Chateau Lloyd

I first encountered David Horowitz through his "Heterodoxy" newspaper, which was distributed around campus in the 1990s.  It was a breath of fresh air, and part of the intellectual current that pushed me into a more independent - and often conservative - point of view.

I've always been something of a reactionary, and while I entered college as a Democrat, by the time I graduated, I was deeply dissatisfied with the party, which was already abandoning its principles to political expediency.

I next encountered Horowitz's work online, and regular read him for many years, but it was not until comparatively recently that I purchased Radical Son, his autobiography first published in 1998.  Horowitz was a classic "red diaper" baby, raised from birth by his Jewish Communist parents to carry out the long-awaited revolution.

In a sense, it's a secular conversion story, but what sets it apart is the penetrating analysis of the mentality behind the politics of the New Left.  Marxism is a rival religion, not an economic or political program, which is why people who believe in it have a quasi-religious zeal.  Horowitz laid out very clearly that the reason why so many American Jews "lived like Episcopalians but voted like Puerto Ricans" was because the synagogue had been replaced by the Party committee room.

This is still true today.

Many people of his generation followed the same path, and American popular culture reflected this drift through TV shows like Family Ties, where a hippy couple end up with apolitical or even conservative children, all the while living the middle class lifestyle they once condemned.

Having found his new faith, he carried it forward with zeal, and it is interesting to note what while many 80s conservatives turned against Trump, he instead embraced him.

Horowitz was a minor influence on my intellectual development, but an important one.  The seeds planted by reading his paper in the dorm cafeteria took deep roots and have remained with me ever since.  May he rest in peace.