Posted on 04/29/2025 3:50:25 PM PDT by Beave Meister
On behalf of the David Horowitz Freedom Center, we are very saddened to announce the passing of the Center’s founder, David Horowitz. After a lengthy battle with cancer, David passed yesterday at the age of 86.
The Freedom Center’s founder and guiding force was a relentless conservative warrior who survived a previous brush with death (chronicled in his book Mortality and Faith), confrontations with the Black Panthers, campus radicals, government investigations, death threats, and hate campaigns, some led by his former friends and allies, without ever considering giving up or letting up. Nothing short of the end that comes for us all could silence his voice. He continued writing, working, and steering the Center to the very last; his final article, “The Biggest Lie of All,” appeared earlier this month.
Although he was a giant in the conservative liberty movement for over 40 years, David was raised a Marxist and was one of the leading intellectuals of the New Left movement at Berkeley in the 1960’s. But David, along with his writing partner and Freedom Center co-founder Peter Collier, eventually had a political epiphany and joined the side of freedom in the early 1980‘s. They committed the second half of their lives and work warning Americans of the dangers of the Progressives whose intellectual roots and totalitarian aims they understood better than many Leftists themselves.
(Excerpt) Read more at thelibertydaily.com ...
It was SO bad, as you obviously know, that it made THE VILLAGE VOICE look Conservative. :^)
His book “Radical Son” had a significant impact on me, almost as much as Whittaker Chambers’ “Witness”.
It made me believe there is hope for everyone, and not just in a religious sense. Even the most radical Leftists can get mugged, though it is true that some of them are beyond redemption, they are that brainwashed.
Solzhenitsyn described those types in “The Gulag Archipelago”. They had been true believers scooped up by Stalin in his purges and killed, tortured, or been sent to the Gulag to be worked to death. When Stalin died, those people wept tears of grief for the monster Stalin who had put them there.
Horowitz was “mugged” by the Left when a woman he worked with (their accountant) was raped and murdered by the Black Panthers who were suspicious of her and thought she knew too much and might squeal on them.
So they murdered her and raped her to make it look like a random rape.
He was the Leftist lawyer for the Black Panthers, and he knew the truth of how she died. He knew they murdered her.
But even with that knowledge, it took him ten years to break himself from Leftism. That is how hard it is to un-brainwash Leftists.
That is one of the data points in my life that made me realize that one of the hardest things for people to do is openly and without rationalization, unequivocally admit that they were wrong.
He did that, and become one of the Left’s most virulent, hated, and feared enemies. And it showed how much, of all crimes (perceived as such by the Left) that can be committed against them, Apostasy is their vilest transgression in their minds.
God bless and hold that man. How I admired him.
I was given a free book by David’s organization as a thank you for my contributions, but I have yet to read it.
Yes. I read that, as well as The Gulag Archipelago.
Both were eye-opening books for me.
Another good one is: “Blacklisted by History”, about Sen. Joe McCarthy.
Since reading that book, I feel comelled to set anyone who uses the term “McCarthism” incorrectly.
Sad, indeed. I had NO idea he was 86. I knew he was raised a red diaper baby and reformed. He’s been a great voice for freedom and liberty.
Was it “Radical Son”? If so...it is even more relevant today than the times he lived through described in the book. I highly recommend it.
Yes....
His famous quote, “The issue is never the issue. The issue is always The Revolution.” - Lives on, Rest in Peace, David..........
I have read dozens of books about the McCarthy Era, and hands down, not even close by a mile, the absolutely best and most thoroughly researched of them all is “Blacklisted by History: The Untold Story of Senator Joe McCarthy and His Fight Against America’s Enemies”.
That is one remarkable book.
Like “Witness”, I have M. Stanton Evans’ book in hardcover, Kindle (for notes and reference) and the audiobook.
He was one of the people I would have loved to have met so I could shake his hand and say “Thank You” to him, but alas, he passed on before I could have ever done that.
See my Freep Page!
They better not take down his website.
You are a lucky person! A book with a connection is a very desirable thing...:)
RIP David ... you fought the good fight.
Also read FAMILY CIRCLE, by Susan Braudy and you'll find out HOW, WHEN, and BY WHOM Angela Davis was brought into the fold, as well as much else.
Yes. David Horowitz had to go through very dark times after his co-worker was murdered, he had to cross a barren desert in his life to come out on the other side. Reading his book, your heart nearly breaks for him, as dismal as things seemed for him.
My father was a high functioning alcoholic his whole life, and managed to get sober about 15 years before he passed.
Of all the things my father did in his life, of all the things I admired and respected about him...it was his determination to become sober that I hold as the most remarkable and noteworthy of all of them.
I believe that for many alcoholics, they must hit bottom and weather crisis before they can become sober.
I feel exactly the same way about Leftists.
Betty van Patter. As far as I know, no one was ever prosecuted for her murder.
I couldn’t put it down!
It changed my view of that entire era.
Your parents look lovely.
Mune were heroes to me as well.
Indeed.
What really enraged me was M. Stanton Evans’ explanation of how, with the focused efforts of Communist spies in our own government feeding lies back to the Communist sympathizers in the Roosevelt Administration, we stabbed the Chiang Kai Shek and the Chinese Nationals in the back, turning the country over to the Communists.
WE were the experts in China, and Britain let us lead the way in that perfidy.
The exact same thing happened in Yugoslavia, where they British were the experts there, and we in America let their “trusted” British Communist spy “experts” lead their country to stab Draža Mihailović in his back and turn their country over to the Communists.
I did not know that history, and it was a shock to me.
There was a LOT in that book I didn’t know about.
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