (1917), and the Tulsa Massacre (1921) which decimated what was known as the Black Wall Street in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Black-owned businesses such as banks, hotels and insurance companies were burned to the ground, blacks murdered.
And they did not just kill blacks, these white democrats killed white republicans for defending and helping blacks from white democrats.
Please explain how this is even relevant or signficant today. Tha was 100+ years ago. We are no longer there.
But what we DO have operant today, and here, is a form of racism that selects “approved” groups and rejects those not on that list. We were making pretty good progress for a long time…. but then along came a rabble rousing troublemaker named Saul….. and he wrote a book ci=uriously titled ‘Rules for Radicals”. His main premise was, and remains, this:
divide any group into factions, set any one or more faction against any other group or groups on any cinvenient basis. Stir the pot from a distanceuntil chaos ensues, as it surely will. The step up and dclare “WE have to=he solutuon to the chaos, trust us and we will iplement it”. The result, subjugation of the entire population whtout waging open war.
Antifa, BLM. now “antisemitism”, etc, are the result. Just as master Saul intended. Many other dividing lines exist, they are not hard to find. Rage is often stirred up in one random grouo agsint any other random group, the pot stiffd again…..
Books will not save America……….and neither will the courts.
The SCOTUS is a bunch of black robed cowards and weaklings.
Your faith in them is highly misguided.
The SCOTUS threw Trump under the bus in 2021 when they refused to hear Trump’s election fraud case.
Roberts and many of the RINO appointees were deathly afraid of Antifa and BLM.
Judge Merchan will incarcerate Trump at Rikers Island and revoke his bail during the appeal process.
Then the RINOS and Deep State will move to install Nikki Haley as the GOP nominee at the upcoming REP convention in a CIA arranged color revolution.
You will see this in only 5 weeks.
You may well be correct–a true turning point in our history, and, by extension, in the history of the world. Then, unhappily, we may witness the truth of the old Bugs Bunny line, “Of course you know, this means war.” It is almost a relief to be old.
Luther wrote in the 16th century. The 95 Theses were posted 1517.
Technically he straddled the fifteenth and sixteenth, but you’re right: his work belongs to the sixteenth. The correction has been made.