Horowitz first entered the public consciousness in the 1960s, when, as a member of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and writer for Ramparts, his explosive rhetoric against the Vietnam War did little to end the conflict. Decades later, Horowitz has repudiated the cartoony left of his youth and has become an ideologue for the parodic right. A thoughtful conservative, the man is not.

There is no right-wing ideal or position too wacky for Horowitz. Was the movie The Patriot historically inaccurate? No, screams Horowitz, because it made the British look bad and the Americans look good. Yes, mention the historians of earth idly, as they tick off error after error, and indeed, historical fabrication after historical fabrication. Is there a vast left-wing conspiracy against the right? Of course there is! Hororwitz insists. His proof: some readers gave his books negative reviews on Amazon.com. I cashed my check from Moscow (uhm . . . Communism is dead, better make that Berkeley) today, and I never even wrote my commissioned review of Horowitz’s work, but I'll make up for that now.

Horowitz recently scribbled a poison pen letter to blacks, seekers of social justice and history itself. This little number, called Ten Reasons Why Reparations for Blacks is a Bad Idea for Blacks - and Racist Too (gee, thanks for caring David!) has caused quite a stir in California. Opponents of Horowitz have been smeared as being "politically correct" as usual, and the many members of the myopic news media have squinted at the text of Horowitz's piece and have declared it "not racist." (So much for the vast left-wing conspiracy against Horowitz).

Of course, since the media could look at a sentence reading "All niggers are motherfuckers," and, under the guise of objectivity, declare that sentence non-racist -- after all, a pity op-ed writer might opine, some white people have been described as niggers as recently as a week ago by Governor Byrd -- I've decided to take a look at Horowitz's ten claims myself. Here they are, from FrontPageMagazine.com:

1. There Is No Single Group Clearly Responsible For The Crime Of Slavery.

Horowitz punts here. He mentions that black Africans were involved in the slave trade, and that some free blacks owned black slaves. Of course, he stops short of explaining why this is a reason why reparations would be bad for blacks. The implicit argument he is making is that reparations are conceived as a payment by whites that benefited from slavery, and that such a conception is racist, since whites are not exclusively responsible. His claim would be accurate if black Americans had filed a class action suit against the descendents of slaveholders, but they have not. The US government is clearly responsible for slavery, since it allowed slavery to exist legally.

It is also worth noting that, even if Horowitz is right, this doesn’t mean that reparations would be bad for blacks. A check in the mail is nearly always a good thing.

2. There Is No One Group That Benefited Exclusively From Its Fruits.

Here, Horowitz gets explicit and says that reparations are based on the notions that only whites benefited from slavery. Such a claim would be a surprise from many of those supporting reparations. Building a rhetorical strawmen and shoving it in the mouth of hundreds of thousands of blacks is certainly the action of a racist.

Horowitz further claims that black Americans benefited from slavery, since slave-built wealth exists in the US and since blacks in Africa are worse off then blacks in the US. If their ancestors hadn't been kidnapped, current claimants would be stuck in Somalia, suffering from absolute poverty.

Of course, Horowitz doesn't demonstrate that slavery was the mechanism for building up the US economy as a whole – in fact most historical economists who study its impact would suggest that slavery was a drag on the economy throughout much of the 19th century. Further, blacks in the "black belt" of former slave states and territories are the dead last poorest group in this country, even though they are the closest to the "wealth" built by slavery. Horowitz ignores this inconvenient fact and adds, willy-nilly, the income of the descendents of free blacks in the North to those of slaves in the South, and claims that all blacks benefited from the existence of slavery.

He also ignores the probability that blacks are better of in the US in spite of slavery. Since most of the black middle class emerged in the 20th century and in the North where neither slavery nor Jim Crow has as significant an impact on the economy, Horowitz's supposition that blacks benefited from slavery is incorrect.

He's also wrong on Africa. While Africa is clearly an economic basket case, that is also partially the fault of slavery. The need for cheap labor, cheap raw materials and new markets fueled what is frequently called "New Imperialism." Africa went from terra incognita to fully colonized by European merchant powers in a matter of decades. The extractive economy of imperialism kept local capital and civil society from developing, and the US, as one of the largest market for slaves, and later for raw materials and finished goods, fueled this.

Even today, nations with immense natural wealth, such as the Congo, are impoverished because of the political and economic manipulations by the US during the colonial era, and also in the post-colonial era. Far from being an argument against reparations, the state of Africa suggests that African nations should sue for reparations based on the terrible impact slavery had on their economies as well.

3. Only A Tiny Minority Of White Americans Ever Owned Slaves, And Others Gave Their Lives To Free Them.

Horowitz plays the race card. He asks, rhetorically, what moral principle exists that would allow for millions of whites who had nothing to do with slavery to pay reparations through taxes? There need be none, of course, since Horowitz is asking the wrong question. The moral principle at work is that the US government is an institution, and one responsible for its actions. Since the US government had allowed for and encouraged slavery, and since slavery would not have existed in the US had it been illegal and fought against, the US is responsible.

It is clear that non-whites also pay taxes, and they would pay for reparations as well. In other news, millions of people who have no use for nuclear weapons and who never get to ride in Air Force One have to pay for these things, because the government claims a responsibility to supply these things.