Transcripts For CSPAN2 David Horowitz Mortality And Faith 20240714

Wouldnt it be nice if the spandrel tv would letth me interview him for their purposes and guess what . They did. Here he is. Welcome to new york city. Arent you from new york . Originally. Fifty or 60 years ago. Thats originally. You have a new book out, so many books. A lot of people think of you mostly as a political conservative but in your book, radical son, where you talk about your life story you reveal a side of yourself that i, as a writer, would call a good writer. You are not just someone with great ideas but right well and in this book and probably not the first one to call it in elegiac. It has a beautiful tone to it, ruminations on mortality in faith and that is the title but when you decided to write this book let me ask you a simple question but why did you decide to write this book . A lot of people who read your book radical son maybe would assume that your story. That was the story of my political transformation, as it were from a leftist and someone who described as a revolutionary to a conservative. Host at what point did you stop scrubbing yourself as a marxist revolutionary . What youre roughly . Guest roughly 1974 when a woman i had recruited to took the books for the black part Panther Party and was murdered by the black panthers and that was the end of my career in the left when i realized i was among gangsters and people who wh wsupported gangsters. What really hit me was that all of my friends defended the panthers and blamed bettys death on the white power structure which is what they do today only they blame it on trump in white supremacy. Host a lot of people dont remember that time but the violence of those years its interesting, if you dont mind, before we get into the new book, mortality and faith, which picks up your story for those who arent familiar with your story and with your seminal bo book, radical semite, i want to ask you if you dont mind reprise that story for a bit to give us a running start. Guest i was raised by a cardcarrying communist. Host literally . Guest yeah, literally. Our whole community wanted stalin to in the cold community and to create a soviet american. Host where were you raised and what was the community . I was raised in sunnyside and grew up in bliss street. Host sunnyside, queens, right over there . Yeah. Host most people think of queens as the Upper West Side of manhattan, yes, plenty cardcarrying communist but sunnyside, queens. Guest colonized by the columnist party. I lived in the development of rowhouses and Eleanor Roosevelt broke the ground there and they were built like t english rowhouses and the backyards had a commons and the interesting thing was when the 40 year was listed after that commons everyone extended their backyards into the center which that has human possessiveness and instincts which is what the left is always fighting which is why they end up with the gulags and firing squads. Host you literally were raised among cardcarrying communists who were rooting for stalin. How so . Thats a fascinating idea . Its one thing to be left us and the democrat but you talk about Something Different and what was this group and who were your parents that you found yourself in the situation . Guest we can get into that with mortality and faith. People have a need first of all, this book is not a book but theres politics in it but its at a philosophical level. I think this is might be the and book ive written people will regret it and feel in the writing and so forth. Host the writing is beautiful. I read parts of this book all the way through. I read parts of this book all the way through. Its a joke. What i read it is very writerly and beautiful so you are right. Political book but your story t guest were thrown into this world and people have a greater need to think of the alliance as meaningful. The idea that we are all going to disappear some day and be forgotten is very hard for people to take. Theyso developed various kinds f faith and their faith because you cant know that god existsu and you can know through the i quote pascal in this book who says you can know through the heart but you cant know with your intellect. No one can prove god exists and no one can prove that he does not exist. Host i beg to differ but since im interviewing you i will let it go. Guest youre a man of religious faith but this is my perspective. So, people develop a faith it can be socialism as one kind of faith or communism and social justice is anothermu or you can have a faith in divinity and the way i describe it in the book to believe in a divinity who will sort things out after we are dead on the other side for now [inaudible] that, to me, a healthy face faith. If you dont believe in eight divinity you cant, or most people cant base the meaninglessness of our life, it does not [inaudible] for those people to get meaning in their lives they get what i call a crypto religious faith with this progressivism, leftism, social justice and thats the world will be made into a kingdom of heaven on earth. Host imminent typing the eschaton. Guest there you go. Host i once had an interviewer who said how do you live without an eschaton . But isnt that looking for the same thing . Even misguided radical communist, leftist i would say the misguided but were out looking for the same thing but disagree on how to get there, but the nature of that thing is what the nature of reality is but it seems to me that people who may be believe life has no meaning but can stand the radius of the great meaning. Guest and the meaning is recreating the world and you have a Green New Deal and will rearrange everything and the only way to do that is through a Totalitarian Police state and then you cant do it anyway. Ri you just shoot a lot of people. I dont want to give the idea this book is a book of ideas because its a lot of narrative and life lessons and you know you go through life have to deal eawith death. I had a daughter who had a birth defect that caused her to die in her 40s. I take lessons from these and try to deal with the infirmities of age. People dont talk about this too much but people are living ten20 years longer than they ever did because of science. A but they do that because you have parts of you removed by surgeons and so forth and ive done them of that in the book and given whatever wisdom i have for my Life Experience we want you do some of that in the book. Guest a lot of it. I talk about i had Prostate Cancer and when that metastasized i had serious reengineering of my body. Host is that your original head . Thats the most important thing. Everything else is negotiable but at least the had so far. We will go to a break because the eric texas show but we will continue talking for as long as you will stay here, David Horwitz. Its an honor to have you. A new book is mortality and faith. Stick around. Host if the eric were texas show and today we are coming to you on book tv as well as and im talking to David