The Figure in the Carpet Will Be Online Only in 2013
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
november 2012 the vol. XI no. 3 FIgure in thecarpet Editor's Notes The Figure in the Carpet Will Be Online Only in 2013 Starting with the February 2013 issue, the Speaking of change, due to the high Figure in the Carpet will be available sole- level of interest in our Ken Burns event, Advisory Board ly as an online publication. This change which will take place at 5 pm on Friday, is not only the result of rising costs and a November 16, we are changing the venue. NaNcy Berg olivia limited budget, but also a response to the Please note the Burns event will take place Professor of Hebrew lahs-goNzales Language and Literature Director, potential of digital technologies. at Washington University’s 560 music Sheldon Art Galleries center at 560 trinity avenue in KeN BotNicK As I noted in the November 2011 Edi- Professor of Art steveN Meyer university city. There should be ad- Director of Kranzenberg Associate Professor tor’s Notes, we now print over 8,750 cop- Book Studio of English ies of the Figure, and we mail almost 6,000 equate parking available. Burns will geNe DoBBs aNNe Posega receive the International Humanities BraDforD Head of Special of these to individuals on our mailing list. Executive Director, Collections, Although we have tried to economize by Medal and for his acceptance speech will Jazz St. Louis Olin Library reformatting to a larger size to reduce show clips from and discuss three up- elizaBeth chilDs Qiu XiaoloNg coming documentaries: Dustbowl, The Etta and Mark Steinberg Novelist and Poet mailing costs, the numbers on the mail- Professor of Art History Central Park Five, and The Roosevelts. Chair of Art History JosePh schraiBMaN ing list fortunately grow and the cost of Professor of Spanish providing them our service unfortunately This event is free and open to the pub- Mary-JeaN cowell lic. Please contact The Center for the Associate Professor of heNry schvey grows even more. But we see this change Performing Arts Professor of Drama as an opportunity to strengthen and ex- Humanities at [email protected] Phyllis grossMaN waNg NiNg or 314-935-5576 for additional informa- Retired Financial Professor of English, pand the Figure by adding more graphics, Executive, LA66 Tsinghua University having interactive features, and generally tion. Michael a. KahN JaMes Attorney, Author and wertsch enriching our content in ways we can- We promise to deliver our Figure to Adjunct Professor of Law Marshall S. Snow not do now. We will be able to commu- your email box. Please send your email Professor of Arts zuraB KaruMiDze and Sciences nicate with you more quickly, send out address to [email protected] by Write, Republic Associate Vice Chancellor of Georgia for International Affairs timely updates and alerts, and hear from December 15th, 2012. We hope we will Peter Kastor you more directly. We believe our online reach more readers with a better, more Associate Professor of Ex Officio version of the Figure will serve you even vibrant publication that will be less costly. History and American eDwarD s. Macias Culture Studies Program Provost & Exec VC for better as a reading audience. We loved We appreciate your support. Academic Affairs chris KiNg doing our print version of the Figure as Editorial Director, gary s. wihl The St. Louis American Dean of Arts much as many of you loved reading it. But & Sciences we think we will love our online Figure even more, and if you give it a chance, we think you will too. Jian Leng Associate Director The Center for the Humanities Published by The CenTer for The humaniTies aT WashingTon universiTy in St. louis visiT our blog siTe aT http://Cenhum.arTsCiWusTl.edu/Pubs/blog.hTm The Common Reader style and become a memory in the muse- Rich Progressives Ride to the Rescue um of historical antiquities. In my father’s Review of heavy security, and some colleges will not paradise there would be no strangers. No permit him speak at all. And as he notes one who felt like an outsider, alienated The New Leviathan: How the Left-Wing in Radical Son, some of his right-wing col- from others and at odds with themselves” Money Machine Shapes American (emphasis Horowitz, Radical Son). But as Politics and Threatens America’s Future leagues, knowing his past, do not entirely trust him. So, he has real but uneasy com- with any obsession, suppose you have sec- By David Horowitz and Jacob Laksin fort in his new home. ond thoughts? Horowitz states about his ex-colleagues on the Left: “To them I can Crown Forum, 2012, 309 pages It might be said that Horowitz, like never become one who felt what they felt, including index, notes, and appendices other “converts” of