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Epoch Times
10-05-2025
- Politics
- Epoch Times
From Radical Leftist to Conservative Activist: Remembering David Horowitz
Commentary David Horowitz, the radical leftist-turned-conservative activist and author, The cause of death was cancer. Horowitz is Horowitz's influence was perhaps best summarized by conservative New York Times columnist Ross Douthat in a '[E]veryone who is a young person on the political right in the 1990s and early 2000s, as I was, has had at least one encounter with David Horowitz of one kind or another. Sixties radicalism definitely lived on in his postradical phase, I think it's fair to say.' While I never met Horowitz, I did have the opportunity to read his autobiography 'Radical Son: A Generational Odyssey' for a college final paper. Somewhat ironically, the book had been recommended by a famous left-wing professor at my university whose class on the history of the American Left I was taking. Related Stories 5/6/2025 5/8/2025 Reading the memoir would become a highlight of my college career. Horowitz was, at heart, a superb storyteller. The future journalist and commentator was born in Forest Hills, Queens, in New York City, in 1936, the grandson of Russian Jews who had immigrated to the U.S. His parents were high school teachers and devoted members of the American Communist Party. That all changed when Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev in 1956 issued his 'secret speech' that denounced former Soviet dictator Josef Stalin for crimes against humanity. The speech was leaked to the Western press, and it led the American Communist Party to Fulfilling the American dream, Horowitz would go on to attend some of America's finest universities. He graduated from Columbia University in 1959 with a degree in English, and he later earned a master's degree in the subject from the University of California at Berkeley. That was followed by a position at the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation in London. Horowitz eventually made his way back to the U.S., where In the 1960s, both Collier and Horowitz were devoted believers in left-wing causes. They wrote against the Vietnam War, and in his memoir, Horowitz recounts how the conflict became a foil for the Left's antagonism against the American way of life. '[The war] was not ultimately about Vietnam, but about our antagonism to America, our desire for revolution,' Horowitz also became acquainted with the Black Panthers during this period, in particular cultivating a friendship with the group's founder, Huey P. Newton. As Horowitz would tell it, he even helped A few months later, Van Patter would disappear, and her severely beaten body would be Van Patter's slaying was a point of no return for Horowitz's relationship with the American Left. 'In pursuit of answers to the mystery of Betty's death, I subsequently discovered that the Panthers had killed more than a dozen people in the course of conducting extortion, prostitution, and drug rackets in the Oakland ghetto,' Horowitz 'While these criminal activities were taking place, the group enjoyed the support of the American Left, the Democratic Party, Bay Area trade unions, and even the Oakland business establishment,' he continued. Horowitz would take his same zeal for justice that he had when he was on the Left to his work on the Right. He joined a rising group of former left-wing intellectuals in rejecting Marxism and socialism and supporting the policies of President Ronald Reagan. That took the form of publishing influential articles like ' The two men would go on to publish Horowitz was a pioneer in combating the Left in America, and today he has many imitators. He went on campus tours, where Horowitz even has some compatriots in academia with centers devoted to preserving and restoring Western civilization A major theme of Horowitz's memoir is the importance of family. Even when he was at the height of his left-wing political involvement, the journalist noted that his wife and children kept him more grounded than many of his peers. In an atomistic society, where Americans increasingly leave their homes for opportunities, and where digital interaction offers the false promise of genuine human connection, we could all do with holding our families a little tighter. Reprinted by permission from Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
Time of India
28-04-2025
- Politics
- Time of India
Saikat Chakrabarti, Dini Ajmani, Vivek Ramaswamy: The next generation of Indian-Americans shaking up American politics
Once upon a time, the story of the Indian-American in politics was simple: work hard, succeed quietly, maybe send a polite donation to a senator's re-election campaign, and otherwise stay away from the blood sport of American democracy. That time is now dead. A new generation, born of internet activism, technocratic ambition, and entrepreneurial audacity, is elbowing its way into the halls of power — unafraid to confront the establishment, unbothered by the polite invisibility once expected of immigrant communities. At the vanguard are names that, today, are whispered in political circles but could tomorrow be roared on the national stage: Saikat Chakrabarti , Dini Ajmani , and Vivek Ramaswamy . Each comes from the same diaspora, yet each charts a wildly different vision for America's future — one revolutionary, one