Big Party neocomrade D. Horowitz explains -- logically and lovin’ly -- why certain mad dogs have undertaken to bark against his campus caravan:
| Obviously, the attacks on Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week by liberals such as Colmes and radicals such as the Revolutionary Communist Party and the Muslim Students Association are based on reasoning that is absurd. Their only logic is emotional, and the character of that emotion is hatred -- hatred for those who want to raise awareness of the threats we face from radical Islam. This hatred has only one purpose, which is to put a metaphorical bullet in the head of those who oppose the jihad. The purpose is to silence them. |
Naturally the Martin Luther of jihád careerism does not propose to be tamely muzzled, not even figuratively, and what genuine lover of diversity in human events would wish him to be? Hath not neocomrade D. Horowitz and the whole 'Phobe Parade been prophetically foretold?
| The world is so full of a number of things, I'm sure we can all be as happy as kings. |
Palaeocomrade I. Babbitt of Harvard quoted that couplet for much the same purpose that D. Horowitz -- formerly of Trotsky State in Manhattan, at present a propagandist in residence at Wombschool Normal University -- carries on as he does two generations later, namely as a hostile diagnosis of Wicked Liberalism. Professor Babbitt did not wish to be as happy as kings himself, and indeed, that dharma-tinged humanisme of his could easily be explained in terms of a wish not to be happy unlike kings either, all happiness of any sort being decidedly infra dignitatem babbittensem . A fun guy was ol' Irv!
However ol' Irv was a gentleman -- insofar as it was ever possible in the holy Homeland for anybody indigenous to resemble a Newmanoid gentleman -- whereas Big Party neocomrade D. Horowitz is a mere clown. Here's more diversity still, sir, clowns and gentry! and I ask you to applaud it, Mr. Bones, and welcome it. But bear in mind that we do not apostasize from Robert Louis Stevenson, or foreswear all hope of quasiroyal bliss personally, when we prefer some spots in some phases of the kaleidoscope over others, as for instance Harvard Square gentility over WSU clownin' and grandstandin'. [1]
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The neocomrade's free mass psychoanalysis is perhaps not pushed quite as far as it might be, however. Ought he not have gone on to explain why wicked liberalism wants to hear no words uttered about Islamophalangitarianism and Islamophobia other than its own? Presumably such a "why" must be thoroughly emotional and illogical, yet all the same, does not a diversity of sentimentalities and fallacies exist also? Do the patients of Dr. Horowitz irrationally love silence for itself? Do they irrationally love jihád for itself? Do they illogically love either silence or jihád as a[n unworkable] means to some other absurd and gland-based objective? Could knowledge of their toilet training help account for their strange behavior? Or how about Jungian archetypes? Are the irrationalities and sentimentalities of radical patients and wicked-liberal patients and Muslim or neo-Muslim patients uniform and interchangeable?
And so on, and so forth.
Ah, well, Mr. Bones, perhaps the Big Management Party neocomrade has crafily abstained from addressin' these very issues so as not to encourage anybody to stay away from the Greatest Show On Campus under the mistaken impression that she knows all about it already? You can not deny, sir, that that plan would be strictly logical and unsentimental!
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[1] This preference is admissible only in foro interiori and as regards private-sectorian affairs, however. The regulations for public human events in a wicked-liberal democracy necessarily differ. In addition to being diverse, Public Square diversity is required to be in some sense representative as well. Being a palaeocomrade, good ol’ Irv mostly disregarded these police regulations and abstained from playing fkat-out politics, whereas Big Party neocomrade D. Horowitz is notoriously obsessed with the notion that his (currently) preferred bits of the kaleidoscope are grossly undercounted and undervalued, chiefly due to pointy-headed professors and shameless mainstream journalists.
That is why it seems to D. Horowitz & Ilk that there is a cryin' need "to raise awareness of the threats we face from radical Islam." For a wonder, the neocomrade words himself with a certain precision at a crucial juncture here: awareness is far from being the same thing as knowledge. Ms. Chicken Little is assuredly not called upon to be able to explain what has kept the firmament in place up there the last six thousand years before she undertakes to make agitprop on behalf of, ta-Da! Skyfall Awareness Week. One might even applaud the Big Party (very briefly) for sidin' with awareness rather than oblivion: it makes a change from the prescribed dogmas about climate change and Absolute Free Trade and what the Executive Branch is up to as regards Heimatlandversicherung, among various other matters not difficult to discern.
