Politics & Power Quote by David Horowitz

Horowitz builds this line like a victory lap, but it’s really a rhetorical trap: if Black Americans are “the freest and richest” Black people on Earth, then the indictment of American racism must be exaggerated, outdated, or opportunistic. The sentence flatters the national self-image (“America’s efforts,” “ideals of equality and freedom”) while quietly relocating the burden of proof. If the outcome is comparatively good, the argument implies, the system can’t be fundamentally unjust.

The subtext is doing more work than the claim. By contrasting the U.S. with “nations that are ruled by blacks,” Horowitz smuggles in a second thesis: that Black political power elsewhere hasn’t produced comparable prosperity, so contemporary racial inequality in the U.S. can’t be blamed primarily on white supremacy or structural barriers. It’s a move that reframes a historical and policy question into a civilizational scoreboard. The phrase “including all” is the tell: it’s not just comparison; it’s escalation meant to close debate.

Context matters because Horowitz’s career as a polemical conservative writer is defined by counter-narratives to progressive accounts of race. This quote sits comfortably in late-20th/early-21st-century backlash politics, where “America is uniquely liberating” becomes a cudgel against claims for reparations, affirmative action, or expanded civil-rights enforcement. The argument works not by being airtight, but by being emotionally legible: it offers absolution (America tried), a metric (relative wealth/freedom), and a villain (those who won’t admit progress). The cost is that it treats “freedom” and “richness” as aggregate trophies, sidestepping the lived reality of unequal exposure to violence, exclusion, and policy neglect.