technocratic, one unapologetically contrarian. Together, they reveal not just where Indian-American politics is going — but where America itself might be heading. Saikat Chakrabarti: The Spreadsheet Revolutionary If the American Left had a tech startup phase, Saikat Chakrabarti would have been its founding CTO. Raised in Texas, a Harvard graduate, and a former engineer at Stripe, Chakrabarti could have lived a life of elite anonymity — sipping flat whites and cashing stock options. Instead, he chose to be a political arsonist. First as an architect of the Justice Democrats and later as chief of staff to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, he helped remake the American Left in the image of its insurgent base: younger, angrier, and utterly intolerant of business as usual. Now, Chakrabarti has decided to take on the final boss of the Democratic establishment — Nancy Pelosi . To call this move audacious would be an understatement. Pelosi is not just the former Speaker of the House; she is a living institution, an apex predator of Washington's jungle. But Chakrabarti believes her era has expired — that the politics of wine cave fundraisers and endless bipartisan pieties no longer fit an America drowning in inequality and existential dread. Chakrabarti's revolution doesn't come with berets and barricades. It comes with policy decks, fundraising funnels, and precinct-level organising — spreadsheets for socialism. If the revolution will not be televised, it will be live-streamed from a WeWork. He knows this will be trench warfare. But he also knows he has something Pelosi doesn't: time. Time to campaign relentlessly. Time to activate disillusioned, debt-burdened, digitally native voters who have grown weary of incrementalism. Time to build the political world he wants — one email blast at a time. Dini Ajmani: The Boring Fixer America Actually Needs If Chakrabarti is the revolutionary storming the Bastille, Dini Ajmani is the quiet administrator patching the city walls before the next hurricane. Soft-spoken but formidable, Ajmani is no firebrand. She represents a new breed of political technocrats who believe that competence — not charisma — will save American democracy from itself. A former US Treasury official and Assistant State Treasurer under New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy, Ajmani knows the arcana of public finance better than most mayors know their coffee orders. Now, she's running for Mayor of Hoboken — a dense, politically fractious city perched precariously between climate disaster and affordability crisis. Her campaign platform is refreshingly unsexy: fix potholes, balance budgets, overhaul 19th-century sewage systems before the next Category 5 storm. In a political culture addicted to buzzwords and culture wars, Ajmani is offering something far rarer: adult supervision. Yet don't mistake her pragmatism for passivity. Ajmani understands that in the post-2020 landscape, identity matters. As a woman of colour, she embodies the changing face of American leadership — not just symbolically, but substantively. If she wins, she could model a style of governance America desperately needs but rarely rewards: serious, steady, and allergic to drama. Vivek Ramaswamy: The Contrarian Capitalist And then there's Vivek Ramaswamy — the biotech billionaire who thinks America's problem is too many people caring about other people's feelings. Where Chakrabarti dreams of taxing billionaires, Ramaswamy dreams of setting cultural sensitivity on fire and dancing in the ashes. After a wildly attention-grabbing presidential campaign in 2024 — part TED Talk, part Fox News monologue, part startup launch party — Ramaswamy has pivoted to a race he might actually win: Governor of Ohio. His platform is unapologetically combative: Ban cellphones in schools. Gut DEI departments. Laugh climate regulations out of the room. Use government not to manage society, but to troll it into sanity. Ramaswamy's brand is contradiction incarnate: An immigrant's son who rails against immigration. A product of Harvard and Yale who loathes "elites." A capitalist evangelist who distrusts corporate CEOs. His critics call him a hypocrite. His supporters call him a hammer — and argue that in today's America, being a hammer is better than being a healer. In Ramaswamy, the American Right may have found its first truly post-liberal Indian-American superstar: one who doesn't just want a seat at the table but wants to flip the table over and sell it on eBay. The Bigger Picture: Indian-America's Political Age of Chaos Put these three together — Chakrabarti, Ajmani , and Ramaswamy — and you get a glimpse of what's coming. Gone are the days when Indian-Americans were expected to be reliable Democrats, polite suburbanites, or apolitical model minorities. Today's rising Indian-American leaders are angry, ambitious, ideologically unmoored, and unafraid. Some want to burn down the establishment and build anew. Some want to calm the chaos with spreadsheets and storm drains. Some want to troll the culture into a brutal, Muskian capitalist renaissance. They are brown, brilliant, and no longer content to be extras in someone else's political drama. They are writing new scripts — in languages America's traditional gatekeepers barely understand. And they are coming. Once upon a time, the Indian-American political story was simple. Now, it's just getting interesting.
