>From the Publisher
"David Horowitz has had a controversial, complex, and influential career.
Born into a communist family, he became one of the founders and intellectual
leaders of the New Left in the 1960s. Then, as the result of a tragedy that
was both personal and political, be became profoundly disillusioned with the
radical movement. In the 1980s he began a second career as a conservative
intellectual." Left Illusions follows Horowitz's intellectual path from
red-diaper baby to conservative political strategist. Complementing his
acclaimed autobiography, Radical Son, the selections in Left Illusions range
from his first book on the New Left, published over forty years ago, to his
most recent writings on the war against terror. Twenty-eight of the pieces
have not been published in book form or were published in books that are no
longer in print.
Table of Contents
Preface
Introduction
Author's Note
Acknowledgments
I Beginnings
1 Prologue 3
2 Idols 6
3 Imagination and Perception 15
II The New Left
4 A Generation of Silence 25
5 New Politics 29
6 Hand-Me-Down Marxism 34
7 Solzhenitsyn and the Radical Cause 38
8 The Passion of the Jews 46
9 Telling It Like It Wasn't 72
III Second Thoughts
10 Questions 85
11 Left Illusions 102
12 My Vietnam Lessons 110
13 Semper Fidel: The Battle over Nicaragua 117
14 The Road to Nowhere 126
IV Reflections on Race
15 Memories in Memphis 151
16 Liberals and Race 161
17 Ten Reasons Why Reparations Are a Bad Idea - and Racist, Too 170
18 Racism and Free Speech 182
19 Conservatives and Race 194
V The Gramscian Moment
20 The Intellectual Class War 207
21 Missing Diversity 214
22 Wake Up America: My Visit to Vanderbilt 222
23 The Era of Progressive Witch-Hunts 230
VI Progressive Witch-Hunts
24 Carl Bernstein's Communist Problem and Mine 245
25 Et Tu, John? 256
26 Michael Lind and the Right-Wing Cabal 271
27 Defending Christopher Hitchens 288
VII The Post-Communist Left
28 Marx's Manifesto: 150 Years of Evil 299
29 From Red to Green 308
30 V-Day, 2001 315
31 AIDS: Political Origins of an Epidemic 319
32 An American Killing Field 330
33 The Meaning of Left and Right 336
VIII The Art of Political War
34 The Art of Political War 343
35 How to Beat the Democrats 356
IX The War on Terror
36 Know Your Enemy 369
37 Port Huron and the War on Terror 376
38 Clinton's Pardoned Bombers 384
39 Why Israel Is the Victim 393
40 Can There Be a Decent Left? 409
41 Alienation in a Time of War 416
42 Neo-Communism 425
X Envoi
43 Roads Not Taken 441
Notes 445
Bibliography 465
Index