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Since Amazon takes a libertarian approach and rarely interferes with reader reviews, it also provides an excellent lens through which to view the cultural hegemony of the left. Anyone who doubts this need only surf the site and compare the treatment of hot-button conservative authors like me with comparable writers on the left.

One caveat to be noted is that in my case I have clouded the original picture a bit by complaining to Amazon that certain reader comments violated the site's guidelines, which exist to prevent compulsive flamers from posting ad hominem smears. (The guidelines require all reviews to "focus on the book's content and context" and declare that "comments that are not specific to the book will not be posted.") As a result of my complaints, several particularly nasty posts about my work were removed.

David Horowitz David Horowitz's column appears on the News site every other Monday. + Biography + Archives

Nevertheless, it is clear that many leftists believe that it is their mission to go onto sites like Amazon and warn unsuspecting surfers that authors like me are dangerous, and that our work should be quarantined.

This kind of attempt to obstruct the marketplace of ideas, which is familiar to anyone who has ever enraged the hardcore left, is carried out by people so cowardly or paranoid that they use pseudonyms and refuse to divulge their e-mail addresses. It may be that they see themselves as soldiers in a clandestine force, resisting an oppression so powerful that it will hunt them down and destroy them if their true identities are discovered.

Of course, a well-known attribute of paranoia is the capacity of the victim to project onto others his own aggression. Therefore, the flames posted against me didn't bother me as much as the sense that their presence reflected a general erosion of civilizing standards in our culture.

But the comparative features of the Internet reveal more than the presence of leftist activists. The reviews from institutional sources on the site are also extremely illuminating. Take the Los Angeles Times Sunday Book Review, which purports to represent a large and diverse audience, but in fact has come under the control of partisan ideologues. Its reviews amount to little more than in-house memos to the radical left.

Other institutional reviews, from sources that would seem to be above politics altogether, have as their primary audiences libraries and retailers. These include Kirkus Reviews, Book List and the Library Journal, which though obscure, are important factors in the success of many books. Internet bookstores like Amazon post their comments at the top of their review sections, giving them extra influence in the buying decisions made by visitors to the sites.

I received a rave review from Kirkus with my first book, which was an attack on America's role in the Cold War. That was 35 years ago. Since then, however, Kirkus and Library Journal have not looked as kindly on my work. The reason is that these services draw heavily on professors from academic institutions that have been thoroughly politicized by the left.

Now, I would be the first to admit that the concept of an "objective" review is ludicrous and that, even in scrupulous hands, reviews routinely display a political bias. But it is one thing to have a partisan agenda and quite another to systematically misrepresent that agenda as something else.

What came as a shock even to a veteran of ideological wars like me was that Amazon's own reviewer slipped an ideological knife into the ribs of my autobiography, "Radical Son." How could a bookstore -- whose only reason for being was to sell books -- deliberately set out to sabotage one of its own products? It also didn't seem in keeping with the spirit of unrestrained capitalism that characterizes the dot-com world.

Upon making inquiries, I discovered that a favorable review of "Radical Son" by one of Amazon's contract writers, Scott Shuger, had been spiked to make room for the negative notice. I also did a spot-check of Amazon's reviews of leftist authors like Noam Chomsky and Cornel West, and found words like "genius," "brilliant," "enlightened" and so on, much like the pufferies you would expect from a merchant hyping his wares.

No official Amazon reviewer or Kirkus commentator referred to these writers' works as ideologically biased or "doctrinaire," as they had mine. To avoid the possibility of falling into a narcissistic trap, I also checked the page of another high-voltage conservative, Robert Bork.

Sure enough, the Amazon review denigrated Bork as a historical footnote and hypocrite, calling his book "an extended attack against everything liberal" -- when, in fact, the book's central argument is that liberal ideals are good until they are taken to extremes.

Armed with ammunition like this, I began an e-mail appeal to Amazon. On a trip to Seattle to promote my book's paperback edition, I dropped by Amazon's headquarters, where I met the individual in charge of reviews. He was a reasonable fellow, and when my next book appeared, it received a very fair review from the site.

This, however, triggered a reaction from the kind of leftists who feel the need to invade the neutral spaces in our culture, like Amazon, to sabotage those who disagree with them.

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