Education Quote by David Horowitz

Horowitz sets a trap with symmetry: “left” and “right” are presented as equal and opposite cages, so the reader can feel above the partisan mess simply by rejecting both. It’s a clever move from a writer who’s spent decades in ideological combat, because it reframes the battlefield. The target isn’t a specific doctrine; it’s the institution that allegedly manufactures doctrine.

The intent is less about cultivating open inquiry than about delegitimizing a certain kind of education - the kind that produces recognizable political attitudes. By defining those attitudes as “learned” rather than arrived at, Horowitz implies indoctrination without needing to prove it. The subtext is that genuine thinking is inherently non-tribal, and that tribal outcomes are evidence of coercion. That’s rhetorically satisfying, but it also smuggles in a stringent standard: if your thinking maps onto an existing spectrum, it must not be yours.

Context matters because Horowitz is famously concerned with perceived ideological capture in academia. The line functions as a portable critique of schools, professors, and curricula that, in his view, nudge students toward fashionable conclusions. It’s also a preemptive defense against criticism: any pushback can be dismissed as “trained” reflex rather than reasoned disagreement.

What makes it work is its moral flattery. It invites the reader to identify as independent-minded while suspecting everyone else of being produced. The irony is that “thinking for themselves” becomes a brand in its own right - a posture that can be just as inherited, and just as performative, as any campus orthodoxy.