The Politics of Bad Faith: The Radical Assault on America's Future [Hardcover]

David Horowitz (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 7, 1998

"The Politics of Bad Faith" brings into the open the refusal of the political Left -- including those who describe themselves as liberals -- to learn from the past, specifically from the checkered history of progressive movements for social justice and equal outcomes. This refusal shapes agendas that Horowitz describes as part of a new "cold war" against America -- a culture war that pits "progressives" and "multi-culturalists" against America's founding principles and ideas. Horowitz traces the radical project from its origins in 19th-century socialism to the disastrous excesses of such current "progressive" causes as political correctness, radical feminism, racial preferences, and what he describes as the nihilistic campaign to "deconstruct" the American idea itself.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

The author of Radical Son returns with a vigorous polemic against the American Left. Showing that liberals and conservatives have sharply contrasting views on the ideas of freedom and equality--and defining these differences in forceful prose--Horowitz goes on to blame the Left for many of what he believes to be America's ills, including multiculturalism, feminism, and economic socialism. "We speak reflexively of leftists as 'progressives,' even though their doctrines are rooted in nineteenth-century prejudice and have been refuted by a historical record of unprecedented bloodshed and oppression," writes Horowitz, an ex-Marxist who is now a staunch right-winger. In an especially controversial chapter, he charges gay-rights activists with creating a political environment that made it almost impossible for the public health community to react effectively to the AIDS crisis. Like the man himself, this book will attract lovers and loathers, depending on their political creed. For conservative readers, he performs the helpful task of clarifying their own convictions; for left-of-center ones, he provides a penetrating glimpse into the conservative mindset. --John J. Miller

From Library Journal

In his fiesty autobiography, Radical Son (LJ 12/96), Horowitz recounted his heady journey from Socialist Left to free-market Right. His new book is billed as a follow-up but basically revisits the same thesis advanced in the earlier work: that the ideals and values of the American Left are antithetical to the American way of life. Even after the collapse of communism, the Left "refuses to die," writes Horowitz. "Despite its dismal record of collusion and failure, the tradition of the Left is intellectually dominant in the American university today in a way that its disciples would never have dreamed possible 30 years ago." In denouncing the influence of the Left, Horowitz critiques the ideas of Eric Hobsbawm, Noam Chomsky, Isaac Deutscher, and other "anti-American" authors. Horowitz is an energetic polemicist, but his book is marred by careless statements, such as the inaccurate claim that Columbia University's "Great Books" course requires that undergraduates read "the avatars, and the fellow travellers of the discredited Left" such as Jurgen Habermas, John Rawls, and Hannah Arendt. Recommended for libraries with collections in conservative thought.?Kent Worcester, Marymount Manhattan Coll., New York
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: Free Press; 1St Edition edition (October 7, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0684850230
• ISBN-13: 978-0684850238
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.3 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (48 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,054,561 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

40 of 44 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars New Insight into the Leftist Mindset, December 1, 1998

By 

Wesley David Wynne [e-mail] (Austin, Texas) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Politics of Bad Faith: The Radical Assault on America's Future (Hardcover)

Observing the catastrophic misdeeds and failures of the revolutionary left from Robespierre's time to the present, former left-wing activist David Horowitz reflects, "One might conclude from these facts that the Left is now no more than a historical curiosity, and the intellectual tradition that sustained it for two hundred years is at an end. But if history were a rational process, mankind would have learned these lessons long ago, and rejected the socialist fallacies that have caused such epic grief." Instead, what exists in many arenas in American life today is the wolf of radical leftism in sheep's clothing, now calling itself "liberal" or "progressive" or "populist" or anything other than what it actually is. Horowitz reveals that in the past twenty years the hard left has come to permeate academia, government bureaucracy, and the Democratic Party. Far from being a "historical curiosity," the radical left is alive and well, travelling incognito.

Horowitz gives a marvelous example of its tenacity in discussing the "liberal" reaction to the recent passage of the California Civil Rights Initiative (CCRI). CCRI officially bars racial discrimination in public employment, education, and contracting. In so doing, it effectively outlaws affirmative action. The ACLU and NAACP went to court to have CCRI declared unconstitutional. Ironically, these groups argued that CCRI - a law banning discrimination - was discriminatory. The paradox begins to make sense once one recognizes that the ACLU, the NAACP, and American "liberals" in general no longer hold that the concept of equality means equality before the law and equality of opportunity. To them, as to the Bolsheviks and Stalinists who went before, equality means equality of outcome. With an Orwellian wink, the "liberal" opponents of CCRI are really saying they want to force California to discriminate in order to end discrimination, in the interest of racial justice.

In an especially perceptive section, Horowitz examines the left's view of the right, and vice versa. People on the left often ask themselves how anyone can not be progressive and not be concerned with social justice and their attempts to better the world. Leftists conclude it is because "their conservative opponents are prisoners of a false consciousness that prevents them from recognizing human possibility . . . opposition to progressive agendas grows naturally from human selfishness, myopia and greed." People on the right look back at the leftists and ask, "How is it possible for progressives to remain so blind to the grim realities their efforts have produced. How can they overlook the crimes they have committed against the poor and oppressed they set out to defend?"