Horwitz about his brandnew book mortality through. David i have to ask you before we go further. How many books roughly have you written . Youve written a few books. Guest twenty that are worth reading. [laughter] well, i wrote quite a few as a leftist host its funny to think that you were a radical committed leftist until 1974 so you werent playing at this. You are very seriously involved in this. Guest this is the origins of the vision in this book that to make our lives meaningful we live inside stories that we tell ourselves and the stories theys. Vary and can be you can create a dynasty as one and they are all designed to give you hope or you will be a famous athlete or be in the hall of fame in a thousand years. Host that is my story. It can happen. [laughter] guest i lived inside this story and got from my parents in my community but we were going to change the world. Host through communist resolution in america. Guest yes. Through communist revolution. Thats what it was supposed to do. We do not have quite the classes of racism and sexism and xenophobia but we were all one big family in the vision of progresses. Host united by guest and in earthly redemption. Host and if you dont believe in that . Guest if you dont, you get in the way and progresses killed 100 Million People in the 20th century in peacetime. Host the progressives worldview that you are describing is that is at odds with the American Worldview we would call freedom or liberty. Thats another story but thats the key problem. T look at the Green New Deal. They want to pay people who dont want to work. Thats an incentive to be lazy and live off other people. The other people will resent that sooner rather than later and those people become problems and become you identify them as racist and its oppressing marginalized people. Its ridiculous but there are millions of people who believe wit and i would say ten or 15 f the 20 democrats candidates for the nomination also believe it. Host let me ask you because when you talk about we live inside stories and create stories. Guest gives our lives meaning and hope in the illusion that it will go on forever i. Its so easy to forget that you will die. Its really very easy. Normal human denial. This book i talk a lot about these stories. For example, theres a lot of literary host Julian Barnes who wrote a number of i guess postmodern novels, i cant think of the one he wrote the most famous one but what about him . Guest nothing to be afraid of which is when he was a little kid and afraid of death his friend said its nothing to be afraid of and his whole book is about this and the fact that as a writer and a famous writer probably millions of people who read his books but figures that in a generation ores two there will be nobody reading his boo books. Host [inaudible] is his most famous book and not only are very few people reading it but most people dont remember it but quite a big book at the time. He sort of is right about that that reading his guest yeah, cause it are scratching on the walls of the present which is life. This is a man who doesnt have a religious faith. Religious faith is a great consolation and thats why people are so passionately committed to ideas that have been proven to be incredibly destructive like social justice and socialism and communism because its such a consolation for the meaninglessness of our lives. Host do you believe that life is meaningless . Guest im an agnostic. I man agnostic which is why i think im a good witness on all these issues so host when you say that you were talking about communist radicalism when you say thatou its at odds with reality, right . Is that what you said . At odds with human nature when you say its at odds with human nature it seems to me you are saying that the american view of selfgovernment and libertye wht i would say is for conservative you is not at odds with human nature, is that correct . Forgive me but when we come back from a break ill ask you about that because sk guest we can talk about the plate and heresy. Host coming up on cspans book tv, dont go away. Host if the Eric Metaxas Show coming to you on cspans book tv talking with the author, thinker David Horowitz and his new book is mortality and faith, reflections on the journey through time but in this book, david, were talking about the meaning of life. You talking about the meaning of life and were talking about this haidea that you are saying your previous view, the communist view, utopian list view is at odds with human nature. Guest led to the murder of my friends and 100 Million People in the 20th century. With that story that i lived inside we shattered that is how i came to all these views to look at you only see a piece and there are people who are saving the planet and they get meaning out of that but you dont look outside that. You live inside it, why mac it gives your life meaning and if youre not saving the planet or the planet cant be saved which is more likely it shatters your personal peace and takes away your consolation. Host you have to have seen the data in 1974 in a way as a severe mercy . Its as though it took something sof horrible to wake you up to the idea guest i was clinically depressed, i would say or seven years. Host seven years . Guest guest. Host at what point did you shift . Guest how do you get out of that . Thats the subject of radical islam. Put 1 foot in front of the other and get involved and i had a running partner, petey peter collier, hes a catholic so he had a face and so he would get interested in stories that we did together. We were journalists and i had no interest in but i would follow him because i had to support my tchildren i did that. You put 1 foot in front of the other and after a while it turns out that you get inside in another story. Host at what point guest now, i guess, i want to save this country and i think this country is threatened by people the founding and understand where our freedoms come from and they have a contempt for the people who created our freedoms. This was based on the reading of history so that i understand this is a story and could be meaningless. Host could be meaningless . But your banking on the fact that guest on the right side of history. History has no right side. Host why do you say that . Guest well, its a classical view. In this book we talk about work is a really us and the romans and greeks they saw history as cyclical. Host didnt everyone see history as cyclical until you get to the western christian biblical guest everyone but the jews. Host i happen to know that but christians worship a jew. You might not realize that. Guest i always am finding that out. Host you dont have to pointed out to me but h i pointd out to you but its a fact but the question is once the bible and the god of the bible enters history and creates at least, in part although mostly what we call the west and leads to what we have today in america its at odds with this idea that history has no right side or history is not go