STOPPING THE PROGRESSIVE JUGGERNAUT by John Snyder

Conservative Base Book Review

BIG AGENDA: President Trump’s Plan to Save America

By David Horowitz

Humanix Books

HB, 180 pages, US $26.99

ISBN: 978-1-63006-087-9

Reviewed by John M. Snyder | March 16, 2017

The left must be destroyed. Not just defeated. Destroyed. The left is not a traditional democratic political movement. It is a cultural phenomenon. Its raison d’etre is the destruction of western political society including American political society. Though termed progressive, its binding force is hatred of the truths accepted through tradition and the followers and promoters of the truth. The left and its operational vehicles and their minions use various traditional entities mendaciously to bring about an unknowing general acceptance of parts of its program by various publics.

A chief political instrument of the left in the United States these days is, most unfortunately, the Democrat Party. It has been captured by modern Marxist political ideologues.

So, to a large extent, have large segments of cultural entities in the fields of education, media, economics, religion, and others.

For some years, a good number of Americans has realized there was something wrong with the direction our country was taking but has not been able successfully to tackle the problem.

Then, along came Donald J. Trump, a leader with the financial wherewithal, determination, and strength of personality to attack the left and its organizational vehicles and their minions directly, forcefully and determinedly.

The American people coalesced to form a patriotic, populist movement numerically and organizationally strong enough to nominate and elect Trump our 45th President of the United States.

This is a good, solid, first step in a long and difficult road for the American people to demolish the left and reassert American exceptionalism.

But it’s just a first step.

President Trump needs help – lots of help.

He needs help from patriotic Americans generally, but most particularly from genuine Republicans, not Republicans In Name Only (RINOs), to bring about, on the national and international stages, a destruction of the left and a reinvigoration of America.

That, in a nutshell, really is an underlying thesis of the latest book by New York Times best selling author David Horowitz, Big Agenda: President Trump’s Plan to Save America.

Horowitz lays the challenge right on the line. “The movement galvanized by Trump can stop the progressive juggernaut and change the American future,” Horowitz writes, “but only if it emulates the strategy of his campaign: Be on offense; take no prisoners; stay on the attack. To stop the Democrats and their societal transformation, Republicans must adhere to a strategy that begins with a punch in the mouth. That punch must pack an emotional wallop large enough to throw them off balance and neutralize their assaults. It must be framed as a moral indictment that stigmatizes them in the way their attacks stigmatize Republicans. It must expose them for their hypocrisy. It must hold them accountable for the divisions they sow and the suffering they cause.”

Although the Horowitz volume is comparatively short, it packs plenty of evidence, analysis, challenges and suggestions within its covers at 180 pages. It delves into the areas of strategic political and economic policy, strategic and tactical military policy and armament, cultural social policy, and practical political policy. This includes prescriptions Horowitz thinks the Trump administration and its allies should follow in order to win the political war for America.

Among these are suggestions for reforming America’s educational system, a hotbed of sentiment against traditional American values and the seed bed from which a lot of so-called progressivism has permeated much of contemporary American media, entertainment, politics and culture.

“Republicans,” writes Horowitz “should make it their business to persuade university administrators to see the wisdom of having the institutions that shape America’s future generations be less adversarial toward the community that supports them and more reflective of the diversity that characterizes them. Eighty-five percent of American college students attend public universities that are supported by taxpayers and funded by state governments. As of 2014, Republicans controlled 68 out of 98 partisan state legislative chambers –the highest number in the history of the party. In other words, Republicans control the purse strings that can be used to restrain the progressive juggernaut. Why should half the country fund institutions that regard them as racists, sexists, homophobes, Islamophobes, and xenophobes – in a word, ‘deplorables’?

Republicans should use their leverage to represent the half of the population that academic ideologues have put into the basket of deplorables and restore intellectual diversity to institutions that have become one party states. Republicans should use their leverage to restore academic standards and democratic values to the most important institutions shaping America’s future.

“A call from the chair of an appropriations or education committee asking university presidents in his or her state to put the italicized word intellectual, ideological, or political into their diversity missions is the way to begin the process. Republicans should ask for the university presidents’ commitments to correct the gross underrepresentation of their party on his faculties. Professors should not be hired because they are Republicans but they should not be excluded – as they are now – because they are Republicans. Universities should find a new way to recruit scholars who happen to be Republicans until there is a reasonable balance, one that would reassure the public that the current discrimination against Republicans is ended. Universities should conduct inquiries as to how this state of affairs has come to pass and introduce procedural changes to make sure that there is so such political bias against Republicans and conservatives in the future.”

Among the many particular public issues with which Horowitz deals is Islam.

Horowitz thinks President Trump has the correct approach in this matter by opposing radical Islamist terrorism and that the so-called progressives who really hate America and what it stands for have become aligned with the Islamist movement. Horowitz notes that, “While hundreds of millions of individual Muslims are law-abiding and peaceful, Islam itself – far from being a religion of the oppressed – is a religion of domination and submission. The Arabic word Islam means ‘submission,’ and the Koran clearly enjoins its followers to treat other religions as requiring just that. Theocratic Islam is not only a religion but also a political ideology recognizing no separation between mosque and state. Submission to its religious law –sharia – is thus to be enforced by the state. Unlike Christianity or Judaism, Islam is a supremacist religion that regards non-Muslims as infidels who must be eliminated or subdued. In words that are holy writ today, its Prophet incites believers to behead unbelievers and pursue a war of terror against them: ‘I am with you, therefore make firm those who believe. I will cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieve. Therefore, strike off their heads and strike off every fingertip of them.’ To regard ISIS and al-Qaeda as a perversion of the religion rather than a radical interpretation of its texts – as Democrats do – is denial and is dangerous.”

The author includes seven pages of proposals for the new Trump administration. Most readers of this review probably will be seeing it about two months after the new administration has been on the job. It would be interesting to see how many of the recommendations have been accepted and put in place in Washington, D.C. and around the country.