>>I’m trying to remember the last time I disagreed with David Horowitz
Wasn’t David Horowitz a radical Leftist in his yute?
https://www.csmonitor.com/1997/0407/040797.feat.books.1.html
It all began for him in New York during the l940s, as the son of a Communist Party family, a classic red-diaper baby. In this intensely political, self-contained, Marxist enclave, his role was to reshape the world. He took the first steps by writing “The Free World Colossus” at age 23. But endless introspection and arguments with his father also fostered a sense of inadequacy and isolation.
Having moved to London, Horowitz plunged into leftist activities as the Vietnam War progressed, energetically denouncing American policy before coming home in l968 to a position with Ramparts, the ultra-leftist San Francisco journal. A radical victory seemed imminent in the Bay area. But in what he later realized was a horrendous mistake, Horowitz joined “the cause” in l973 by linking up with Huey Newton’s Black Panther party.
Here was a turning point in a life which had pivoted solely on intellect, writing, and family, but which had left Horowitz’s longing for political power unsatisfied: “Having Huey’s ear made me feel politically powerful in a new way.... Until now, my theorizing had had little visible impact ... the Movement had pretty much ignored what I had written.”
But the Panthers mixed idealism with violence, even criminality: How could Horowitz blind himself to that reality?
He no longer did after l975, when a woman whom he had recommended for a job with the Panthers was murdered. The crime remains unsolved, but a guilt-ridden Horowitz, insistent that the Panthers were responsible, swiftly began denouncing all that he had once favored: Marxism, the Soviet Union, and the American left above all.
Few such leftist activists ever went to Vietnam.