The Art of Political War and Other Radical Pursuits

Politics is war, but in America one side is doing all the shooting-liberals. Shell-shocked conservatives blame their failures on the media or unscrupulous opponents, but they refuse to name the real culprit: themselves. In a new book that will shatter the complacency of establishment conservatives, David Horowitz shows how Bill Clinton's generation, having mastered the art of political war, has spent the last ten years clobbering conservatives in and out of government. The best-selling author of Hating Whitey and Other Progressive Causes has the strategy to fight back.

The Democratic Party's recent electoral dominance is due not to its theft of Republican issues, but to its superior grasp of the nature of political war. Horowitz opens his book with the six principles of politics that liberals understand and conservatives do not. He next warns against the essentially liberal inclination to supervise the lives of a "helpless" citizenry. This "Puritan impulse" promises shipwreck for conservatives who fail to keep liberty as their watchword.

The success of the left is nowhere more evident than in the politics of race. Revisiting a recent controversy in which Time branded him a "real live bigot," Horowitz probes an ugly strain of left-wing racism and reflects on the prospects for true racial justice. He concludes with a profile of the radical mentality-hidden but real-of the American left. In 1972, the bomb-throwers took their battle from the streets into the McGovern campaign and became the activist core of the Democratic Party. A genuine ideological left thus entered the heart of America's political culture.

Once a notorious radical himself, David Horowitz understands the mind of the left better than any other conservative. The Art of Political War is an indispensable guide for the battles of the campaign season and beyond.

The first half of this manifesto is a blunt, savvy, Machiavellian manual on the art of political campaigning that Republicans and Democrats alike may ignore at their own risk. Horowitz (Radical Son, etc.), former 1960s leftist turned prominent conservative, urges Republicans to go on the offensive, to take back issues that Clinton Democrats have co-opted, to reach out to working people and minorities, and to master images, symbols and sound bites as the Democrats have done. The book's incendiary second half, gathering articles of which many originally appeared in the Internet magazine Salon, reveals Horowitz as an independent, rigorous, outspoken political analyst who nevertheless can sound as dogmatic as a conservative as as he did when he was as a leftist. Horowitz calls Noam Chomsky an "America-loathing crank," advocates an end to "racial preferences" (affirmative action), argues that left-wing activists make up the core of the Democratic party, and castigates teachers' unions as the chief opponents to school reform. Ridiculing the NAACP's class-action lawsuits against gun manufacturers and educational testing firms, he contends that leaders like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton have betrayed the civil rights movement by promoting a blacks-as-victims mentality and by blaming whites for problems endemic to the black communityAan attitude that he says has been exacerbated by a patronizing liberal establishment. Taking aim at motley supporters of censorshipAIrving Kristol, Andrea Dworkin, Tipper Gore, Catharine MacKinnonAlibertarian Horowitz opposes it in virtually all forms, including the v-chip parents can use to block offending television shows. In one scathing essay he accuses Edward Said, Betty Friedan and Nobel laureate and Guatemalan activist Rigoberta Menchu of falsifying details of their lives to serve their political agendas. (Sept.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Written by a self-described former Sixties radical whose previous books (Radical Son, Hating Whitey, and The Politics of Bad Faith) explain his transformation to a libertarian conservative, this anthology of essays is an odd mixture of polemic against the Democratic Party, earnest but simple-minded advice to his new-found Republican Party, and heated airing of his strong, often controversial opinions on flashpoint social and political issues. Horowitz advises his fellow Republicans, whom he describes as "managers who want to fix government," to confront their Democratic adversaries, pejoratively called "missionaries who want to fix the world." He sharply criticizes what he believes is the media's bias against Republicans, federal and state education bureaucrats who siphon off federal funds intended for local use, and supposed Democratic Party softness on crime and national defense. Horowitz gets a lot off his politically incorrect chest, but his intended audienceDmainly Republicans and independentsDmight be put off by his libertarian position on censorship or his pugnacious prose. For medium and large public libraries.DJack Forman, San Diego Mesa Coll. Lib.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.