Is this a Double Standard?

[I offer deep and abiding gratitude to David Horowitz for featuring this essay at his website, Frontpagemag.com, in April.]

By the time the 1960's came to a close, I was in fourth grade, all of nine years old. I recall that the '60s scared me: that the Black Panthers, assassinations, riots, and even the epileptic screaming of Janice Joplin simply frightened me. Having been born in the middle of a war, I found Vietnam scary as well, though the allure of combat teased not only my imagination but the backyard play-fantasies of my New Jersey playmates (till I moved to New Hampshire in 1968). And there, in second grade, in what may have been my first gesture of bravado, I recall telling classmate Timmy Tyrrell, who already was planning on being a minister (his whole family was devoted to that goal), that I wanted to grow up to be a "heroin addict," a boast I completed with a pantomime of shooting up: arm on my desk, sleeve rolled up, pencil heading deep into my vein - and Mrs. Barden nearby. I would join the rebellion, I declared, and I'll have my hair as long as Rapunzel's.

Recently I've been reliving those times, in the trenchant and matter-of-fact analysis of David Horowitz' autobiography, Radical Son. It is a revealing book, prophetic in its disclosure, giving me an anchor for my wind-tossed anxieties about a decade deemed by some "the best of times."

I share this because I am more certain than ever that the causes for my anxiety have not been rebuffed or destroyed. The radicalism that pervaded the '60s remains, with the '60s youth now in places of political and social prominence, and their children and grandchildren, each breast fed on the idealized protestations of their '60s progenitors, now seeking their own Age of Aquarius. Horowitz reminds me of this, and though I am intellectually mature enough to rein in my emotion (most of the time), anxiety still wakes the soul at night. They are here.

They of course, are those who cannot and will not permit dissent from the party line that a "redemptive future", as Horowitz puts it, is possible; a future without poverty, inequality or any perceived injustice. This future is about emancipating humanity from the fears imposed by the Church; about liberating people from the incorporated capitalist greed bent on creating an unquenchable thirst in consumers; about tossing off the common sense shackles of sexual and artistic prudence.

Go back with me, for a moment, and relive the 1960s' radical beliefs about revolution in America. For example, relive the revolutionary conviction that criminals, particularly black ones, were really acting as liberators; that they were merely acting out as repressed people against an oppressive "system"; against "the Man." Recall that the Black Panthers were not merely victims, but liberators, fighting with clenched fist the classism and injustices of a tyrannical white enterprise. The Weather Underground, violent and aggressive; the property-smashing protesters in American university towns; even the Vietnamese communists exterminating the Party's transgressors; each of these received the compassion, mercy, even the all-out support, of American leftists from coast to coast. For these eruptive and confrontational movements, unavoidable according to Marxist-Hegelian theory, were allegedly symptomatic of a repressive, soon-to-die capitalist colossus.

So Horowitz tells in truly chilling detail and - with what cannot be described in any other phrase - he tells with nothing short of bravery. For Horowitz himself was a revolutionary, born into an American family of strident and organized Communists. But after decades of mounting a truly impressive assault on America with revolutionary zeal, Horowitz saw his ideals crumble into the realities of the gulags of the Soviet Union, and the failed socialist economies everywhere Marx was embraced.

Perhaps the single most important line in Horowitz' work is this, which he describes as the subtext for defending the left's moral failures: "No matter how bad my actions seem, my heart is in the right place." This defense, Horowitz argues, was deployed by leftists everywhere as they were confronted by the violent, murderous realities their actions and ideas supported.

It is an important line to remember.

THEY ARE HERE

Sunday, April 24, 2005, in typical fashion, Frank Rich of the New York Times writes of House Speaker Tom Delay that (and I quote Mr. Rich), "It's a lie to argue, as Tom DeLay did last week, that such a judiciary is the 'left's last legislative body.'" One wonders what Mr. Rich means. It is never a "lie" to argue, no matter how one argues. It is a lie to deliberately tell a mistruth. Arguing is not lying. Lying is lying.

Here's Tom Delay's full remark: "And of course, the leftists hate it when we attack the left's last legislative body." That Delay is referring to the judiciary is inescapable. But that it is a lie is hardly accurate; nor is it an argument, as Rich wrongly suggests. If anything, it looks like an incontrovertible truth: it is transparent that the left indeed does hate it when Delay (and others of his ilk) attacks the judiciary. Just look at how the leftist media have reacted to his remarks. They've aimed their guns at him. He's a "liar."

I share this small item for a very important reason. It reveals that the left, embodied by Mr. Rich, is blind to its double standard.

That double standard is this: The left rarely, if ever, inquires why the right, particularly the religious right, is so disenchanted with "the system." Moreover, the right is never offered the rather easy out granted to the left: Tom Delay, for example, will never be acquitted for his 'lies' with the merciful "we disagree with Mr. Delay's actions and words, but his heart is in the right place."

No, Rich never inquires, and I believe he has never inquired, why Delay and his colleagues feel so outraged by the US judiciary. Or why conservatives feel "oppressed"; or why radical opponents of abortion (the few that exist) have taken up arms and shot abortion doctors. Are conservatives' hearts in the right place? Never!

That Mr. Rich (and virtually every leftist pundit in this country) has never granted such tolerant understanding of the right indicates the clear line of demarcation between the two political wings. Leftist writers are much more willing to discern the heart of Osama bin Laden or Saddam Hussein than the person seated next to them on the train (unless that person be a member of MoveOn.org).

In Radical Son, Horowitz spells it out plainly for all to see. He recounts how the leftist media reacted to his defection from the left: with an onslaught of lies, vitriol and scorn. And he recalls how Garry Wills, protegé of right-wing William F. Buckley, was treated by the right when he defected for the left: He was treated like a human being deserved to be treated, with respect.

Horowitz also makes the claim that pundits of the left are expert in writing, not brilliant arguments, but brilliant indictments. Frank Rich's piece on Sunday, like most of his work, proves Horowitz' point. But Horowitz makes a more chilling claim, and I quote:

"Lenin said that the object of political debate was not to win a debate but to wipe one's opponent from the face of the earth."

Apparently Lenin and his distant relatives don't give a damn about whether one's heart is in the right place.

It's that sort of "understanding" of the revolutionary spirit that keeps me up at night.

Peace.

©Bill Gnade 2005/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.