>Horowitz trashes Berlet for criticism on racism
>
>Hi,
>
>I figured I should alert folks to this controversy rather than having it
>pop up through osmosis...
>
>http://www.frontpagemagazine.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=9830
>
I read the exchange-- and while I think Horowitz is as mad as a thousand
battlefields, his self-defense isn't baseless. For example, his argument
that no movement against slavery _per se_ existed until the Quakers, and
his defense of this point, seems reasonable to me. (One of these days,
though, I'm going to have to re Du Bois's history of the anti-slavery
movement. By most accounts, it's never been surpassed.)
But this also indicates a something symptomatic of his style. It comes from his claim about the anti-slavery movement coming from "White Christians," and how much he flogs this particular point. If he simply argued that organized opposition to slavery is a relatively modern development, fine. If he argued that it came out of developments in European culture, or Western culture, or the Enlightenment, I'd certainly agree. Even if he wanted to claim that it arose out of the values of Christian theology, I'd be willing to grant that as a possibility (but I'd give more credit to the Enlightenment).
But when he pins the credit to "White Christians," well, you can tell he's going more for effect than education. It's one thing to attribute moral progress to a particular civilization or a doctrine. It's another to attribute it to a _race_-- even if it is something so nebulous and wide-ranging as one called "White." So Horowitz is trying to be provocative in the most unsavory way. (He's not as good at it as Charles Murray, whose arguments are small marvels of mystification in the service of evil.)
(It's a fine point, but here's how it works. Let's say Group A develops something that Group B doesn't, and you want to know why-- anti-slavery, computers, sickle-cell anemia, whatever. Saying that Group A developed it _simply because_ they're Group A doesn't contribute any understanding, and can actually obfuscate any real understanding. )
Having seen Horowitz in action, we know that this is where he starts to yabber about how his _opponents_ do this, and he's only using the same tactic to illustrate its fallacy, or somesuch. He may even be sincere about this he-hit-me-first nonsense, like a first-grader trying to be a lawyer. And if he framed the comment in that manner (i.e., "If we applied the same logic my opponents do..."), he might have had a point.