By Bela “Bill” Suhayda
There is a saying: “If you’re not a liberal at twenty…you have no heart; if you’re not a conservative by age thirty…you have no brain.” Was it Ernest Hemingway who authored this quip, or, was it Winston Churchill? No matter the author, it has always reminded me of the evolution many of us go through as we experience life and history. Will we continue following our emotions through life, or will we learn the hard lessons of history and become wiser?
In the end, what we have done for others or what we do to others becomes our legacy. And it is this legacy that lives on as an example how we should live our lives or how we shouldn’t live them. As an educator I’ve always tried to remember that all of us are always teaching something, by word or deed. I learned this from my mentors, some of whom are gone now. But I will always remember them for what they did for others even when they didn’t know anyone was watching.
David Horowitz was an American writer, activist, and founder of the David Horowitz Freedom Center. Born to Jewish parents who were committed to communism, Horowitz grew up in a “red diaper” upbringing and was deeply affected by the early communistic ideological views of his parents.” But by age 40, he understood he had to have more than raw empathy and emotion for the leftist activists of the 1960s he was supporting in his columns. Horowitz came to the realization the people he was writing about were not who he thought they were. He began learning about the disastrous consequences of their actions for him personally and for the future of our country. He learned from the violent actions of people such as Angela Davis, the Black Panthers, Huey Newton, Bill Ayers, and the Weather Underground. It took the rape and murder of his friend, Betty Van Patter, at the hands of the Black Panther party, before he could see past his rose colored glasses to the evil he was protecting with his journalism. Horowitz had an awakening about the evils of the left and became a conservative.
In my teens, I believed being liberal politically meant you were a good person. It meant you were someone who held kindness close to your heart. Being a liberal was synonymous with open mindedness, human rights, dignity, and fighting against injustice in all its forms. These were my naive perceptions as a young man. Then when I had children and experienced the world and some history, I realized nothing could be further from the truth. What I’ve seen since the 1990s is that liberals are anything but liberal. They evolved into the American left. They’ve become communists! The American left has clothed themselves into appearing kind especially to those they label victims. They’ve created victim classes. Not far from the surface of the left is cruelty, malice, and depravity. These communists present themselves as human rights champions. Yet they support violence and rapists here at home, along with antisemitic organizations such as Hamas, and Hezbollah on our Universities. They support the evil of the Mullah’s of Iran who raped and murdered 40,000 of their own.
These so-called liberals, now communists, claim they hate violence yet celebrate Charlie Kirk’s assassination and the attempts on Donald Trump’s life. They have wished death on their political rivals and their children. They celebrate violence when that violence is directed at conservatives. And you either believe everything they believe or you’re considered their enemy. If you’re not with us…you are against us, say the Democratic Communists, and, the three stooges of The Voice.