Diverser and diverser still human events get, sir, the deeper one looks into them! "The more one cultivates one's ‘awareness’ of human events" you might even say, sir -- although doubtless D. Horowitz would not care to second such a motion. Life being unfair, though, you and I must definitely second his "metaphorical" motion that diversity is one thing and a Public Square equality of things diverse quite another.
So it is perfectly OK to like some bits of diversity better than others, Mr. Bones. It is even in accord with the axioms of Wingnut City and the lovin' logic of Rio Limbaugh. Diversify your "awareness," sir! After concluding that X is nicer than Y, you must, if possible, carry on to become aware also that Y happens to be a thousand times more popular than X, unless in a case where X and Y have no general implications whatever, there being no urgent need to make sure that everybody loathes M. Rousseau and Mr. Stevenson as ferociously as I. Babbitt of Harvard used to, or prefers the quartets of sensuous Boccherini over those of cerebral Haydn as we ourselves do.
I totter on the brink of De gustibus non disputandum, plainly, and it occurs to me as I scribble that the venerable maxim does not altogether apply to a wicked-liberal democracy. At very least, there must be a certain amount of disputation an hoc sit ex gustu or whether it spring rather out of what Big Party neocomrade D. Horowitz calls "reasoning" and "logic." His ideobuddy or soulmate C. Little considers that the heavens are "objectively" about to collapse on our heads, after all, and such seems to be the Horowitzian stance about Islamophalangitarianism as well. We are not exactly called upon by either alarmist to decide policy about her pet peeve by plebescite and referendum, as if all the holy Homeland were darkest Schwarzeneggerland. On the other hand, neither C. Little nor D. Horowitz is willing to consider Firmament Change or Kiddie Krusadin' a matter that is strictly ex gustu.
Neocomrade D. Horowitz, at least, paints himself into a curious corner somewhere in between. The Neo-Muslim Menace is considered 100% objective at Wingnut City and Rio Limbaugh and FPM, quite as objective as Copernican astronomy or Calvinist theology. To request a show of hands about "Islamo-Fascism" ought therefore to strike the neocomrades as absurd, yet plainly it does not. The sweet puppies of neorightism are forever complainin' that their point of view is inadequately represented -- deliberately hushed up, even -- which borders on the ridiculous if they speak of their policy position, since their Little Brother very firmly refuses to allow the ignorant vulgar to influence His schemes of aggression and occupation even when the ignorant vulgar happen to be Senators of the United States and suchlike nominal worthies. George XLIII is insufficiently anti-Islamophalangitarian by many puppies' lights, but the notion of influencin' Himself with campus teach-ins is merely dotty.
But it is equally dotty, is it not?, to attempt to sway what sort of real or alleged Wissenschaft is purveyed at our colleges or universities, whether old-fashion scholarly or newfangle wombscholarly. To adopt such means implicitly treats the whole "Islamo-Fascism" fandango as a mere matter of taste and not "objective reality" at all. The Baní Velikovsky have never, that I know of, attempted to force their own product into the tertiary educational marketplace with such measures as Big Party neocomrade D. Horowitz now champions. It is not difficult to understand why not: if they won that way, they'd lose; Velikovskianity would cease being objectively correct physics and celestial mechanics and become at once a mess of ideological pottage. The Baní Velikovsky do sweet-puppyize about their plight to a certain extent, or at least they used to, fancying conspiracies to prevent most folks from knowing that their stuff is available. Since they never ascended to the radiant rhetorical heights of "put a metaphorical bullet in the head of those who oppose," I am inclined to guess that Velikovskians are rather more firmly persuaded of the objective correctness of their product than Horowitzians are, with the latter protestin' rather a bit too much . . . .
But God knows best what either crew is subjectively sincere about.
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