Uncle Jimbo went to see David Horowitz lay the smack down on Islamofascists.
What a let down. My buddy Ebo and I attended Horowitz’ opening night of Islamo-Fascism Awareness week and if this is our answer to sharia, then I guess Dirka Dirka Mohammed Jihad it will be.
*Gasp!* *Shock!* *Stop the presses!!* David Horowitz revealed to be an inane dipwad!!
It does say a lot to the quality of the presentation though (from Uncle Jimbo’s account) when the audience engages more with the heckler than the featured speaker.
Horowitz should bring back Fight Back and ambush some Imams with the power of reality television.
Is it just me or is David Horowitz just a little bit too old to still be arguing with college students?
Thorley,
It’s just you. What does age have to do with it? Lameness comes in many different sizes, shapes, and birthdates; as a college student I found that the old (often emeritus) professors sometimes had the most to share.
AFAIK David Horowitz isn’t a professor emeritus at the UW or anywhere else, he’s basically the equivalent of the aging hippy protester (pushing 70) whose life STILL revolves around the college protest scene and the personalities there. It’s one thing to be into it when you’re in your 20’s but if you still have nothing better to do with your life fifty years later, well that’s just kind of sad.
Just because you’re fighting the good fight doesn’t mean you’re good at it.
It also doesn’t mean you don’t have bad days. I’ve seen Horowitz debate on TV a couple of times and he did pretty well in those appearances.
Based on Uncle Jimbo’s comments at BlackFive, I suspect that Horowitz was suffering from two self-inflicted wounds: Over-scheduling and under-preparing. It sounds like he either didn’t have the time or did not take the time to thoroughly rehearse his speech or his talking points for the Q&A.
MUSLIM STUDENTS ASSOCIATION:
IKHWAN >> TALIBAAN >> ALQAEDA — MSA(USA)..
…get it?
Read the following two books:
Dore Gold:
TWO FACES OF ISLAM:
ISBN: 9780385506922.
Schwartz Stephen:
HATRED’S KINGDOM:
ISBN 0895260611.
It (MSA) all started in early 70’s with one mission:
To spread WAHABISM in America to infidels.
Now with SAUDI money they have mosques in every big/med/small/rural/urban/suburban,CITIES…Not to mention our prestigious college campuses, like UCLA, Stanford, Texas A&M, etc.
Theres nothing wrong with having a mosque anywhere…BUT to prepare JIHADIS by brain washing them against the country that give them SO MUCH….thats abhoring.
Get what, that those of us who are concerned about Islamic extremism need to be aware that some of those who might be labeled as our “fellow travelers†are people whose thought process doesn’t get much beyond “Muslim=Terrorist�
Message received loud and clear.
Excellent point, it reminds me of whenever Ann Coulter gets attacked by the right people. Like Horowitz, she’s a provocateur but I’m note sure either does our side more good than harm. Horowitz’s shtick seems to be focusing on campus radicals (protesters, professors, grievance groups, etc.) and getting in the mud with them. I’m not sure if illuminating them has the effect of countering them or elevating them. Either way I’m not sure it does much to advance the cause. Some people seem to find it entertaining but I’m not sure that reducing politics to the level of entertainment is the best way to make the sort of weighty decisions that need to be made for our nation.
Oh, there’s no question that Coulter does the right more harm than good.
A.L.
“Either way I’m not sure it does much to advance the cause.”
I can’t resist. My curiosity has gotten the better of me.
Thorely, just what is “the cause” you wish to advance?
#10 from Armed Liberal: “Oh, there’s no question that Coulter does the right more harm than good.”
Two examples:
(1) Do you think Mary Cheney and Dick Cheney (who has apparently taken on board his daughter’s views on gay marriage) are conservatives in good standing? I do. And if you do, then Ann Coulter has been about as unhelpful as possible to good conservatives. Gay and gay-friendly Republicans are in a slightly tougher, more embarrassing place because of her “fag” line.
(2) Do you think that we need to reorient our thinking about Islam, and take it with the seriousness that a threat of world-historical proportions calls for? Is sobriety on this issue a conservative value, as you see it? If so, “raghead” jokes are thoroughly unhelpful.
