You know you’ve really made it when David Horowitz’s empire of front groups takes notice of your work.  At least, that’s how those of us at Free Exchange are feeling these days.  Over the last few weeks, Horowitz and his various astroturf organizations have been publishing “responses” to posts by Free Exchange and our member coalitions, each sillier and more shrill than the last (For example, see here and here). 

Yesterday, Horowitz himself “responded” to the findings laid out in our Horowitz Fact Checker by calling us "internet fascists" and dismissing the dozens of inaccuracies, distortions and manipulations of truth we’ve exposed as “differences of opinion” and “trivial errors common to any published text.”

That Mr. Horowitz believes it is common for published texts to contain as many errors as his book does is telling - but I digress.  The real point here is that, true to form, Mr. Horowitz does not actually back up his response with any facts.  He does not explain why he considers it a “difference of opinion” for us to point out that (to cite only a few examples) the charges he levels against professors in his book are based on allegations that were investigated and proven groundless well before his book was published (see here and here); or for us to point out that he omits critical information when it doesn’t fit his argument, or that he takes things professors have written wildly out of context to distort their views, or that he makes accusations about professors' teaching without any evidence to back them up. 

These are not “differences of opinion,” nor (as I’m sure the professors attacked in Mr. Horowitz's book would agree) are they “trivial errors."  They are manipulations of truth, facts bent and twisted to suit Mr. Horowitz’s argument and advance his ideological agenda.

In spite of this, we at Free Exchange harbor little doubt that Mr. Horowitz will now claim to have “responded” to our findings. 

If previous “responses” from Horowitz land are any indication, the bar for rebuttals over there seems to be set at approximately ankle height.  Take, for example, Christopher Flickinger’s “response” to a Campus Progress student who went to the sparsely-attended SAF conferecnce and reported, "The majority of the people in attendance were either on one of the panels or were a spouse/ child/ assistant to a panel member."  Flickinger’s response: “Wrong. I wasn't on a panel nor was I related to anyone who spoke.”  Touche, Chris.

Point is, we at Free Exchange hope against hope that one day Mr. Horowitz will respond to our findings with more than mere rhetoric. Specifically, we’d appreciate it if he’d explain which of our findings he considers differences of opinion, and which qualify as trivial errors.

Needless to say, we’re not holding our breath.