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The Top Books for Understanding the Left
NewsReal Blog ^ | September 8, 2009 | David Swindle

Posted on 09/08/2009 5:42:48 PM PDT by HorowitzianConservative

radical son

David Horowitz's recent appearance on Glenn Beck and the subsequent resignation of former Green Jobs Czar Van Jones has brought a renewed interest in understanding the nature of the political Left.

I got an email yesterday from Robert, one of our readers:

I am an avid reader and have followed David Horowitz for some time. Just finishing Liberal Fascism, I would like input into what you might consider to be the best 10-12 books an individual could read to best understand the progressive movement. Could you forward some recommendations?
I promised Robert a post in which I made my recommendations.

Before leaping into the books a great place to start is with Discover The Networks, the Freedom Center's online encyclopedia of the Left. Go there and browse around a bit. (You'll note that here at NewsReal we link to DTN extensively -- something we encourage other bloggers to do.)

(Excerpt) Read more at newsrealblog.com ...


TOPICS: News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: davidhorowitz; newsrealblog; theleft

1 posted on 09/08/2009 5:42:48 PM PDT by HorowitzianConservative
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To: HorowitzianConservative
I'll add one excellent book to understanding:

Slouching Towards Gomorrah : Modern Liberalism And American Decline / Robert H. Bork.

It was written in 1996, but is succinct and relates a great historical perspective to "progressives" and liberals.

2 posted on 09/08/2009 5:51:58 PM PDT by C210N (A patriot for a Conservative Renaissance!)
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To: HorowitzianConservative

The Necronomicon of Abdul Alhazred.


3 posted on 09/08/2009 5:56:45 PM PDT by sphinx
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To: sphinx

Boy, you got that one right.


4 posted on 09/08/2009 5:59:56 PM PDT by Noumenon (Work that AQT - turn ammunition into skill. No tyrant can maintain a 300 yard perimeter forever.)
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To: HorowitzianConservative

I just finished “I Can’t Believe I’m Sitting Next to a Republican” by Harry Stein. Insightful, cathartic, depressing and hilarious. I enjoyed it very much.


5 posted on 09/08/2009 6:03:36 PM PDT by fullchroma (Obama: GET OUT OF MY DOCTOR'S OFFICE!)
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To: HorowitzianConservative

The Gulag Archipelago

The Black Book of Communism


6 posted on 09/08/2009 6:06:20 PM PDT by WeatherGuy
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To: fullchroma
I just finished “I Can’t Believe I’m Sitting Next to a Republican” by Harry Stein. Insightful, cathartic, depressing and hilarious. I enjoyed it very much.


Hey fullchroma - See what Obama Reads

The name of the book Obama is reading is called "The Post-American World" written by Obama's fellow Muslim Fareed Zakaria.


Fareed Zakaria


One commentator has said this about the book:

"The author is one of the legion of foreigners who have come to the US for various reasons since WWII (George Soros comes to mind) and are working to move the US into globalism and their concept of a one world order. Having gained that intelligence, there was no reason to subject myself further to propaganda of this type."



FAREED ZAKARIA, APPEASER AND MUSLIM APOLOGIST from an earlier post by Lawrence Auster

If Fareed Zakaria could ever have been thought of as a conservative or a neoconservative (perhaps because he was once associated with the National Interest), those days are long past. His July 10th article for the leftist publication Newsweek, where he is the international editor, is must reading, a stunning example of how the mainstream media seeks to manipulate Americans into a supine posture toward Islam and Islamic terrorists.

To begin with, Zakaria excitedly claims that, unlike after the 9/11 attack, Muslims after the London attack are strongly condemning terrorism. Yet he gives virtually no quotes to back up this statement. He even says, without a single quote in support, that hard-line Muslim terrorist groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah have condemned the attack. Further, the quotes that he does provide employ the classic Muslim weasel language. For example, he says that Sheik Mohammed Sayyed Tantawi rejected "the argument that this attack could be justified as an attempt to force Britain out of Iraq. 'This is illogical and cannot be the motive for killing innocent civilians,' he said." But as anyone who didn't land on planet earth yesterday knows, "innocent" doesn't mean the same thing to Muslims that it means to the rest of us. When Muslims say that "innocent" people shouldn't be murdered, they're speaking of people who have not offended Islam, i.e. Muslims and dhimmis and people living in countries such as France which have "understandings" with Islam. Second, Tantawi does not even denounce the killings of innocents. He says that forcing the British out of Iraq cannot be a justifiable motive for killing innocent civilians. The plain implication is that there are justifiable motives for murdering innocent civilians. In presenting such weasel language as though it were legitimate, Zakaria, who is no fool, becomes an accomplice in the age-old Muslim tactic of lying to outsiders.