anywhere, does it not . Guest no, because i think well, its what reagan said. Where a generation away from losing out all our freedoms and have to fight for every generation. If the islamists win and theres no reason they should not, they could cleverly infiltrated our society and they have a barbaric view of the world and they are jew haters and christian haters and [inaudible] haters as well. If they win were back to thear dark ages and its all gone. No, everything is fragile in that sense. Not as fragile as i dont want to be in extremist on that because i think america has a lot of resilience but i want to get to the plate and heresy. Host i cant you believe you just effort to get back to the plate and heres the. Guest the fundamental divi divide. The judeochristian view is contained in genesis, first chapter of genesis. Adam and eve were given a paradise much better than the Green New Deal or socialism and you did not die without pain or childbirth but there was one condition and that was to remain in the garden and that was you could not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. In other words,ed you do not wat to do evil. Adam and eve showed that they defied god in eight of the tree. Human beings enjoyed doing evil in human beings we have all inside us these free will, thats the basic judeochristian idea that god could easily compel belief in jesus could have risen off the cost and could come back today and do miracles but god gave us free will, the freedom to do evil as well as good. That human corruption is the problem. Its the source of social problems, all social problems. There is no such thing. Its just a collection of who we are as individuals. Its us. We have these bad tendencies that we fight all the time and have created all religion with morality. Host you are saying this is inherent and agreeing with the biblical worldview. Guest yeah, i definitely do but people on the left are followers of pelagius. He was a monk in the fourth century and pelagius believed that sin is against human nature that human nature left to itself is good. Host according to pelagius. Guest yes, so it took to sin is to go against your nature. He believed people were good christians the only thing they had to do to be good and then you had the key. Host i hate to cut them off in the middle of discussing the pelagius heresy but well be right back. Host it is the Eric Metaxas Show. David horowitz, youre just talking about the pelagius heresy so continue. Guest yeah, so, if you understand that the source of our problems is us and corruption inside every human being that has to be because it exists for example and you can see it in infants that you put two yearolds in the room and theres a lot of toys and you leave them for five minutes you will hear screams coming. Once you understand that then ndyou understand people in government are more dangerous than people who arent in government because they have more power and the same people that have the problems and we see this all around us today that corruption is epidemic in our government. Even worse are what i call the social redeemers. He will say i can redeem the world and we will save the planet. You already have environmental radicals talking about putting people in prison if they dont believe in Global Warming and stuff like that. When the legislators behind the Green New Deal u. S. Somehow we will do it and they say well, world war ii globalization. Will live under a military regime well, great. Host in their defense they say this as much an accidental threat as the nazis. Guest well, of course they wanted to be so they can get as much power but you know you end up with a totalitarian space. How will you confiscate 20 20067000000 gas guzzling cars . If you dont institute a military dictatorship and this is what people thats what makes it conservative to your view of human nature. People on the left think that people are born good and Society Makes them evil. Corporations make them evil. Patriarchy makes them evil. Host dick cheney has made it all. We dont have time to go into it but believe me hes in a bunker beneath the earth and were just his puppets, david. This idea something that you disagree with but i want to go back in the 70s you have the shattering experience of someone you knew was murdered by the panthers and how long did k it take before you realized i was with the wrong story in the wrong narrative . Almost instantaneous first of all, my closest friends when i told them that the panthers had murdered betty they said it was rue white power structure you know, we have this today where a set of a black panther, Tommy Lee Coates is the big icon of the left on Race Relations says theres no such thing as black on black crime and its white people behind it. Crazy stuff but an awful lot of intelligent people believe it. Host its fascinating because you talk about mortality and faith and its about stories and grab onto stories lately and people called narratives and that is the questionnd and we dont have time to get into it in the segment but when we come back we talk about whether there is an overarching narrative that is consonant with reality or i want to get into that but were talking with David Horowitz, mortality and faith is the new book. This is the Eric Metaxas Show. Host hello there folks. Im talking to the author of a brandnew book mortality and faith, our friend David Horowitz subtitleoo journey through time and people i admire have embraced this book like crazy. Dennis prager said that hes never been so moved by davids writing as i this profound book and stanley fish reading about it and i have to say, david your writing in this book is particularly fine but i want to ask you earlierre about your contention which i agree with that we have to grab onto stories or narratives and you are talking about when this woman was murdered in 1924 people couldnt get out of the narrative and rather than l sayi missed something she was so murdered by the white power structure or by the power structure and the man did it. Isnt it like being bring washed it seems to me like youre talking about putting your thinking in line in reality and human nature in saying that people who are stuck on these other narratives arent willing to do that. Guest its very difficult. I described it as a scene in the radical son which is icy these as to volumes of my autobiography when im in a bookstore and its after this happened and its a berkeley bookstore. This had all these books and then i see the sciencefiction and the people are into this or that in the whole world is a completely my world but marxism was the key to it all to my books and whatever but like 10000 books in the bookstore and when i realized that it was just another story it was a completely false one as it turned out the room looked black and it was like being in a desert completely fat with no landscape and i realized i was nothing and thats a terrifying we want what do you mean . Youre in a bookstore in the 70s and