David Horowitz presents (bumped)

NOTE: When I posted this on Friday morning, I thought readers would find the video below of interest. That has proved to be true and then some.

In the comments to this post John Drew makes an appearance. Drew appears on pages 9-10 and 88-90 of Kurtz’s book; Drew’s testimony remains available online in “Meeting young Obama.”

I’m taking the liberty of bumping this post in case you may have missed it previously.

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I’ve known David Horowitz for more than 20 years, from the time he came through town with Peter Collier talking about their invaluable book Destructive Generation: Second Thoughts About the Sixties. As Jay Nordlinger has written, David was a leader of the New Left who became a leader of the fighting Reaganite Right: “He is a thinker and a doer, an intellectual and an activist. His mind ranges widely, and so do his books. He has written about politics and policy, of course. But he has also written about matters literary, cultural, and spiritual.” He remains a prolific writer and voluble observer.

Jay has also named David an MVP of American conservatism. Because he comes from the Left, according to Jay, he is exceptionally tough, and cannot be intimidated by his erstwhile brothers-in-arms — particularly on race (about which most intimidation is done). He is battle-hardened, he knows the relevant language, and he is not afraid. Hence he is an MVP.

On Thursday David was in town on his way to give a talk at the College of St. Benedict and St. John’s University in St. Cloud, Minnesota. We had lunch and spoke at length. As David discussed Stanley Kurtz’s recent presentation to David’s Wednesday Morning Club in Los Angeles, it occurred to me that a series of posts featuring matters of interest to David — either from his own work or the work of others — might be of interest to Power Line readers.

As it happens, Kurtz’s presentation is available online, along with David’s introduction, the questions and answers following Kurtz’s presentation, and David’s parting comments. Each is posted here as a separate video.

In his remarks Kurtz gives an overview of the results of his research for Radical-in-Chief: The Untold Story of American Socialism. This is the most effective presentation of Kurtz’s views that I have seen. It is both timely and worth your time.

At his blog, David wrote about Kurtz’s book: “This indispensable work contains a wealth of previously unpublished research and tells the hitherto missing story of the activists who supported America’s Communist enemies in the Sixties and attempted to ‘bring the war home’ through violence in the streets, and who learned through their defeats to pursue the same destructive agendas through stealth and infiltration, and have emerged behind Obama as the dominant force in the Democratic Party.” The “activists” to whom David refers are Obama’s friends and mentors.

Kurtz is a scholar who holds a Ph.D. in social anthropology and a fellowship at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, DC. He is a serious man. If a comparable man of the left had spent a couple of years in the archives to produce a substantial book disclosing the fascist roots and beliefs of George W. Bush, the New York Times would have run a page-one story publicizing the author’s findings. The New York Times Book Review would have assigned the book to Paul Krugman for review and run the review on page one to promote the book. Bob Herbert and Maureen Dowd would have devoted op-ed columns to the book’s explosive revelations of a president’s hidden past. The New York Times Style section would have profiled the author, explaining how this retiring academic type was handling his newfound fame. The man would be a celebrity.

The Times being what it is, of course, it hasn’t even bothered to take issue with Kurtz’s book. Kurtz remains a conservative pundit best known to faithful readers of NRO. The Times and other prominent organs of the left have simply ignored Kurtz and his book, but, as David Horowitz suggests, conservatives should attend to him.

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