Telegraph
08-03-2025
- Politics
- Telegraph
A Democrat finally dared to tell the truth about trans women – and the Left are furious
No matter what Donald Trump may have said and done in the past week or so, I doubt many Americans regret voting for him yet. If only because the Democrats seem hell-bent on reminding them why they did. Take what happened on Thursday. Gavin Newsom – the Democratic governor of California – had just plucked up the courage to admit that letting trans women (i.e. males) compete in female sports is 'unfair'. Well of course it's unfair. And in contact sports, actively dangerous. Inevitably, though, almost the entire American Left reacted as if Mr Newsom had just called for an immediate cull of every kitten in the country. 'Newsom Condemned for 'Throwing Trans People Under Bus',' reported the Guardian. Numerous activists furiously denounced him ('profoundly sickened', 'shocking and offensive', 'this is a terrible look'), and declared that his comments would severely harm his chances of being the Democrats' next pick for president. Plainly these gibbering fanatics are still incapable of seeing why their behaviour is so damaging to their party. It's not that voters necessarily care about trans issues, or even about women's sports. It's that they can't take seriously anyone in politics who claims to believe that males and females are equal in height, weight, speed and strength. Naturally enough, voters think: 'These people must be either lying, or mad. Either way, I don't want them in charge. In comparison, they've actually managed to make Donald Trump look honest and sane.' Justice for gingers No doubt everyone in Britain will have eagerly welcomed the news that, under revised sentencing guidelines, criminals who are deemed to come from marginalised minority groups (for example, those who are black or Muslim) could be given sentences that are more 'carefully considered' than criminals who are white. I'm sure we can all agree that this scrupulously fair plan will heal divisions in our fractured society, bring communities together, and end racism once and for all. None the less, I fear that it may yet prove to have one small downside. Which is that white criminals will cynically try to wangle softer sentences by claiming that they come from marginalised minority groups, too. Take redheads. Mick Hucknall, the singer with Simply Red, once angrily insisted that making fun of people with ginger hair (such as him) is akin to racism. Lily Cole, the redheaded model, has also argued that these two forms of prejudice are 'not dissimilar'. If so, why shouldn't a criminal with ginger hair demand that, during sentencing, the judge take into account the lifetime of cruel discrimination that he has been forced to endure, on account of his carrot top? He might even argue that his descent into criminality was a direct result of the understandable anger and alienation he felt in response to our society's endemic anti-ginger bigotry. Ultimately, therefore, his crimes were society's fault, not his own. Many liberal-minded modern judges, I suspect, would readily accept such an argument, and let the poor marginalised criminal walk free on the spot. Although of course they might end up regretting it, once every single defendant starts turning up to court in a See You, Jimmy wig. Meghan's top tips Hey guys! It's Meghan Sussex here, with another episode of my new Netflix series, filled with incredible tips on how to elevate your lifestyle so it can be almost as perfect as mine. So far I've shared some of my most amazing secrets, like how to put some pasta into a pan, how to put bits of food you aren't going to eat into the food bin, and how to blow up some balloons. But today I'm going to share my most useful lesson of all. How to teach your grandmother to suck eggs. First of all, you'll need some eggs. You can easily get these from one of the hens in the grounds of your beautiful Californian home, but don't worry if you don't have time to run your own artisan poultry farm – these days, eggs are also available in many local grocery stores, and even supermarkets! Next, you'll need a grandmother. As a little girl growing up in LA, I always loved grandmothers. They truly are the most adorable little old ladies. My husband used to have a grandmother, and I was so hyped to teach her the secrets of how to suck eggs, but sadly, certain unnamed members of the Royal household chose to deny her that opportunity. I guess it's not for me to say why they might have been so rigidly opposed to the Queen of England receiving some much-needed expert advice from a woman of colour. So I'll just leave you guys to draw your own conclusions. So now you've got your eggs, and you've got your grandmother. What next? Easy. Just pop an egg into your grandmother's mouth – and chant, 'Suck it, Grandma! Suck, suck, suck!' This is the part my kids always love to help out with. They also have great fun decorating the eggs first, with colourful paints or felt-tip pens. And it's great for Grandma, too, because sucking on an egg is so much healthier for her than sucking on a boiled sweet. Lower calories, and zero sugar! So you'll be helping Grandma to watch her weight! That's all for today, but tune in next time, when I'll be showing you an incredible way to make money – using nothing more than a piece of old rope!