berkeley and you guest i realize that marxism is a farce of a set of ideas. There are millions who live off these bad and disproven and stupid ideas. Host you are suggesting guest thats what the stor story [inaudible conversations] that was difficult a thing as you could possibly have to do. Host you talk about that in the new book, mortality and faith, but it seems to me youre suggesting that you were going along for a ride and at some point you woke up and realized i was going in the wrong direction. Guest i had written maybe ten books at that time as a marxist and a devoted my life and was 35 years oldha and i devoted my life to this false idea and very destructive on and evil idea and thats how i know who people are still marxist like i like obama because the first thing i wanted to do was scream it out and say so that people stopped falling into the trap and that people dont do it, the obamas, the table axelrod they are still communists and all brought up that way and never detach themselves from it. I probably turned off half the audience with this book. Host i think that i want to go back is there a grand narrative and it seems to me like an agnostic youre suggesting that there might be but you dont know that there is but in the grand narrative that actually, not only happens to be correct but that its true on a deeper level. You are saying that you spent sthe last decades working with another narrative but you are not entirely convinced its true but you just think it might be true we do give me the book and i will redo the passage. I will fess up to this. Guest i wrote about mozart who was an incredible miracle who wrote all this beautiful music from the time he was six years old. Then he wrote a letter in his 31st year, 31 years old and wrote a letter to his father and it said as death is the real purpose of our life the seven years ive become closely acquainted to this true and best friend of our life so that is the image is not only no longer terrifying to me but rather something very soothing and comforting. I think my god for holding me in his grace and the opportunity of realizing that he is the key to our real happiness be one key meaning death or god. Guest he meaning god. The glass is the door. I wrote this and it was a this is me. It was a generous thought for a miraculous soul and i wish the face of this great and gifted young man who died four years later after this letter was mine as well. I wish it were mine is what i wish i could place my trust in the hands of our creator and wish i could look on my life and the life of my children and all i have loved and see them as prelude to a better world but try as i might i cannot. I am left to ponder the pointlessness of our strivings on this earth and to ask the impossible questions and receive no answers. Thats my plate but yes, marxism is a religious faith and very comforting to be a marxist. Its very important. Its very comforting to be in an environmental radical saving the planet but its just a faith a and. Host you are saying its a false faith. Guest yes, its a false faith. Look, science is very limited and its an amazing thing and has all this knowledge and the way youth double it every ten years or whatever but rightists have no idea how the universe began and have no idea how life began. How do you get these minerals, animal life host can i give you a hint . You dont. Its not guest our knowledge is so limited and d theres a lot in e book about [inaudible], other writers like saul bello and they stand and say we have threedimensional lines but we live in a four dimensional universe. That is the same thing as saying see it through a glass door. Thats wisdom in my view and thats the first humility is to understand the limits of our knowledge. It is interesting that when at a many were in the garden in the first chapters of genesis they were seduced into wanting to know evil by the serpent and what did the serpent say . If you eat of it treat you shall be as god and that is the left thanks they are gods and can rearrange the world and solve all our problems and do it in ten years. No then they can compel you to do what they want you to do. That arrogance is what causes the death of 100 Million People in the 20th century. Host you identify hubris guest these political figures like cortez there is no hesitation but she has the answers to everything. Its your bartender so no humility and its interesting that people on the left always mock people who pray but what prayer does is humbles you thers are powers and mysteries beyond you that you can never get a hold of and have to be heaven the answers. You will not find them. Host its interesting you say all these things because yo talk like a man of faith and dont sound like someone who whos if you accept the idea that life is meaningless and that everything involved with primordial soup by accident that we offer here by accident than life is meaningless and can hardly involve anyone because why should they why shouldnt they do anything because there is no truth or right or wrong and will come back with David Horowitz, new book mortality and faith and this is the Eric Metaxas Show. Host here is the Eric Metaxas Show talking to David Horowitz about mortality and faith. You say that some people latch on to a narrative and its almost like theyre inside a dream dont want to wake up for the dream but you woke up from the dream but that seems to imply there is such a thing as a world outside the dreamworld which is to say a real world with human nature and reality so you behave that way but get them comfortable dont you, david . Guest i do. But this is maybe a legacy for my communist parents that i was brought up to believe [inaudible] so its comfortable for me to live that way. R i lived my whole life. Host do you know what thats called . Guest there are consequences to actions and i tried to be as good a person as i can. Host but then, of course, why . Thats called a jeep dodge. Im not letting you get away with that. You realize that i would argue here that you dont believe what you just said that you are basically dont know the answer and so youre saying well, i think its because but the fact is your tooth awful and then do too much to the gate to pointing out lies if you dont believe there such a thing as truth. Guest i think youre right but ive been burned at one church of marxism and i see all churches and im weary where he. Host now youre in the church of wariness and guest yeah, and then your writing the humility train and i want to say but just to be whats the word, i dont want to get too conceptual but what im saying is isnt that there is no way out of that loop is what im trying to say that when you say now i figured it out and i was too radical and too sure of myself and now i will be more humble, less sure no matter what nyou do you are asserting something and asserting the idea of humility and asserting the idea of facts that work against this narrative and you are doing what youre doing more gingerly but