Horowitz suggests that this conflict of visions is rooted in a simple difference: the right attempts desperately to understand the left, but the left makes no comparable effort to understand the right. Indeed, it acts - in bad faith - to ignore and suppress scholarship and opinions that are critical of the left's ideology and historical legacy. Names such as von Mises, Hayek, Kirk, Sowell, Kristol, and Strauss are virtually unknown to the left and are systematically omitted from university curricula. In contrast, names like Marx, Heidegger, Galbraith, Chomsky, Foucault and other leftist intellectuals, while not household terms, are certainly familiar to the educated conservative.

Some people may wonder, why did Horowitz become a conservative, that is, why did he go from one political extreme to the other? In answer, Horowitz would probably deny that his brand of conservatism is "extreme" in any meaningful sense of that term. Essentially, Horowitz became a man of the right because conservatives adhere to two core principles -- the free market and limited government -- which history has vindicated as superior to socialist economic planning and Leviathan state power. Having been raised to believe that the path to communism led to justice, peace and plenty, Horowitz was a leftist. A lifelong process of learning made him a conservative. The Politics of Bad Faith is a memorable exploration into the reasons behind that transformation.

54 of 66 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An essential tool to identify the falsehoods of the left, January 16, 2000

By 

J. P. Ledbetter "Jim Ledbetter Sr." (Ridgecrest, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

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This review is from: The Politics of Bad Faith: The Radical Assault on America's Future (Hardcover)

Among the many dozens of books I have read concerning our founders, their philosophies, their dreams and the various other aspects of our Republic and our Republican Form of Government promised in the Constitution. I find this book by David Horowitz to be perhaps one of the most impressive and educational justifications to abandon the liberal philosophy and move more in line with our founders. It is however, also among the three most difficult I have found to read, comprehend and reach the end of in one-piece. For there is on almost every page some interesting, informative and deep seated principle, piece of knowledge and insight that must be underlined or highlighted, slowing down the process considerably. And one must read with care not to miss the wealth of information in all these words of wisdom. Mr. Horowitz has done a superb job of bringing the reader into a better understanding of the failures of the Marx, Lenin, Stalin, Hitler and other philosophies of the extreme left and many of our left wing representives today. And how anyone who follows these failed policies and ideals must find excuses for the devastation and terrible toll they placed and still inflict upon the community of man. There are three main ideas that I perceived from David. First that the core principles of any political philosophies (in our case the right and left, Republicans and Democrats, conservatives and liberals) of the world, when taken to extremes, all converge at a point resulting in, Tyranny, Despotism, Communism and Slavery. And all these things should be shunned and avoided by Americans. Second that our childhood beliefs, which were to some extent in the past simple brainwashing by listening to our parents could be thrown off, once emancipated, if we chose to. Which David did not, until late in his lifetime after finding out some simple truths the hard way. Yet we also find that that condition has been changed now. And in our current society has become a form of government manipulation and brainwashing that continues on for an entire lifetime. Thereby making us slaves to the politically correct, the socialistic social workers and the puppeteers of an aristocratic political establishment that used handouts to enslave the people, and let us not forget the Media Moguls. Television or the visual screen in every home and movie theatre has become mans greatest enemy and will be the instrument of his downfall because our leaders did not regulate it's use and protect our values, character and virtues from it's assassinating effects. Our lack of vigilance has allowed us to become the underdogs in a struggle for true liberty and freedom, and we are loosing badly. And third that all these leftist philosophies lead to Slavery, and those so-called progressives are the architects of that condition. There are four kinds of people that will approach this book. The first will put it down after a few pages and say...boring! The second will put it down after falling asleep several times somewhere in its interior, due to the intensity and level of intellect of Mr. Horowitz insights. The third will read it and fail to get the point, refuse to get the point or rant and rave at him for being a traitor to their liberal causes. And the fourth will find this book invaluable for identifying the beginning and continuing causes for the liberal virus that infest the American Dream and the world. In any case a classic work by David Horowitz that should be on all reading list.

21 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A superb dissection of Leftist "theology.", November 4, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Politics of Bad Faith: The Radical Assault on America's Future (Hardcover)

David Horowitz has done time at both ends of the political spectrum, and he's just the person to elaborate on the "theological" presuppositions of the Left. Readers of Paul Johnson's _Intellectuals_ will be unsurprised to learn that Horowitz finds a whole lotta claptrap clouding the minds of the secular Left. But his discussions of Leftist "messianism" are a fascinating and insightful dissection of the view that we can bring on the New Age ourselves "merely" by chucking tradition and the accumulated wisdom of our forebears and rebuilding human nature and human society from the ground up. The free market beats the muddle of the "planners" every time. Maybe such mitzvot/commandments as "You shall not murder, you shall not steal" really do represent indispensible "design parameters" for a sustainable human society, and it's not our job to undertake "redesigns?"