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Summary: Okay, he's a "traitor"--but is he right?
Review: It is no surprise that David Horowitz is viciously despised on the left. He now attacks the left with the same persistence and self-righteousness that he once employed in service of radical causes. I can't help but notice, however, that many of his leftist critics choose to explain him in personal, psychological terms rather than discussing the truth of his claims about the left. Perhaps Horowitz leaves himself open to such an interpretation by including so much non-political material--his estrangement from his parents, his broken marriages--in his story. I believe the more important issues of contention are his various claims about the intentions and integrity of the leaders of the New Left, such as Tom Hayden, or their complicity in despicable acts of violence. His charges about the death of Betty Van Patter at the hands of the Black Panthers have brought a bitter exchange with some of his former comrades at salon.com. Say what you will about Horowitz, he is at least no coward and does not shrink from the most difficult issues. This book is important, because it is a necessary antidote to all the romanticized and hagiographic presentations of the sixties and its leaders stuffed down our throats by some of the Baby Boomers--too many people my age seem to swallow the myth that the sixties were about a bunch of idealistic, naive young people fighting against an oppressive system.
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Summary: Despite Flaws, An Important Read for Students of US Politics
Review: It seems like either you hate David Horowitz and this this book or you love him depending upon the reader's ideological bent. And Horowitz's confrontational style does nothing to reduce this polarization either. However, this is a hugely important book for those trying to understand the present configuration of political ideologies in America. As an epic of a former radical's gradual disillusionment with Marxism and leftist extremism to conversion to Reagan conservatism, this book is unequaled in both its scope and its theme. Nowhere else will you find such a total change of political convictions so meticulously documented. Despite flaws, such as Horowitz's tendency to overrate his importance and to focus exclusively on himself to the oblivion of others in his life, this book presents arguments still unanswered by the left in the United States. Despite personal attacks by his former radical colleagues, no liberal of any standing has yet addressed Horowitz's central them of liberal hypocrisy. Horowitz ruthlessly lays bare this hypocrisy, arrogance, and indulgence like few other former leftist insiders can. Whatever you may feel about Horowitz and his abandonment of his family and the New Left, this book is essential reading for the arguments it poses for the true origins and philosophy of the left in America and how it poisoned the US body politic and culture.
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Summary: For those who want to know the truth.
Review: I urge everyone, esp people my age to read this book. There are so many misconseptions about socialism - you must read this book to find the truth. He has lived through it and used to believe it and has shared his experiences for everyone to know the truth.
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Summary: Wonderful (gulp) revelations about the Left
Review: This is a book I wanted to get when I heard it was coming out several years ago. However, it wasn't until last year I finally picked it up. I just finished it, and boy am I glad I got it! "Radical Son" is a fascinating, hard-to-put-down autobiography which basically sticks to Horowitz's life experiences in a chronological fashion. However, he also diverges into speculation and insight about why things were so and self-psychoanalysis about why he did what he did. I only feel that perhaps Horowitz should have saved most of his insight and back-analyzing for a final chapter or section. Sometimes it's nice to just read the facts of what happened and then, as we come to the present day, perform the analysis. This is true for both analysis of the author himself and the movement in general. I'd like to see the insight and analysis all summarized in 1 section. I really don't have complaint about the book and would rather give it a 4.5 star, but Amazon doesn't allow that. His story by itself is great insight into the leftist movement; what it really was like w/o all the self-congratulatory ballyhoo typical of his generation, and how pervasive the leftist movement became through and after the '60s. It really only confirmed most of my suspicions about the left, including about the radical '60s in general, but also provided new (to me) revelations about the pervasiveness of Communists and their allegiances in the US, even before then.