asserting the very idea of doing things respectfully and humbly and gingerly as opposed to the idea that weto will grabn idea to thats a little generous and i agree with everything you said but ive devoted my life to finding the evil that i was born into it which is progressivism. Ive written over 20 odd books and have a series of nine volumes called the black book of the american left. I fight thatme battle with conviction because i lived it and want to prevent other peopl like me from going through the misery that i went through. But it is limited. Uncomfortable with that limited this imposition of agnosticism and i dont think i would be comfortable embracing a faith because our religious faith and the divinity, tempting as it i is host isnt that funny . Got his devilishly tempting you to accept them. Guest look at the comforts he brings. Host i dont know but were talking something bigger than religion and truth andli it strikes me that youre still trying to figure out what is truth and it seems to me your positing the idea that a humble ettitude toward knowing is part of truth. Guest i think its the way you approach it the way you begin the search for truth and i was always uncomfortable with astronomy when i was a young m man. Host astronomy . Guest astronomy because the universe is so unfathomably big and as i say scientists despite all their advances they dont know the most basic answers to the most basic questions. That is a problem with the religious view that yeah, god created the universe and god created life but it also is the door to kind of i will be wary. Host its interesting that ive never guest in my story which is my battle with this delusion that human beings without a divinity can redeem the world. I see that is the most destructive ideology in Human History and that is the ideology of progressives and thats a big enough battle for me. Host okay. I get that. It still means that you believe their battles are worth fighting because you fought hard and you just fight slightly differently than you might have in your previous incarnation but i wantr to get back to the book mortality and faith. You tell a lot of stories in this book and it is volume to you said of your autobiographiet and radical son so where do you pick up your story in this book . What year . Guest radical was on publish in 1997 but wrote it a little earlier. I will tell you where this book began. It began after 911 which isn interesting. Host we want to pause on an interesting note. We will driving back to talk about David Horowitz about mortality and faith. Host were talking to David Horowitz about his book, mortality and faith, on the Eric Metaxas Show. They were, you were just telling us it was around 911 near 2001 and two things happened in that year. One was 911 which i think, america was insulated from a lot of the evils of war in particular especially since the civil war and we just felt very safe in america and the 911 attacks changed thats. Knowing that availability of Nuclear Weapons would cause you to think about final things and then i was diagnosed right after 911 with a Prostate Cancer did that brought it home to me and i figured i should write about what worked for me in time and i was interested in it what were my feelings as i grow older and as things happen to me which i described throughout the book. Various losses and in particular, my daughter, i thought it would be i dont know, it attracted me to write about that and that has caused a lot of people who think im dying on the time. Thats the way the book begins is myoo father telling me that e begin to die the date we are born which is a little bit pessimistic. Host its really the day we are conceived but to be even more pessimistic its interesting and something to think about our own mentality but think we can be flippant about the meaning of life and death. I remember thinking of ourselves but we think about loved ones he mentioned your daughter dying young when you love someone and they die particularly when they die young that, to me, is much more strongly against the meaninglessness of life than the prospect of our own death. You do findow that losing your daughter . Guest my daughter was an observant jew and she believed in theer [inaudible] of the sous which led to reincarnation but reincarnation is the spirit and her spirit is inside me. I wrote a book about her all the cracking of the heart in which i deal with this and i think youre absolutely right about that. It was horrifying her death. I write about it and say that my life has a winter from which it can never recover. But, like i say, im very not only satisfied with the books i write but with this one in particular because i think theres a lot of wisdom in it and consolation for people since life is my father always liked to put it say it but i put it on his tombstone and it was a scene of marks, life is struggle. Host marks got something right, didnt he . Well,ng the german word for struggle kind of took a hit when hitler wrote mein kampf and so its really hard to speak about in the original german. Theres something about love when you talk about your book about the dog and your daughter dying in the cracking of the heart there is something if you are looking for clues to the meaning of life it seems to me that you have clues there that theres something about love and attachment to someone that says it doesnt seem possible that life could be meaningless. Host theres a whole passage about my wife and i. Guest my wife had been looking at on her laptop pictures of my daughter after she died and she came to me and said lets go out. I dont know if it is run by jews but it was like a jewish deli. Host in california . Guest in california and i was sitting at the table and there was a plate any stiff paper plate and it lifted off the table and hit me in the stomach and there was no wind and it was completely inexplicable. My wife was sure it was my daughter mitigating with us but offer as an example that again host did it strike you as miraculous guest yeah, i cant explain t. It. Host but it was at least its really strange. Guest yes and that is where i leave it as an egg agnostic. Host you say that but i dont believe you. You dont believe it was zeus and you dont believe it was nothing but just because we hold things lightly and just becausec were not sure radicals does not mean we cant believe things and it seems to me that though you are unwilling to say so there are certain beliefs that arent Worth Holding onto andin certain beliefs that might be Worth Holding onto. Guest im fascinating by shows called the seatbelt psychic and there was a guy who drives six people out and buy some places and they just get in to his cap and you never know whats going on behind the cap but he does things that are uncanny. He knows things about these people and their loved ones and i just take an agnostic view of that. Im not at all prepared to dismiss it even though there are psychics who are fake but im not prepared to dismiss it