And that’s before you get to the destructive effect she may have on the image of conservatives, which may be her main effect outside the conservative movement.
You may have things you want to say, even in some cases good things. (Ann Coulter is not always wrong, though no example if her being right leaps to my mind.) You may even have figured out how to get paid for saying what you want to say anyway – nice work if you can get it. But you may be doing your cause more harm than good.
And it’s really, really hard for people to be objective with themselves about that.
I forgot my main point… Good for “Uncle Jimbo” for calling it the way he saw it.
I know David Horowitz from a couple of things: his fascinating book The Kennedys (written with Peter Collier) and Destructive Generation.
I think it was Destructive Generation that made him a lightning rod, not his personality. Even in the 80s it was not yet okay for ex-radicals to utter criticism of the most self-absorbed generation that ever lived.
Horowitz is to be thanked for breaking that ice. He wasn’t the only one, but he was one of the first and foremost. He was helped by the fact that the heavy political cost of the 60s (nearly all paid by the Democratic Party) was finally starting to sink into some skulls.
I well remember the reaction to this blasphemy, too. The old Aquarians were falling all over each other to point out that Horowitz was a COMMUNIST in the 60s, not a peace-loving hippie. Joseph Effing McCarthy never sighted in so fast.
It was funny – in a weakly pathetic sort of way – that they assumed that this should immediately discredit him with conservatives. Look, an actual commie! (The same bogus ammunition was used against Whittaker Chambers, 30 years earlier.)
For those not afraid of commies, they trotted out their other argument: Reaganites and communists were really the same thing, and Horowitz was proof. This was the best they could do, I guess, under the highly emotional circumstances.
I wouldn’t defend everything Horowitz ever said or did, because he doesn’t himself. But I’ll take him over the people who hate him any day.
David Warren, as usual, gets to “the heart of the matter”:http://davidwarrenonline.com/index.php?id=799 in a single column.
I don’t know why it is, that Muslims are allowed to call me (a non-Muslim) a dirty “kuffr” which means unclean thing. And constantly call for Sharia Law, my treatment as a slave, my death, and taking away everything that constitutes my culture, including but not limited to, Halloween, Christmas, Thanksgiving, and so on.
But if someone makes disparaging comments about Muslims, oh horrors.
If Muslims do not wish to be called names based on wearing non Western clothes, then they should not in this country wear non-Western clothes. Not tents for women nor whatever it is that constitutes their headgear.
If they don’t like that, well Saudi Arabia will happily take them. And make sure that no Christians nor Jews trouble them, not even with worshipping in their own way.
I am tired of Muslims and the constant drip-drip-drip of “sudden jihad syndrome” where some Muslim takes it into his head to go on Jihad and try and kill Americans here in this country. And I am supposed to look the other way and agree that it is not jihad but mental illness (that latest by the Muslim Math Teacher wanting to kill Americans). Or some other thing.
I am tired of Muslim demands that I give up my culture and holidays. I am tired of Muslim demands that they have special food, recognition of their holidays, and their absurd demands that *I* a non-Muslim observe their obsessions over alcohol, dogs, pork, women (what Muslims call “uncovered meat”) and not eating or drinking anything at Ramadan. I am tired of Muslims wanting special footbaths or whatever in public restrooms.
If Muslims want to practice their own religion (or any other, including worshipping Xenu or a killer Rutabaga from Pluto) in the privacy of their own home that is fine by me. But after more than thirty years of constant Muslim terrorism directed at Americans and America, and non-stop demands that America turn into Somalia with better roads, don’t expect me to get the vapors when someone utters an insult to Muslims.
Muslims may be the pet of the anti-American Left (see, they hate America and the average person’s freedom as much as we do!) but they are not mine.
Amen, Jim, Amen!
That will get you labeled as an Islamophobe. One who has an irrational fear of Muslims. I have also been labeled as such. But, I have a rational fear of Muslims for all the reasons you state. Rational fears for personal safety can be dealt with easily.
But this society will not approve of the solutions because we have become so obsessed with political correctness. Not until Wretchards 3 conjectures become facts. How many cities must be incinerated before the Leftists will face facts? How many millions must be dead before that happens?
The Hobo