But then, after all his re-assuring folderol about how Muslims are forthrightly condemning terrorism and how great this is, Zakaria says, "There should be much, much greater condemnation from mainstream Islam." Excuse me, but if there has to be "much, much greater" condemnation than there now is, then obviously the amount of condemnation supposedly occurring now is not remotely sufficient, is it? So why does Fareed act as if it's such a great breakthrough? Clearly this is not a truth-seeking writer but a spinmeister for Islam.

But it gets worse. Zakaria tells us that President Bush has been missing the boat in the war on terror because he hasn't focused on what victory in the war would really mean. After a lot of hemming and hawing, Fareed tells us what he means by victory: (1) being able to prevent the worst terrorist attacks (i.e., preventing a 9/11, but not a 7/07); and (2) improving our response capabilities to terrorist attacks after they occur (a favorite campaign plank of John Kerry's, by the way). Thus Zakaria wants us not only to accept domestic suicide bombings as a regular, unavoidable fact of existence, but to see their regular occurence (in the absence of a 9/11 scale attack) as a sign that we have "won" the war on terror. Meanwhile, naturally, he suggests doing absolutely nothing about the vast Muslim populations within the West and the ongoing mass immigration of Muslims into the West. In fact, in an article for Newsweek following the rejection of the EU constitution by France and Netherlands, he urged an increase of Muslim immigration into Europe, plus the accession of the entire population of Turkey:

[W]hat Europe desperately needs is more of all the trends that are producing populist paranoia. It needs ... more young immigrants to sustain its social market and a more strategic relationship with the Muslim world, which would be dramatically enhanced by Turkish membership in the EU. Of course, Europe already has a disastrously close strategic relationship with the Muslim world, involving, on the European side, total European support for the Palestinian cause, unstinting European hostility to Israel, and the redefinition of European identity as equal parts European and Islamic, an arrangement Bat Ye'or has called "Eurabia," and Zakaria wants this "strategic relationship," which in fact represents the dhimmitude of the entire European continent, to get even stronger than it now is.

In sum, Fareed Zakaria, once a member of the neocon camp and now a star of the liberal mainstream media, is an apologist for Islam and for Muslim extremists (assuming there is any difference between the two), as well as an advocate for the demographic and cultural Islamization of Europe. These things should never be forgotten.

7 posted on 09/08/2009 6:33:49 PM PDT by B-Cause (It's not what you gather, but what you scatter that tells what kind of life you have lived.)
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To: B-Cause

I’ve seen that. This county’s been infiltrated. Big time. No doubt. Straight up.


8 posted on 09/08/2009 6:44:34 PM PDT by fullchroma (Obama: GET OUT OF MY DOCTOR'S OFFICE!)
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To: HorowitzianConservative

To understand what liberalism is, you have to understand what it is not. Read HOW CAPITALISM SAVED AMERICA by Thomas DiLorenzo.


9 posted on 09/08/2009 6:57:39 PM PDT by grumpa (VP)
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To: fullchroma

I totally agree with you!


10 posted on 09/08/2009 7:00:24 PM PDT by B-Cause (2 Terms as limits for all politicians - the first term in office - second term in jail!)
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To: HorowitzianConservative

The Tyranny of Liberalism. James Kalb. I needed to read it twice.


11 posted on 09/08/2009 7:49:00 PM PDT by smallelmike
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To: sphinx

LOL! How True!

thanks, I needed that laugh break.


12 posted on 09/09/2009 6:47:13 AM PDT by Jacksonian Grouch (God has granted us Freedom; we owe Him our courage in return)
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To: Jacksonian Grouch

Darkness at Noon by Koestler


13 posted on 09/09/2009 7:12:18 AM PDT by tommythev
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