and the same thing with my daughter, i wish it were true as i write in the book. I wish this was a communication from my daughter. When somebody dies it leaves all the conversations unfinished and you know, you think about all the things you should have said but i leave it for what it is that. Host will go to another break in the right back with David Horowitz. Host talking to David Horowitz about mortality and faith. You have big bee gees fan . Guest queen. Host big queen van. Guest mark knopfler. Host hes a little leftist. Guest they all are. Host whos the other guy i always get them mixed up with [inaudible] i cant think of his name. Anyway, nevermind. Funny. Youve chosen to settle in california and been there all your these years and as someone who is the common arts conservative politically you are not in a place where most people share your worldview and people in the media tend to be radically on the left side of things and to have any theories as to why that is . Ha guest no. I moved to california in 1959 when it was still a leftist but hell for you is not a serious place. Not like new york but if i was in new york i cannot walk into a room without being assaulted for a belief. Host for what you believe. Guest i would be in battle all the time. I have often thought of that. California, on the other hand, is easy to avoid. I now cant go on a campus because the leftist decided to shut down conservatives entire entirely, not only have they been purged from their faculties but you cant let them in the door for a lecture. Host very dangerous if people like you are a College Campus two i cant go to a College Campus without a bodyguard but now the administration is so supportive of these campus fascists that they just turn my speech into a circus with all kinds of strange things. They try to obstruct it. But i find it very easy in california that theyre interested in their bodies and careers. Unless you are in San Francisco and i moved out of the bay area about when i voted for reagan and that was the year i moved out. Host is that right . Guest everybody all they talk about his relationships. [laughter]i host oh my gosh. Its funny to think of you living on the west coast with the views you have. With this book, mortality and faith, you make it sound it has an elegiac tone, do you think this as as a final statement . Not exactly on your deathbed guest i say i inspired people to act on the idea that im dying. This was years ago. Host this is not your farewell tour . Guest it is but i wrote it that way. The end of the book. A dear friend, ed snyder, created the philadelphia flyers, very wealthy man, very generous man and he had cancer at the same time i did but he opted not to do the surgery. But he was just a wonderful spirit in this life and when he died, of course, people come out ofo the woodwork and tell the things he did for them and so you lose him again. Host i want to hear the rest of this story but we have to ended this hour. If you want to hear the rest of this from Eric Metaxas Show we are on youtube and will continue the story but that and this hour, david, thank you. Thank you. He host hello there folks. Its the Eric Metaxas Show. Im sitting here having a wonderful conversation with David Horowitz, new book is mortality and faith. David, what is the book we talked about before this book . . Guest i want to finish my story about ed snyder. Host this is the man who created guest created the will of althea flyers. And many other things. When i was suffering from this cancer i have this major operation and he comforted my wife and then he insisted that i have nurses around the clock which he paid for. I wanted to i was very reluctant to accept such a gift but i knew this guy and i did not want to hurt his feelings so i took it and was a great help to me. Then he died he was incredible pain. His son told me the story and Wells Fargo Center where the flyers played that his last words which were excruciating and had to put his ear close to his father to hear them were, i want to thank the flyers for what they did for my family. I get emotional but i felt ashamed by this type because i wanted to be a person like that but did not live up to quite that standard. All the flyers loved him because he was like a father to him. I went to a lot of the games with him. Even though i did not watch the flyers games for 4050 year games but he was like a 12 yearold game and got upset but things do not go well. He would always go down to the locker room even when they lost and encourage them. Host tell us his name again. Guest ed snyder in philadelphia. Host its interesting because if we are looking for what is truth which seems to be what you are doing in your book, mortality and faith, trying to think about it carefullyr it strikes me that when you encounter someone like your friend, ed that you know there is something there. Something there this is a clue as to what is true or meaningful but he seems to me as further evidence its not possible that life is meaningless and we just exist and there is nothing because a life like his. I respect t hai obviously respect that. Its interesting thats how you respond although theres something somebody who is cynical, scientistic i know, listen, the only reason you respond that way is because evolution has programmed you to, listen to people who believe that. I understand that. They make an argument for that and they say it is meaningless but somehow evolution has favored those who have genes predisposed that life has meaning and so it doesnt mean life has meaning, you have to thinkg about. Thats a presumption. Yeah, i dont agree with it, its interesting to yeah, but im not that person. I know youre not. This is probably a legacy. Yeah. Even though their belief was false. That to me seems cynical and we will let it go. The idea the question is what are you believing. I understand that. Your parents were passionate people. My father, my father was communism made him strong, just personally, his father was very weak. But his political faith made him powerful, he was very articulate and very good teacher. What did he do for a living . High school teacher. Did he pass away before your conversion . No, he never fully understood it. I wrote a the first book i wrote together, and it was front page of sunday times, as author you know how important that is. It wasnt about the economic crisis, he said to me, what wants to read about the rock rockfeller at this point. Its a best seller, dad. That was pretty good, we are talking about the nature of reality, if he was right and power corrupt, absolute power corrupt, absolutely, as political conservative both of us we would say that, yes, because human nature is not good we need to have checks and balances on power and that any time power crews its a bad thing and we do what we can structurally to work against that, seems to me that one thing the founders did not plan for was the kind of power we have today in in corporations like google and something has