DAVID HOROWITZ, RIP
One of the greats just passed away. Cancer got him at the age of 86. Admiration is what remains.
David Horowitz was a mensch. His intellect was comparable to anyone's. I admire Einstein for his expertise in physics. Unlike Einstein, Horowitz was an intellectual. Where Einstein's product was mathematical equations and uncanny intuitions, Horowitz's output was ideas. He challenged the status quo. He made us think thoughts that we hadn't fully conceived. He thought them out for us in our practical world. And to their logical conclusion. Then he explained them, same as Einstein, but differently. That's what intellectuals do. Both men were smart in their different ways.
This is my paean to him. My life is enriched by his journey. God has him now and will nurture him through and beyond the transition. In his youthful college years, he was a left-wing advocate, full of piss and vinegar, an early 1960's radical and outspoken leader in California's New Age movement in an era when free speech was at the top of the ticket. That's what he and others fought for. Then he watched as his "free speech" brethren moved beyond free speech and, in fact, began opposing it. After demanding tolerance, insisting that their voices must be heard, those same folks then became intolerant, convinced that their views were the only views that mattered. It's a slippery slope that gets faster on the way down.
Horowitz wanted no part of it. He was not a relativist, in which one person's views are as valid as another's. Once you embrace relativism, you are inviting trouble in ways you never may have imagined. It's not a hill worth dying on. You might want to embrace relativism when you are talking with a cannibal, if only to get along, but don't turn your back on that person, else you may be what's for supper. Instead, walk side by side until you reach the fork in the road. Then part company and call for help. Be open-minded, but not so open-minded that your brains fall out. If you don't watch your back, don't blame those who are behind you, 'cause they are looking out for themselves. It's on you if you don't understand.
I love democracy. You are free to hold your ideas, and me mine. Then we go out and vote, and the candidate with the most votes gets to enact laws that represent the majority's interests. That's how voting, aka democracy, works. The Constitution sets the rules of the game.
That's the point at which Horowitz parted company with his old friends. They didn't like the rules of the game. He did. And he spoke his mind.
Like David, I loved the notion of collegial dialogue when I was a university professor. You know, the free exchange of ideas. You share your thoughts, I share mine, and together we search for the middle ground or perhaps some other terms of mutual refreshment. These days, those days are gone. We've lost our shared moral tradition, at least in the media's view and among too many politicians. But that shared moral tradition persists. Life teaches us sooner or later, if we have ears to hear and eyes to see.
I soon found myself on David's side of the aisle. He got there before I did, if only because he was smarter than me. I ended up as his colleague, and an admirer. I wish I could have told him these things before he died. He now is a memory, but one I won't forget until I, too, share his journey into what comes next.
I don't view this life as a final journey. It is a passage. A pathway. If you think otherwise, good luck to you. I prefer the free exchange of ideas, a mind with which to weigh them, and what comes next, the emphasis being on what comes next. The concept of time is irrelevant. Time is just another word for cause and effect. It's how we measure the duration of events. That's for this life and the four dimensions of our universe, both space and time. Experience is what follows. But in the eternal NOW.
