Where were you on 9/11 when you first learned of the terrorist attack? Like the Kennedy assassination and the Challenger explosion most Americans old enough to have witnessed these events have them permanently seared into their memories. I was watching the north WTC tower smoke-‘n’-burn on CNBC when the second plane came in to strike the south edifice. At that moment I realized how childish my view of the world was. Idealism waned. Confidence in my opinions essentially evaporated along with the Twin Towers. ‘Twas time for major reprogramming and reeducation.
Fortunately, the internet now made possible access to a seemingly infinite range of information resources that I could use in my quest for the “Truth.” Unfortunately, I soon realized how not-so-full-spectrum political journalism obfuscates more than it illuminates. However, my quest began to gain traction when early on I discovered the work of Steve Emerson and David Horowitz. My confidence in the integrity and enlightening insight of these two individuals has been consistently reaffirmed over the intervening years, a primary reason being that these men were calling spades, spades long before the twin towers came a tumblin’ down.
Mr. Emerson is the producer of the 1994 PBS documentary “Jihad in America.” In testimony given prior the millennium changeover and before both houses of Congress, he details the names of individuals and organizations engaged in the Islamic subversion of the United States. Surprisingly, many of those names appeared again when Bush II reached out to reassure Muslim Americans that they were not to be held accountable for the actions of a few Islamic radicals.
This was my first indication that the GOP, in general, and the Presidents Bush in particular, did not fit my concept of patriotic, America-first Republicans. Since then, this view has been reinforced many times over to the point that I now see the establishment GOP as essentially progressive-Lite. Certainly not even “middle of the bird” as comedian Pat Paulsen once described political moderates. But it was through Steve Emerson that I was first set upon them.
David Horowitz is a self-confessed red-diaper baby and ex-Communist whom I also happened upon shortly after 9/11. His writings revealed to me for the first time President Clinton’s treasonous give-aways to the Chinese, Hillary’s anti-military White House shenanigans, and the Democratic Party’s coddling of openly Marxist Congressmen. And, as with Mr. Emerson, my trust in what Horowitz says has been frequently reinforced. What he wrote before 9/11 has proven most helpful when evaluating the works of Obama, his administration, and his Congressional cronies of both parties.
Emerson and Horowitz are among several writers I’ve followed whose insightfulness has been confirmed by subsequent events. Their perspicacity is not simple happenstance, but rather the result of deep, personal experience and not-so-wishful thinking – which brings me to my friend Heinz.
Heinz was born in 1934 in what would later become East Germany. During WW II, a bomb dropped by Allied aircraft left a large crater very near his house. He was shot at by German troops while tossing a few chunks of warmth-giving coal from a train loaded with the stuff. These were only a couple of his wartime (mis)adventures.
Post-war didn’t prove much better, what with his having ended up on the east side of the Iron Curtain. In 1955, having told only his mother, father and the brother who was going with him, Heinz headed for West Berlin. With only the clothes on his back, he walked to freedom through Checkpoint Charlie into the American Sector. From there he made his way to the United States in 1958 and his future career as an electrician working in Detroit’s auto industry.
Heinz is retired now. Both he and his wife collect their social security and pensions. They live quite comfortably, though his wartime experiences have left Heinz unable to watch an air show with its diving planes, and now finds barley inedible since he ate far too much of it during the war.
He has no plans to move outside the U.S. But, like George Mason U. Prof. Walter Williams, Heinz thinks that young persons might seriously consider emigrating. This isn’t the America he fled to. What he thought he had left behind has reared its ugly head right here in the U.S. During a recent conversation Heinz shook his head while commenting on the current political atmosphere in the United States, “… and the people here say they can’t understand how Hitler came to power?”
So, who would you prefer to believe? The talking heads on television? Those who extol the infinite virtues of socialism? Celebrities and LGBT aficionados? Michael Moore? Oprah? Karl Rove?
Or should you more seriously consider the insight of a man who has lived under heel of both the Nazis and the Communists?
Ciao.