happened on social media. They have to regulate it. Its the public conversation, is there, you know, National Greatest danger to american democracy right now. Thats facebook and google. Media matters, the whole left is organized to suppress and destroy and the Progressive Left today is a communist left. Yeah. No relationship to democratic left. Democratic socialism is a oxymoron, thats ridiculous, you cant take away power and have democracy. The fact that these people, you know, its frightening, through all of the dishonesty, Elizabeth Warren is not a stupid woman, not learned a single thing is scary. What i was going to say about google and social media, you have two things going on, first of all, the heads of hugely powerful corporations not only being radically leftist but willing to use their power if you have any respect for american pluralism, you know, when i was a leftist, the leftist gotten worse and worse in the 60s, when i was a leftist in the 60s, i wanted to hear what our opponents were saying. I thought it would make me a better radical. They didnt want to hear anymore, they just we wanted to destroy you. To me thats the first part of it, the second part of it, the one thing the founders couldnt really foresee is the idea of social media, in other words, something putting aside the biases of the heads of google and other powerful organizations, amazon, jeff bezos, so on and so on, putting that aside, theres something in the nature of social media, its the kind of cruel or aggregation that works like a mob, in other words, you can by having the Electoral College you can work against that structurally during duections but in terms of the culture generally social media seems to behave like a mob in the way that if we did away with Electoral College, you will go to computer every day and vote on what you think everybody should do, clearly the founders tried to create something that would work against that because thats the kind different control. They understood that the root of all the problems, distrusted the people, the founders were very brilliant. You dont want one right. But on the other hand, they introduced all the skepticism, checks and balance. Hang on, we want to end on an exciting note, dont go away. Hey, there folks, we are talking with david, mortality and faith, some of you are watching this on cspan book tv, wherever you can find my name, we are talking about social media, speaking of which, youtube, google, aggregation of power, we were talking about checks and balances, the founder didnt foresee social media, so what is there in our constitution that can help us work against what we see redefine them as public utilities, using the internet. Im not a lawyer. Thats the first part of the problem. The first part of the problem where denise wrote about, in other words f google is censoring, people, yes need to make them public utilities. They are. Its not a question. What about the larger issue that we are now having national conversations, theres like a different consciousness as a result of social media that didnt exist 20 years ago, something has happened via twitter so on and so forth where things moved differently, ideas one of the biggest im thinking that the Tech Companies are only part of the problem and entertainment company, nbc, the news media is so corrupt that, you know, you have people saying things that are absolutely false and clearly politically organized and attack republicans and trump. Dont you think the free market is helping us see that, alternatives . Helpful but less and less helpful is stupid statement, i watched shep smith say it on fox, it was all over, nbc and cnn, there were 251 Mass Shootings this year already in america and i said to myself, that is absurd. I went to google i had i think it was on the second page that i found an article which knew where the sources run and extreme antigun source and they dont give the criteria for what is a mass shooting. Right. Well, i guess this gets to the bigger issue, something is happening, something is happening in the culture that is at part from bias we dont have any liable laws. Is that possible . Can that happen . The New York Times which writes if youre a public figure as i am, you can say anything about me, its an opinion protect bid the first amendment. Right. The new york calling trump a racist, protected by the first amendment, where should be liable even though hes the president when did we cease to have liable laws . New york times versus sullivan. What year was that . I dont remember the year. Supreme court decision, New York Times versus sullivan made the standard for liable so high in this country, not in england but in this country that you cant sue for liable. You have to show malice. Its an opinion. Yeah. Or when you have you have one media which is semifree, which is fox, people say fox is the instrument of white supremacy, ive never watched shepherd smith go after trump for nothing or not to mention Chris Wallace and others on fox. Juan williams. Yeah. Well the problem with democracy, thats the problem we have now, theres got to be some institutions that set standard of some kind of fairness. Right. Didnt always used to be this way, you know, this is 10, 15 years its become this way. I assume youre a believer in free market and i assume that youre not in religious way, though. What do you mean . Conservatives dont want you to mez with private companies. Right. Thats ideology. Right. Im a practical person. I see the threat from google and facebook and and twitter. I cant put up an image of book covers on twitter. Why . They institute algorithm. Just hearing this you know, the southern poverty that people arent in jail, Michelle Obamas lawyer, come on. Well, listen, we are on book tv. There are people out there and i think that slowly some people are waking up to this. Its taking a long, long time but i agree with you that, you know much more rapid. I have a different perspective. I voted for reagan in 84 and i felt like a voice crying in the wilderness in next 30 years, people were nice to me on the right but they were calling these people liberals. Hang on, we have to go to yet another break, we will be right back talking to David Horowitz. Hey, there folks, talking about book called mortality and faith. You said that i wasnt following, you said you think its moving quickly than that and you said that you think people are waking up. Started with obama. Inequity finally ino america. Inequity. Well, both. Inequities. It started with obama that they began to see how radical the people were. Conservatives were uncomfortable with, you know, my talking about the malice of the left, the left has they think nothing of destroying people and lie. You know, at the top of top 10 hate mongers in america, that im antiblack, ive written 3 books on racist issue and theyre t all, you know, even a teenager could read and see on Martin Luther king and the founders vision and should judge people this gets back to the to the meaning