Fox News
02-03-2025
- Politics
- Fox News
VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: 10 bad takeaways from the Zelenskyy blow-up
Friday's extraordinary Oval Office meeting between President Donald Trump, Vice President JD Vance and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy went off the rails, leaving hopes for a U.S.-brokered peace deal between Russia and Ukraine in question. Here are some reasons why things went wrong, and where it leaves efforts to end the war. 1. Zelenskyy does not grasp—or deliberately ignores—the bitter truth: Those with whom he feels most affinity (Western globalists, the American Left, the Europeans) have little power in 2025 to help him. And those whom he obviously does not like or seeks to embarrass (as with his Scranton, Penn. campaign-like visit in September 2024) alone have the power to save him. For his own sake, I hope he is not being "briefed" by the Obama-Clinton-Biden gang to confront Trump, given their interests are not really Ukraine's as they feign. 2. Zelenskyy acts as if his agenda and ours are identical. So, he keeps insisting that he is fighting for us despite our two-ocean-distance that he mocks. We do have many shared interests with Ukraine, but not all by any means: Trump wants to "reset" with Russia and triangulate it against China. He seeks to avoid a 1962 DEFCON 2-like crisis over a proxy showdown in proximity to a nuclear rival. And he sincerely wants to end the deadlocked Stalingrad slaughterhouse for everyone's sake. 3. The Europeans (and Canada) are now talking loudly of a new muscular antithesis, independent of the U.S. Promises, promises—given that would require Europeans to prune back their social welfare state, frack, use nuclear, stop the green obsession, and spend 3-5% of their GDP on defense. The U.S. does not just pay 16% of NATO's budget, but also puts up with asymmetrical tariffs that result in a European Union trade surplus of $160 billion, plays the world cop, patrolling sea-lanes and deterring terrorists and rogue states that otherwise might interrupt Europe's commercial networks abroad, as well as de facto including Europe under a nuclear umbrella of 6,500 nukes. 4. Zelenskyy must know that all of the once-deal-breaking impediments to peace have been settled. Ukraine is now better armed than most NATO nations, but will not be in NATO, and no president has or will ever supply Ukraine with the armed wherewithal to take back the Donbass and Crimea. So, the only two issues are a) how far will Putin be willing to withdraw to his 2022 borders and b) how will he be deterred? The first is answered by a commercial sector/tripwire, joint Ukrainian-US-Europe resource development corridor in Eastern Ukraine, coupled with a Korea-like DMZ; the second by the fact that Putin, unlike his 2008 and 2014 invasions, has now incurred a million dead and wounded to a Ukraine that will remain thusly armed. 5. What are Zelenskyy's alternatives without much U.S. help—wait for a return of the Democrats to the White House in four years? Hope for a rearmed Europe? Pray for a Democratic House and a third Vindman-like engineered Trump impeachment? Or swallow his pride, return to the White House, sign the rare-earth minerals deal, invite in the Euros (are they seriously willing to patrol a DMZ?), and hope Trump can warn Putin, as he did successfully between 2017-21, not to dare try it again? 6. If there is a cease-fire, a commercial deal, a Euro ground presence, and influx of Western companies into Ukraine, would there be elections? And if so, would Zelenskyy and his party win? And if not, would there be a successor transparent government that would reveal exactly where all the Western financial aid money went? 7. Zelenskyy might see a model in Netanyahu. The Biden Administration was far harder on him than Trump is on Ukraine, suspending arms shipments, demanding cease-fires, prodding for a wartime, bipartisan cabinet, hammering Israel on collateral damage—none of which Westerners have demanded of Zelenskyy. Yet Netanyahu managed a hostile President Biden, kept Israel close to its patron, and, when visiting, was gracious to his host. Netanyahu certainly would never before the global media have interrupted and berated a host and patron president in the White House. 8. If Ukraine has alienated the U.S., what then is its strategic victory plan? Wait around for more Euros? Hold off an increasingly invigorated Russian military? Cede more territory? What, then, exactly are Zelenskyy's cards he seems to think form a winning hand? 9. If one views carefully all the 50-minute tape, most of it was going quite well—until Zelenskyy started correcting Vance firstly, and Trump secondly. By Ukraine-splaining to his hosts, and by his gestures, tone, and interruptions, he made it clear that he assumed that Trump was just more of the same compliant, clueless moneybags Biden waxen effigy. And that was naïve for such a supposedly worldly leader. 10. March 2025 is not March 2022, after the heroic saving of Kyiv—but three years and 1.5 million dead and wounded later. Zelenskyy is no longer the international heartthrob with the glamorous entourage. He has postponed elections, outlawed opposition media and parties, suspended habeas corpus and walked out of negotiations when he had an even hand in spring 2022 and apparently even now when he does not in spring 2025. Quo vadis, Volodymyr?
