This evening I had the singular pleasure of hearing David Horowitz speak at Emory University. Mr. Horowitz, who is shorter, louder and more offensive in real life than he is on the Dennis Miller Show, describes himself as "a nationally known author and lifelong civil rights activist...an outspoken opponent of censorship and racial preferences, and a defender of the rights of minorities and other groups under attack -- including the rights of blacks, gays, women, Jews, Muslims, Christians and white males."
Mr. Horowitz is well-known for his vocal opposition to reparations for slavery and lately for his efforts to expose the systematic "purging" of conservatives from university faculties as well as his attempts to correct this evil scheme by promoting his Academic Bill of Rights. But let's not get into all that right now.
Sometimes, when one wants to shoot down a point that another has made, one might make fun of that person or otherwise talk badly about them in an attempt to discredit them on a personal level before giving the slightest consideration to the weight of the person's argument. I find that tactic cheap and obnoxious, and the personal mockery is often followed by a weak counterargument to the actual topic in question.
But I'd like to do it anyway, because David Horowitz is such a jolly but scary little guy and after two hours of him, my brain is so cooked, I'm not making any arguments. Not that I don't have arguments to make. Those will be coming in a series of installments to be written when I'm less exhausted.
So, for now some brief impressions of the real live Horowitz show.
Upon arriving at Emory with my friend Karen, a current Emory graduate student, I discovered that we were both grossly underdressed for the occasion. Perhaps conservative students wears suits to show how conservative they are. Or how big and all growns up they are with their toughness and their no-nonsense worldview. Beats the shit out of me.
Anyway... we browsed through the Students for Adademic Freedom booklets that had been placed in all the pews, and Karen seemed very excited to hear about the injustices that she's been suffering at the hands of liberals. She even had a major breakthrough when she realized that her lab experiments have probably been failing because she hasn't used a single conservative chemical. Good work Karen.
We knew the show was about to start when Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start the Fire" was cranked up on the speakers. (Karen: "Oh my! I feel all filled up with youthful vigor!") When the inspirational music ended, a representative from the Emory College Republicans got up to do introductions and began with a quote from Rush Limbaugh where Limbaugh said something not nice about liberals, if you can fathom that.
Except...the kid didn't really introduce anyone. What he introduced was a series of sound clips of liberals saying things that conservatives don't like (I can't remember what. I know Howard Dean's scream was in there), all spoken over more guitar-heavy rock-ish music (the kind that pumps you up to go declare war on somone). At some point the liberal clips were replaced with clips of Horowitz' voice...the only clip I really understood was, "These people want to kill you." Who wants to kill you, I don't know. Terrorists I guess. Or maybe liberals. That line gets blurry sometimes.
So...the audience was talking and looking around during this whole sound byte series. It seemed like smoke should pour onto the stage and Horowitz should run in and start rocking out ("like a Meatloaf concert," said Karen), but he didn't. I bet he doesn't run.
Eventually another college republican kid introduced a law school professor who said some nice things about the value of being an open-minded and patient listener. He seemed like a good enough guy though perhaps a bit disoriented... and he clearly he didn't know anything about Horowitz (he needed to check through his notes to find the title of one of Horowitz' books). He also described Horowitz as having been "raised by communists" as one might describe fictional children as having been raised by wolves.
Finally, Horowitz emerged from behind the mammoth podium where he'd been hiding. But as I said, I'll leave discussion of his weirdness for another day. I will say that he's not a bad speaker. He has a sort of gracious demeanor and I found him almost charming up until the point when he said, "Democrats have their bootheals on the necks of poor black and hispanic students!"
A few more choice bits from the evening:
"Contemporary liberals are only liberal about hard drugs and sex."
"It's dangerous when a great power does not use its military."
"What's not to like about this war?"
"Every major press is a subsidiary of the Democratic party."
"The left says they care about poor black children...every corrupt school board and city council is patrolled by the Democratic party...they are responsible for everything that's wrong with schools...they have their boot heals on the necks of poor black and hispanic students!"
"The McCarthy era was freer than any academic institution today."
"The Muslim world is going to have to come out of the 7th century and at least into the 15th." (Horowitz has a big, big problem with Islam. Or with "Islamo-fascists," as he says. I should also note that during the Q&A, a student questioned Mr. Horowitz what this term meant and not receiving a satifactory answer, he finally blurted out, "Who are the Islamo-fascists?" Later, when we were walking out, I overheard the student saying that as he was asking his questions, one of the free-speech advocating college republicans stood up, put his hand on the student's shoulder, and said, "I think you need to sit down and stop asking questions." I'm sure the college republican would say that the questioner had been at the mike for too long, though I don't think the same thing happened when a young woman droned on about how "incensed" she is with "smug, smarmy" liberals.)
"There is no distinction between Sunni Muslims and Al-Qaeda." (That's quite a problem considering that Sunni Muslims make up about 35% of the population of Iraq. It was about the time Horowitz made that comment that I noticed that the kid in front of me was asleep with head bobbing back in my direction.)
"I am liberal. I am tolerant." (Ooooh, ok. Fabulous then.)
Horowitz also has a little issue with Palestinians. I mean, everyone does I suppose, but not everyone refers to them as "Nazis reborn" or "the Nazi virus revived."
He also directly blamed the failure to prevent 9-11 on Bill Clinton, Al Gore, and Jamie Gorelick. What happend to blaming 9-11 on the people who did it--Al-Qaeda? Maybe we only do that when the Bush administration's responsibilities are called into question.
Horowitz. Not. Good. More later.
--Heather
Comments