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Summary: A Must-Read Political Memoir by a Former Sixties' Radical
Review: This book was so absorbing that I found it difficult to put down, reading several chapters before even leaving the bookstore. The amazon.com review of "Radical Son" does the author, David Horowitz, an injustice since every autobiography will potentially subject its author to accusations of self-absorbation, self-importance, or denial. However, contrary to that critical review, Horowitz is as painfully honest about himself and his own mistakes and personal shortcomings, as he is about those of his parents, friends, and former comrades in the New Left."Radical Son" is much more, however, than the political mea culpa of a former Berkley radical turned Reagan conservative. It is an invaluable political history of the Sixties' New Left Movement. Horowitz chronicles how his intellectual parents and their friends-- mostly immigrants or first-generation Americans --were drawn to the Communist Party in the 1920's and 1930's; how they passed their idealism and radical beliefs on to their children before becoming disillusioned themselves after Stalin's crimes were revealed in the Khruschev Report in 1956; and how those children-- including himself, Peter Collier, Todd Gitlin, Bob Scheer, Jerry Rubin and many others --established the New Left in the early 1960's, to replace the discredited "Old Left" of their parents' generation and to rehabilitate the Marxist idea. Horowitz further points out why the revolution sought by the New Left never materialized-- the fantasy of utopian marxist-socialism could not overcome the reality of the bloody, totalitarian communist regimes. Revelations of the blood bath in Vietnam and the rest of Indochina, following the communist victories there, soon reached the West. More directly, with the end of the Vietnam War, the protests and mass demonstration on campus came to an abrupt halt. The "people" were never really with the New Left after all. Still, as Horowitz writes, the New Left remains capable of inflicting damag! e. Within its "bases" in the academic and literary worlds, as well as in Hollywood, the New Left has become a sort of counter-establishment in America with the ability to rewrite history (such as Todd Gitlin's "The Sixties" and the writings of Noam Chomsky, not mention the films of Oliver Stone) and to indoctrinate-- or at least attempt to indoctrinate --college students with one-sided lectures, textbooks, and various forms of hypersensitive "political correctness".
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Summary: I have come full circle
Review: Reading Radical son has now completed a journey I began in 1992. After being forcibly drugged by the Psyche profession/courts during an emotional breakdown after giving birth to my first baby, I became very interested in learning how the psychiatric profession obtained so much power against individual rights in America. Reading Cleon Skousen's book, The Naked Communist helped me to connect the Communist link to this ugly reality. I have studied communism off and on during the intervening twelve years while living in The People's Republic of Boulder Colorado as a closet Conservative. I shared my rightist views with other's when opportunity presented over the years, but mostly I stayed home and read books while nurturing my additional four children. My husband and I have home schooled off and on during these past few years - and I would like to suggest to those who feel hopeless about the power elite's control of our universities, and media not to give up on the parents of today. We who are educated about these important political issues are raising large families of holisitcally nurtured, gently educated, and un-propaganized children. My best memories of home school are the daily lessons my husband taught our children in American History. We would say the pledge and sing The Star Spangled Banner, and then he would teach the children about our amazing Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, and together we testified of our faith in and dedication to the principles of freedom. The radical leftist's are aborting away most of their children, and in the end, it will be the our children and grandchildren who will be the leaders of the future. I have walked in homeschooling and dedicated parenting circles for many years now, and those outspoken leftists who always seemed to dominate conversations, wether we were talking about breastfeeding, politics,or education are now somewhat confused and not so confident of their worldview. David Horowitz's Radical Son is a powerful and passionate rebuke of leftist thought and political activism. I will use it to continue teaching my children the Truth. I would hope that the older generation of passionate conservatives would remember the young mothers and fathers of today who are quietly and steadfastly teaching our own the principles and practices of Freedom when you get discouraged or are feeling hopeless. Thousands upon thousands of parents are homeschooling and many who have children in public or private school are teaching and sharing these truths in consistent ways with the next generation. I know dozens of families with young children who are committed to Freedom and understand the sacredness of our responsibility to teach, promote, and share freedom with the rest of humanity. Please read Horowitz's book if you feel any inclination to leftist radical activism. It will cure your of such delusions in a matter of hours. Jenny Hatch www.naturalfamilyco.com
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Summary: Fascinating
Review: This book is a good read for both educational and pure entertainment purposes. What made me really enjoy RADICAL SON was the fact that Horowitz has personal knowledge of the events he describes.
