The Politics Of Bad Faith

David Horowitz, The Politics Of Bad Faith
New York, New York: The Free Press, 1998

Reviewed by Jack Kettler

Marxism: an inescapable road to tyranny and murder

This recent work by David Horowitz is profound, personal and a passionately argued analysis and refutation of this century's most cherished secular god, the socialist utopian state and the ideology that it is built upon. This work is nothing short of brilliant. While not lengthy, this work by Horowitz is one of the most important of the decade because of its substantiated thesis linking socialist ideology with religious presuppositions. Because socialism is a religiously held ideology, it is able to continue or perpetuate itself generation after generation despite its complete failure to achieve anything positive in history. In essence, socialism is a depravity that resides within the hearts of men, manifesting itself as theft and envy towards one's neighbors. Socialism uses the power and force of government to achieve this perverse goal of theft towards one's neighbor's goods (usually called redistribution).

Horowitz shows how socialism once gaining political power inevitably uses the state to steal from its citizens and tyrannize them and consequently can never hold the allegiance of the people once in power except through brute military and police state power. Socialism is another name or face of Marxism or communism. Socialism has perfected this brute military and police state force into an evil art form. This is the only thing Marxism has perfected, brutal tyranny. If it were not for the religious dogmatic nature of socialism, which Horowitz demonstrates conclusively, this present work in and of itself would constitute a deathblow to the arrogant cult of Marxism. Horowitz gives us a rare look into the ethically depraved secular religious mindset that governs the left.

Those on the left in this country have given themselves to a religion hell bent on using the very freedom they enjoy (a product of the West) to destroy the very foundation of freedom in the West. This is an example of socialism living off the borrowed capital of those whom they are trying to destroy. Socialism always dresses up or covers its real intent or designs with expressive emotional speech utilizing undefined terms such as social justice. In reality, as Horowitz demonstrates repeatedly, socialism has not produced freedom anywhere in history. The author convincingly establishes that the attempts to construct utopian socialist dreams have never produced anything in history except misery and death for untold millions.

Horowitz persuasively connects the socialist ideology or the socialist "idea" with the terror that is the inevitable result of the implementation of this "idea" in history. Speaking of the Marxist revolutionaries in Russia he writes: "Though they had cast an entire nation into a living hell, they had to maintain the liberating truth of the socialist Idea. And because the Idea was no longer believable, they had to make the people believe it by force. It was the socialist idea that created the terror" (107). Most certainly, the results are always the same and predictable whether being Germany's Nazi nationalist socialism, the Soviet (Gulag) Union, bloody Red-China, small time imitators such as Vietnam, the Cambodian "killing fields" or the island prison Cuba, it is always political tyranny. Or, as Horowitz explains this political terror, Stalinism being the most consistent and brutal expression as follows: "Stalinism is not just a possible interpretation of Marxism. In the annals of revolutionary movements, it is the prevailing one" (91).

With millions now dead and millions more living in the most backward of economic conditions and police state oppression, do the socialists admit a connection between their ideology and the results? With all the hallmarks of religious cultism, the socialists continue in denial and to believe (through the most amazing mental gymnastics) in the socialist "dream." The left, like all religious cultists, tolerates no dissent. Horowitz painfully recounts how some of his closest former comrades have in effect disowned him (another hallmark of cultism). Horowitz has laid bare the suicidal depraved nature of socialist hypocrisy and the mindset of destruction slavishly adhered to by those on the left. Those committed to the cult of Marxism are trying to impose a hellish form of penance (destruction of freedom and prosperity) on everyone to assuage their own guilt.

Horowitz establishes the inescapable conclusion that: "The reign of socialist terror is the responsibility of all those who have promoted the socialist Idea, which required so much blood to implement, and then did not work" (108). Thus it can be said, ideas have consequences, and those who promote socialist ideology share the blame along with the enforcers for the death and misery that have resulted everywhere this perversion has been forced upon human beings. Accordingly, this work will absolutely make those on the left gnash their teeth and rend their clothes. Indeed, the chapter "A Radical Holocaust" will agitate the "PC" crowd, but more importantly will flush out the ideological allies of western styled Marxists. This work is truly magnificent. David, give us more.

Mr. Kettler is an ordained Presbyterian Elder and the owner of Undergroundnotes.com where his theological, philosophical and political articles can be read. He has worked in corporate America for over 25 years and is now realizing his dreams as a successful home business entrepreneur. Mr. Kettler can be reached through his business site at: http://www.internationalhomebusinessonline.com. Permission is hereby granted to reprint this article as long as my web site is retained in the biographical information.