David Horowitz: Political War

David Horowitz is the founder of the David Horowitz Freedom Center and the bestselling author of several books, including the classic Autobiography Radical son And The Black Book of the American Left. His new book is Betrayed America. He sent us this column for publication on Power Line. David writes:

Many Americans concerned about the fate of our country are wondering why the election polls seem so close. The Chinese have a piece of wisdom that suggests an answer: to restore civil sanity and order, it is first necessary to call things by their right names. Whether out of politeness or cowardice, Republicans are weak at this.

As many of us have noted too often in vain, Democrats reflexively call conservatives racists, white supremacists, and Hitlerites, while Republicans respond by calling them “liberals.” What is liberal about attacking, undermining and trying to abolish the First Amendment? Or meddling in the presidential election by mobilizing a corrupt judiciary to remove the leading Republicans from the race? Or calling for government censorship on social media platforms, or privileging certain races over others?

In the current presidential campaign, Democrats in the media are trying to distract voters from the conditions the Democrats have imposed on them by vilifying Trump as “an existential threat to democracy.” Republicans respond by referring to the fact that Democrats have “weaponized” the Justice Department. Even if a voter understands that “arming” does not mean arming the FBI and federal police, the emotional charge of Hitlerism is sorely lacking – even though that is exactly what it means. If justice is not blind, but becomes a partisan force to criminalize political opponents like Trump, then the logical goal of weaponizing justice is a one-party dictatorship and a totalitarian state. Or, as Hillary has put it, without government censorship of the media, “we will lose total control.”

Democrats criminalize arguments and facts they cannot answer by calling them “disinformation.” In a campaign worthy of the KGB, the Democratic secretary of state bribed 51 top intelligence officials, including the former head of the CIA, to sign a letter just before the 2020 election exposing Hunter Biden’s treasonous laptop called ‘Russian disinformation’. This behavior is not just about winning elections, which was and would be bad enough. It’s about betraying your country and compatriots.

Republicans are rightly alarmed that Democrats have destroyed America’s borders, letting in an estimated 20 million unvetted individuals, including hundreds of thousands of convicted criminals, virtually all of them from countries and continents ruled by corrupt dictators and fanatical terrorists. They are shocked by the Democrats’ determination to give these illegal aliens the right to vote, with more goods and privileges than the native population.

But they remain silent when it comes to calling this policy what it is: criminal and treasonous attacks on our country and its Constitution. Joe Biden had no legal authority to change U.S. immigration policy through an executive order. Immigration policy is the purview of the legislature, not the destructive schemes of one crazed executive. Destroying the border is the greatest crime committed against America in its 237-year history. It is not an everyday policy difference.

When Trump tried to deport immigration criminals as president, he was forced to temporarily separate their children, leaving them in the care of Border Patrol agents in facilities Obama built. He had no choice while the parents were being treated, because U.S. law prohibits imprisoning children for their parents’ criminal acts. Trump ended his efforts after two months.

Democrats used this situation to portray Trump as a heartless Nazi, calling the Obama-built facilities that housed them reminiscent of Auschwitz. President Joe Biden led the charge, saying Trump ripped babies from their mothers’ arms and then locked them up in “concentration camps.” When Biden became president, he and his administration invited “unaccompanied minors” to make the dangerous trek through the hemisphere’s jungles, with Mexican drug cartels as their guides.

While Trump had separated four thousand children for two months, the Democrats’ policy successfully kept nearly a million minors separated from their parents indefinitely. In 2024, the Department of Homeland Security revealed that they had “lost” 350,000 of these children and had no way to find them. Because the cartels were active in the sex trade and in violating U.S. child labor laws, it was not difficult to guess where the missing children had been taken.

It’s hard to fathom how desensitized the hearts of Democrats have become. Not only do they lie about their political opponents, but they do so while pretending to care about the suffering of lost children when, quite frankly, they don’t care—any more than they care about their country and its people. What they care about is winning the power to censor and control their political opponents so that they are free to “reimagine” the American future, whatever the human cost.