#31: The Boring, Abwhorent David Horowitz

Two quotations may serve to describe the political maturation of this writer, activist and commentator.

-- From a 1969 essay: "Liberation is [not] merely a national concern. The dimension of the struggle, as Lenin and the Bolsheviks so clearly saw, is international: its road is the socialist revolution."

January 2001: "What about the debt blacks owe to America--to white America--for liberating them from slavery?" At the same time, Horowitz managed to claim that blacks benefited from slavery and to accuse a black historian of racism for questioning his claims. Horowitz edits the online magazine FrontPage and has authored such books as Hating Whitey and Other Progressive Causes; Liberal Racism; The Feminist Assault on the Military; Noam Chomsky's Jihad Against America; How the Left Undermined America's Security; Unholy Alliance: Radical Islam and the American Left.

With millions in funding from the Bradley, Olin, Scaife (#21) and other right-wing billionaires' foundations, Horowitz pursues a multitude of exciting projects. A top target is the campaign for reparations for slavery, a campaign Horowitz calls "racist." Horowitz's legal arm, the Individual Rights Foundation (IRF), represents professionals who see themselves as victims of affirmative action policies.

Since 9/11, Horowitz has been specially busy smearing liberals as traitors. The antiwar marchers in Washington, DC, in October 2002 were "100,000 Communists" "dedicated to America's destruction," "a movement of, by and for America's enemies within," whose agenda is to "weaken America's defenses" and "force America's defeat in the war with terror." (On the weakening of the military and the pre-9/11 neglect of terrorism, see, for example, Rumsfeld, Cheney and Rice.) As Kurt Nimmo wrote in CounterPunch, "Because David Horowitz wanted to destroy his country when he was a Marxist some thirty odd years ago does not mean all progressives desire to do the same now."

#26: Michael Ledeen: Improving on Mussolini

Ledeen has been called the driving philosophical force behind the neoconservative movement and (by me) "the most influential and unabashed warmonger of our time." A resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute (#7), contributing editor at National Review and former Pentagon, State Department and White House consultant under Reagan (when his Israeli intelligence contacts were used to help broker the illegal Iran-contra affair), Ledeen is often quoted by top Bush officials, including Cheney, Rumsfeld and former Under Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz. But they don't quote quotes like these--at least not in public: In March 2003, Ledeen, a leading and longtime proponent of the invasion of Iraq--and of Iran, Syria and no doubt other countries yet to be named--told a forum that "the level of casualties [in Iraq] is secondary" because "we are a warlike people...we love war."

He has written that "Change--above all violent change--is the essence of human history"; "the only way to achieve peace is through total war"; and "The purpose of total war is to permanently force your will onto another people." He was quoted approvingly by National Review Online editor Jonah Goldberg as saying, "Every ten years or so, the United States needs to pick up some small crappy little country and throw it against the wall, just to show the world we mean business."

In April 2003--one month into the Iraq war--Ledeen gave an address titled "Time to Focus on Iran," and declared, "the time for diplomacy is at an end." Ledeen's attacks on Iran, even when Iran was assisting the US, "helped keep the Bush administration from seeking any rapprochement with Tehran," wrote William Beeman of the Pacific News Service in 2003. "Were it in Ledeen's hands, we would invade Iran today."

Most Americans have never heard of Michael Ledeen, Beeman noted, but if the US "ends up in an extended shooting war throughout the Middle East, it will be largely due to his inspiration."

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