of life, right, seems to me that youre suggesting that g folks on the hard left dont have transcended values and dont really think lying to get in power is wrong. But what im saying our morals are different. That suggests that one world view, lets say a more conservative traditionalist American World view believes in transcendent values and the other views which is cull culturally marxist does not. Its true that people on the right understand that human beings lie. That we have to fight that all of the time, its a natural tendency. People do it all of the time, they do it in everyday life and, you know, social situations easier to get out of what changed. But we have to fight it, we have to understand, actually martin wrote a book where a lie is root of all evil. I didnt think we would get to michael, David Horowitz, you will get to Julian Barnes. Theres a passage about i cant remember thea name of the story but short story about his mother dying of cancer where he goes out and he has adventure with a sexual adventure with a woman. N. Misadventure. Misadventure. He talks about thinking life is a turning table without moving in any direction and, of course, when hey gets back, as he its an embarrassing humiliating the prostitute steals his clothes. Right. He realizes that he hopes that his father disbanded him. He was on the turntable and not really dont see them always progressing towards the end. Because of the force of mortality. Yes. And pascal who is an incredible poynant and moving figure and wonderful theological writings, because pascal understood our plight and, you know, actually his book which collected. Ponse. The thoughts of pascal is about the issue of faith. Although he also did have fire where can you talk about that, i read about that very recently and i was i had never seen that. A lot of interesting things, one is he had a night where he felt he was visited by the the Abraham Lincoln and jacob, whatever the flesh would be but he also talks about the hidden god, this is about free will, its another thing that left dont understand the fundamental christian belief that u god gave usia free will to do evil as wel good. Leftists things we are prisoners of racism, sexism, we dont chose but we do. Theres a fatalism, when you say leftism, especially the recent generation of leftists capitalists, exploiting workers, stealing from them basically which was discredited in his lifetime, transferred it to what . Race, gender and sexual orientation. So right. They talk about who are marginalized. If you put a ring through your nose and you were born male and claim to be a woman, of course, you will be marginal, its not that people marginalize you, change the attitudes of 6 billion people, this is ridiculous. [laughter] we are going to they could do it, they are the firing squad as alternative and people will say we just got a few minutes left, dont go away, David Horowitz is my guest, reflections on a journey through time, the previous book we have a copy here dark agenda, the war to destroy christian america, we will be right back. Hey, there folks, talking to David Horowitz, new book more talety and faith, previous book dark agenda, david, for somebody who holds truth and meaning lightly, you nonetheless hold them and you seem to be a warrior for what you believe is true or at least the warrior for what you know to be false and i think as with my friend davis prager who ison a jewish, youre a much better defender of who we call, you know, christian values and christian thinking that many christians are, why do you suppose that is . Well, first of all, they dontt have stake in the answer. If youre a believer, you believe jesus christ is our savior. Theres a lot of things that i have no stake in that, but i clear view on the way the country was created, the freedoms that left to enjoy but we all enjoy are all christian ideas, the founders were christians, settlers, 98 of the settlers were protestant christians, understand where they come from, where to get your freedoms and therefore you cant defend them and i began with it occurred to me that you cant have an inalineable rights because of beto orourke, gillibrand or Elizabeth Warren, they will take them away from you, the first look that you cross at them. Yeah. You have to come to terms with the fact that without a judeochristian view of the world, no america and that means its a good all the good things in america, freedoms in particular and various ways to do that, i discussed them in this book dark agenda but to me its a pragmatic approach and i think thats why its a at least pragmatic, we will not get into that. Ive written two books, if you can keep it, i wrote a biography of mar tip Martin Luther, and i saw how it is in fact, the bible interpreted correctly ta gives us the freedoms that we celebrate and hopefully defend in america. We have minute left, i have to ask you of current crop of candidates on the democratic side who do you think might end up beingtw our their nominee. Liars im appalled and youre ready for my theory, they will continue to devour each other. Itll be biden. They will continue, its kind of like the jackles and theyll all be bloodied and bloodied, people like Michael Moore already talking that none of the people can win, but here is my theory is that when everybody is is bloody in the water and nobody can beat trump, out of the weeds like an old vest to save america will come hillary clinton, she will pretend to be dragged to be the nominee and she will be the nominee, thats my theory. David, such a pleasure to have you, thank you so much. Thank you for having me. At look at some books being published this week, former secretary of defense jim mattis and ben west recount secretary mattis military career and views on leadership in call, sign chaos, former Senior Adviser to bill clinton and hillary clinton, blumenthal continues biography in all the powers of earth, in defending israel, author and attorney Alan Dershowitz reflects on advocating with israel. Also being published this week in super prompt, New York Times Technology Correspondent mike issac examines the rise of uber, editorial profiles the economists who push for free market following world war ii in the economists hour. In power grab former utah republican congressman Jason Chaffetz offers thoughts on democrats to undermine President Trump and in proof of conspiracy, Seth Abrahamson argues that President Trump has conspired with foreign leaders, look for titles in bookstores this coming week and watch for many of the authors in the future on book tv on cspan2. Now on book tv we want to introduce you to author joel, here is the book hes written, your successful farm business, you dont write books for a living but youve written several, is that correct . Ive written 12. What have you books been about . How to the chicken production, farm, some broader cultural things like everything i want to do is illegal and folks this aint normal about our our modern day. The historic, historical