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Summary: Man of the Year
Review: I have to agree with those who aren't raving about this self-absorbed man who yet again is riding the wave of controversy but this time it is vomit-worthy because he is openly admitting to caring for no one other than himself.
Truly he is an admirable man to profess how painful his life has been, the self-pity and self-indignation (surprise) is excruciating---he is truly the great sufferer who has seen the light
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Summary: Another "red diaper babe" outed
Review: How a reasonably intelligent man moved from 'way over there' politically, to 'way over here' is the superstructure of David Horowitz's interesting autobiography which tracks his political and philosophical epiphany. Like Saul of Tarsus who was stricken on the Road to Damascus and changed from a prosecutor to a defender of those he attacked, Horowitz moved from the extreme left to the far -- but not quite the extreme -- right. From ultra liberal Communist to arch conservative, anti-Communist. From the shadows of lawlessness in support of radical groups such as the Black Panthers to the exposer of their crimes. David Horowitz's parents were depression-era Communists, true believers, they, who raised their son in that milieu, a 'red diaper baby' as the term has become known. He matured as Communist radical during the wild and rambunctious 60's -- the Hippy Era -- in which he became an active participant in the anti-Vietnam war crowd, associating with criminals such as Huey Newton, Eldrige Cleaver and the arch villainess, Elaine Brown. During that era, Horowitz wrote for and, for a time, edited The Ramparts magazine -- the era's showpiece periodical which pushed the radical point of view: anti-establishment, anti-war, anti-law-and-order, anti-moderation. But then Horowitz's private life went to hell. His wife and four children left him, there were two other failed marriages after that. His private life seemed to have no core, perhaps because he failed to see and appreciate its importance. He mourned throughout the book that he could not "connect with" his father, a remote, intellectual Marxist. There were periods of depression and analysis but through it all -- and to his credit -- Horowitz continued to write and to produce. In partnership with Peter Collier they wrote best-settlers: the histories of the Rockerfellers, The Fords and the Kennedys. And -- even more to his credit -- Horowitz writes lavishly in his praise and appreciation of Collier to whom he gives most of the credit for their publishing success. But what made Horowitz flip? He is not entirely clear. But it seems that the odyssey began with his and Collier's departure with the left over homosexuality and AIDS. But then the other strands that bound him to the left began to unravel to such a point that he finally considered Ronald Reagan heroic rather than archaic. He infers that much of his 'conversion' is the reverting to the core of his Jewish culture and tradition, even though he is an admitted agnostic. And it is entirely likely that the conservative point of view is more valuable in preserving his appreciation of his Jewish culture than would a more liberal view.
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Summary: Read the squirming lefties
Review: Hi I'm Tim Kidd and I call myself a 'radical Leftist!" Hooboy run and hide from those who label themselves this way and then pretty much realize that self-righteous louts like this are the ones that Horowitz luckily got the hell away from when he grew up and actually thought. And of course the review that calls Horowitz a 'phony' is too rich. Did you even read the book?? Do you have any conception whatsoever about the life journey that Horowitz has traveled to reach his views? Horowitz's education, family experience, and extensive travels and publications not to mention his travels with the likes of Bertrand Russell, Huey Newton, Jean Genet, and a veritable who's who of icons of the 60's radical generation make fleas like Kidd seem even more inconsequential than they know they already are. The Left just can't deal with people who experience life and reflect on their experiences beyond simply mentioning how much they hate Ayn Rand and then lavish praise on trendy postmodernism which they in a free capitalistic society have the luxury to indulge their petty minds. Rock on Dave Horowitz! ...
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