A bitter, defeated man named David Horowitz attempted to spew his lies and hate speech to an audience of about 100 people.

He was soundly defeated by a courageous group of truth-and-reality advocates. Every time Horowitz told a lie, he was corrected by an audience member, who then were rudely told to “Shut up!” by some demented looking right-wingers.

Horowitz is pushing the agenda of a group calling itself "Students for Academic Freedom," a thinly veiled attempt to censor university professors who criticize US foreign policy. Horowitz claims without a shred of evidence that universities are controlled by radical marxists who brainwash their students. This is just projection; in fact it is the rightwingers who want to destroy free thought at the universities and turn them into fascist indoctrination camps.

The fascist and corporate criminal wing of the Republican Party now controls all three branches of government, the corporate media, the US military global empire and now they want to take over the last bastion of truth and decency, colleges and universities.

Why are rightwingers so paranoid about destroying universities like they have destroyed everything else that is good about America? Universities are the last place where people can escape from the brainwashing of the state-run Goebbelesque right wing media machine; the last place where you can be free to think and offer dissenting opinions without being maced in the face by psychotic police.

The Bush administration, the most criminal administration since that of former President Ronald Reagan, has established a fascist global empire that would make Hitler jealous. What little dissent that has escaped the post-9/11 hypnosis (terrorist! Terrorist! Be afraid!) is squelched by the jack booted thugs of the Busheviks.

How did Horowitz come to this sad state? He was a radical leftist in the 60s and worked with the Black Panthers. When some of his friends were murdered by the FBI’s Cointelpro program, Horowitz embraced the system which was oppressing him rather than fighting against it. It must be some variation of the Stockholm Syndrome or perhaps he was just slumming, a poser, a faux radical. As soon as the going got tough, he abandoned his ideals and became a fascist traitor. Who knows, maybe he was working for Cointelpro all those years he was posing as a radical.

No matter how you slice it, he is a coward. It is funny how the cowards have taken over the government. Since when do we let cowards tell us to be afraid of empty shadows. Real men lead through courage, not fear.

The current movement of fear-mongers does not even deserve the name conservative. True conservatives would seek to preserve the constitution, not destroy it. True conservatism actually shares many values with true liberalism, which espouses the primacy of individual rights over state power. These liars and hypocrites were called “pseudo-conservatives” by Richard Hofstadter. He described pseudo-conservatism in his book, “The Paranoid Style in American Politics and Other Essays:”

"Pseudoconservativism is among other things a disorder in relation to authority, characterized by an inability to find other modes for human relationship than those of more or less complete domination or submission ... The pseudo-conservative is a man who, in the name of upholding traditional American values and institutions and defending them against more or less fictitious dangers, consciously or unconsciously aims at their abolition ... [He] sees his own country as being so weak that it is constantly about to fall victim to subversion; and yet he feels that it is so all-powerful that any failure it may experience in getting its way in the world ... cannot possibly be due to its limitations but must be attributed to its having been betrayed."

I sometimes wonder if pseudo-conservatives were locked in a closet for the first 20 years of their life. That would explain their palpable rage and their dim myopic grasping to understand a complex world that is beyond their ken. Rather than attempting to understand its chaotic dynamics and adapt to them, they seek to destroy the world around them and reduce it to a simple one-dimensional black-and-white parody that they can understand. Their rage and self-hatred is projected outward to the other, Jews for the Nazis now Muslims for the current batch of beady-eyed little fascists.

Some wonder if pseudo-conservatism is a disease. The web site http://www.armchairsubversive.com shows the robust correlation between Republicanism and pedophilia. Even serial killer Ted Bundy campaigned for the Republican party.

I think pseudo-conservatism is a neurological defect, a breakdown in sensory integration much like autism. Like all disabled people, pseudo-conservatives deserve our understanding and sympathy, but they should not be running the country. This epidemic of neuropathy seems to be contagious, but like most plagues it will hopefully burn it self out soon.

The Guardian reported (8/13/03) that “[a] study funded by the US government has concluded that conservatism can be explained psychologically as a set of neuroses rooted in "fear and aggression, dogmatism and the intolerance of ambiguity".

UCLA Professor Philip Agre believes that conservatism is the domination of society by an aristocracy, and that “[c]onservatism is incompatible with democracy, prosperity, and civilization in general. It is a destructive system of inequality and prejudice that is founded on deception and has no place in the modern world.” So why do we put up with this medieval system of oppression?

Horowitz really displayed his true nature when he first walked into the auditorium. One of his group of supporters walked up to him and attempted to give him a lei. Horowitz snubbed this woman and humiliated her in front of the whole audience. His total lack of aloha and sensitivity was a disgrace. He and other rightwingers are always trying to polarize the discussion between the Left and the Right. Anyone can see that the real polarity in the world today is between the Right and the Human Race. Anytime they want to renounce their hatred of humanity and rejoin the human race, we will always welcome them. But we have zero tolerance for their lies and hypocrisy.

Mark Burch, a Chemical Hygiene Officer for the Environmental Health and Safety Office at the University of Hawaii, can be reached via email at mailto:burch@hawaii.edu

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