Paige McKenzie, NewsMax.com
Thursday, Dec. 4, 2003

In his new book, "Left Illusions," David Horowitz, a former leftist who resides in the state often referred to as Mexifornia, outlines how the left has sold a multicultural bill of goods to Americans.

He shows how the multicultural mission is antithetical to its stated purposes and details how this multicultural religion, another extension of the Marxism, has stealthily made its way into American thinking through multiple venues. By infiltrating with another insidious fantasy the halls of government at every level - along with the movie theater, the media, the work place and particularly the classrooms - the radical left has taken control of America’s culture, political language and national identity.

He writes:

It is a culture that is the crucial factor in shaping the American identity, not an ethnicity or race. An American identity cannot exist outside an American culture. … The left’s multicultural offensive is an attack on America’s national culture, not on its racial or ethnic composition. "Inclusion" and "diversity" are not the real agendas of the left - America has always honored both principles, however imperfectly. The idea of the melting pot is an American idea. The left, however, has never been interested in a “melting pot” that would assimilate diversity ethnicities into an American culture.

Even in regard to diverse cultures, multiculturalism is less about the appreciation of those than it is about the theology of gender, race and class oppression, writes Horowitz.

As Jamie Glazov, editor of "Left Illusions," writes, “In the new multicultural version of the radical vision, racial and ethnic status replace class status as a political trump card.”

By insisting on preserving within America the foreign roots, cultures and languages of each race and ethnicity, the left is using the multicultural religion to destroy the bonds that tie people together as Americans.

The Ugly Anti-American

As an example, America is the only nation whose P.C.-minded citizens and media regularly malign their own nation. Though the French, Germans and others have no problem with proclaiming their countries’ superiority over everyone else, Americans who do so are labeled as bigoted, arrogant, ugly Americans. Europeans take pride in their countries and in viewing them as superior; politically correct Americans heap contempt upon ours and agree with the Europeans.

Although at campuses such as Berkeley it is easy to find protests against the Pledge of Allegiance or the American flag, one would be hard-pressed to find a Frenchman protesting the singing of the French national anthem.

Yet whereas one can move to France and never be French, or move to Germany and never be German, anyone who moves to the U.S. can, if he accepts the American idea of freedom, become American. It is this possibility that made America the melting pot of the world, its appeal bringing from all other parts of Earth those who hunger to make the American idea of freedom their own.

But this is the very idea to which the left is so hostile, Horowitz explains. “[Their] agenda is the deconstruction of America’s national identity and culture and particularly the American narrative of inclusion and freedom. The multiculturalism narrative is not about the assimilation of minorities into the crucible of American freedom, but their liberation from American ‘oppression.’

'Diabolical'

“It is perfectly diabolical: in the name of diversity and inclusion, the left has set out to destroy the framework of individualism and the rule of law that make diversity and inclusion possible.”

Horowitz began to discover just how embedded the multicultural religion is in America when he attempted to run paid ads in campus papers on why paying reparations for slavery would harm blacks, and asking who could be more American than black Americans. At least 40 papers refused to accept Horowitz’s ads, and many attempts were made to burn, steal or otherwise destroy the papers that did print them.

Apparently lost on these students attempting such censorship, supposedly some of the best and brightest students in America, was the similarity of their actions to the burning of abolitionist papers by pro-slavery groups in the 1800s and the book burnings that occurred in Nazi Germany before and during World War II.

“Half a century after the defeat of Nazism, our universities distinguish by blood and equate blood with culture. Sixty years after the Nuremberg Race Laws, we ask our students to check off their bloodlines and to act accordingly. The justification for this submergence of the individual into the tribe is the same as it was under fascism. The individual is a function - politically, morally and historically of genetic and cultural collectivities.”

The Campus Thought Police

Lost on the left is the hypocrisy of “celebrating” diversity of race and ethnicity, but eliminating diversity of ideas and thought. On the campus of Bowling Green University, the director of women’s studies told the student newspaper, “We forbid any course that says we restrict free speech.” Asks Horowitz, “What could be more Orwellian?”

As Horowitz explains, the leftists who tenured after the 1960s have succeeded into turning what are supposed to be America’s educational institutions into political battlegrounds and “agencies of social change.”

“How does an institution that publicly promotes itself as ‘liberal’ and ‘inclusive,’ as dedicated to ‘diversity’ and the ‘free exchange of ideas’ devolve into such a political monolith?”

His experiences at America’s universities revealed innumerable examples of the overt discrimination against any organization that stood against the political and multicultural left. These injustices prompted Horowitz to begin the push for an Academic Bill of Rights, legislation that would “break the monopoly of the left on campuses by establishing intellectual diversity.” Though Horowitz says this campaign has increased awareness of the discrimination and censorship at America’s campuses, it continues to be a daunting battle.

“We’ve had small victories,” Horowitz tells NewsMax. “We actually a had a leftist professor apologize to his students for suggesting that Republicans get out of his class. That was at Duke.”

Horowitz notes that of all the campuses San Francisco State University and Brown are probably the most extreme violators of academic freedom, though improvements are being made.

“I won’t be impressed until 40 percent of our professors in universities are conservative,” he tells NewsMax.

Although some, particularly in the media, point to the recent pulling by CBS of the revisionistic Reagan movie and the growing support for Mel Gibson’s movie "The Passion of Christ" as the progress of conservatives in gaining input into America’s cultural landscape, Horowitz disagrees.

“Don’t fool yourself,” says Horowitz. “This is a large mountain to climb. I think conservatives have begun to flex their muscles in the culture. But the culture is still dominated by the left.

“When I see a serious conservative film made and distributed and given an award, I’ll be impressed. Yet let’s not celebrate the victory when we’re only beginning the fight."

Next: Part four, "progressive" witch hunts. Previous installment: Horowitz Exposes Leftists' Racism.

Note: You can get David Horowitz's must-read "Left Illusions" free with NewsMax Magazine: Click here.

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