The Orbis

Issue date: 4/17/02 Section: Undefined Section

David Horowitz Photo courtesy of The Battalion Online [Click to enlarge]

David Horowitz, nationally renowned author and civil rights activist, was brought to campus by Wake Up America, a student organization whose goal is to increase awareness about public policy issues in the Vanderbilt Community.

Horowitz addressed the growing hatred for fundamental American values and the eager willingness to sacrifice national security by liberals in his April 8 lecture, "How the American Left Undermined America's Security." The event brought a crowd to Wilson Hall, as well as the cameras of CSPAN.

He opened the evening by outing Vanderbilt as a university that is "hostile to having a diverse viewpoint." He reported to the audience that the university administration had tried to cancel his appearance because the lecture hall was supposedly "overbooked," though Wake Up America had reserved the room in January. For Horowitz, this was simply another attempt by the Academic Left to suppress speech of which it did not approve.

Shortly thereafter he discussed slave reparations and concluded that since slavery existed 3,000 years before the U.S. was founded, yet was abolished only 90 years afterwards, it is likely that slavery would still exist today had there been no U.S.

In presenting his argument of how the American Left and Democratic Party were able to create an environment in which the events of Sept. 11 could occur, he cited former Congressman Ronald Dellums (D-CA) as saying, "We should totally dismantle every intelligence agency in this country piece by piece, brick by brick, nail by nail."

After giving a brief history of Islam, he noted that Jews had occupied only one percent of the Middle East for over 3,000 years, during which time the Arab "Nazis of the Middle East" had continuously attempted to eradicate them. With this trend continuing today, he described Yasser Arafat as the "inventor of civilian suicide bombers" and reiterated the fundamentalist Islamic mindset, "If you murder children that is a blow for social justice."

While discussing the U.S. response to the terrorist attacks, both domestic and abroad, he pointed out the foolishness of the new airport security laws.

According to Horowitz, nine of the 19 terrorists were stopped on Sept. 11 because they "fit the profile," but they had to be released. He later said, "It is an insult to America to randomly check overweight women in wheelchairs." He surmised that no overweight woman in a wheelchair has ever hijacked a commercial airliner, though many Arab males have.

In closing, he asked the audience to "reconsider your country's history," and realize that there isn't an "exodus of people to other countries" because there is "more opportunity for achievement in America than any country in the world."

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