his type, has an axe to dreamed what they dreamed, suffered, and grind with the Left, and brings the zeal of 1. The apostasy of Second Thoughts learned through pain. Seeing me as one of the reformed sinner to the scourge of his them would pose questions too humbling David Horowitz is one of the Right’s former “sinful” self in renouncing all of to face: What second thoughts might they most energetic and prolific polemicists. Satan the Lefty’s works, as it were. This have had too? What illusions would they He has written or edited well over twenty is a typical criticism and, on its face, not have to give up now?” Whether one likes books. He was a red diaper baby, having unjustified. It is one thing to be a politi- Horowitz the Leftist, who wrote screeds parents who were communists, Americans cal fanatic, to become disillusioned, and against the FBI for Ramparts magazine in by birth, Russian Jews by heritage; and he simply walk away from politics entirely the 1960s, or Horowitz the Right-winger, was an ardent Marxist and New Leftist rad- as if leaving a collection of hopped-up who writes screeds condemning the idea ical as a young man until the mid-1970s. rats clawing at each other in a maze that of reparations for slavery and the politics He describes his parents, his upbringing none of them realizes is indeed a maze. of the global warming movement, he is as and his years as a leftist in Radical Son: It is another thing to do the Saul-to-Paul engaging a reflection of the human condi- A Journey Through Our Times (1997). transformation and become the enemy tion and the complexity of having second Horowitz joins such disparate figures as you once despised with all your moral be- thoughts as someone who has undergone James Burnham, Sidney Hook, Roger Si- ing. It is one thing to quit a war as some- a sex-change operation. mon, and Whittaker Chambers, among thing absurd; it is another to go from the others, who started out as Communists or Union to the Confederacy, from the Allies 2. How the Left Won america by ardent Marxists but wound up as conser- to the Axis. However, “converts” tell us Winning the rich vatives. In fact, Horowitz closely identi- much about the nature of obsession and David Horowitz sums up the reach of fied with Chambers in Radical Son: “I was about its necessity as a form of engage- “The New Leviathan" of his title in this like Whittaker Chambers [of my parents’ ment and belief: life is not about abandon- way: "The Left has created a powerful in- generation]—a young man inspired by the ing obsession as a proud cynic, too pure frastructure inspired by a compelling nar- high-minded passions of the Left who had to be tainted by its excesses and blun- rative, rarely challenged, in which they are broken through to the dark underside of ders, its contradictions and hypocrisies. cast as 'progressives,' as noble advocates of the radical cause. Like Chambers, I had Life is about finding the right obsession, the underdog 'speaking truth to power,' encounters with totalitarian forces that that which clarifies the world for you or selflessly standing up for the economically involved betrayal and death, and even a clarifies slightly more than it deludes. The disadvantaged and the politically disen- Soviet spy. Like him, I had been demon- “convert” can tell us about the heart of franchised. The reality… is quite differ- ized for my second thoughts by a culture darkness that drives all obsessions: he had ent. While claiming the mantle of a for- sympathetic to the Left and hostile to its discovered “the dark underside” of the the-people populism, progressives have adversaries. I, too, had to face the savage grand cause of Leftist politics. As Horow- operated as a moneyed elite, deploying personal attacks by my former comrades itz wrote about his father’s communism: the war chests of billionaires to redraw the that were designed to warn others to re- “Political utopians like my father had a political map to increase their power and main within the fold”. You cannot blame a master plan. They were going to trans- expand the role of the state with negative man who sees his apostasy as being heroic form the world from the chaos we knew consequences for working Americans and or honorable. After all, he paid a price for into a comfortable and friendly place. In the poor." Horowitz rightly points out it, a price most people, untroubling the the happy future they dreamed about, that the Left has always complained about waters with their convenient conformity there would be an end to grief from life being outspent by the Right in pushing its to whatever dominates their environment, out of control, life grinding you down and causes, that the Koch Brothers (the cur- are not willing to pay.