By Brian Carnell

Tuesday, October 26, 1999

On its web site |The Nation| decided to run an old piece from W.E.B. Dubois from the 1950s proclaiming American democracy dead. Horowitz blasts The Nation for failing to put the article in context -- soon after Dubois wrote his article, the Soviet Union invaded Hungary, China started the Great Leap Forward, and Martin Luther King, Jr. showed democracy was alive and well in the United States by completely transforming the political and cultural landscape.

An interesting thing about the running of DuBois' article is the schizophrenia on the Left about the Cold War. On the one hand conservative attempts to set the record straight on Cold War history are still attacked as red baiting at best or met with claims of irrelevance. On the other hand, the Left finds it extremely difficult to make a solid break with the pro-Communist Left precisely because it was embraced by so many in the movement.

Clearly, however, Horowitz goes way overboard when he writes that "the leftist faith is one long continuous assault on the foundations of what is decent and good in the modern world." Although I share many of his views of the Left, it is precisely such sweeping statements that tend to marginalize Horowtiz even with those who otherwise might be receptive to his views.

Source:

The Same Old Left. David Horowitz, FrontPageMag.Com, October 26, 1999.

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