My car broke down Saturday. But aside from that, it was a relatively good weekend. Still, the damage has been done.

So, I’ve been looking for someone to blame for my misfortune. One always feels better when he or she can point the finger of blame at somebody else.

At first I was thinking God. But, as it comes with the job of being supreme ruler of the universe, God gets blamed for a lot of unnecessary crap. So I decided to let It off the hook this time.

This left me searching for other options - where to point my finger?

Then I remembered campus was graced by the presence of conservative David Horowitz on Thursday evening.

And all the pieces began to fit together.

It was the aura of this radical speaker that caused a cloud of gloom to loom over my car when I tried to start it Saturday afternoon.

Horowitz, author of “Hating Whitey” and “Uncivil Wars,” is touring the nation’s college campuses to share his thoughts on “How the Left Undermined America’s Security.”

The FrontPageMagazine.com editor spoke at MSU on Thursday and at the University of Michigan on March 19.

More than 100 students turned out at U-M’s event to picket Horowitz’s appearance in Ann Arbor, which prompted him to use the experience in an editorial to further his rhetoric on how the leftist views at America’s universities help society’s downfall . No protest occurred at MSU.

“It is as though when I leave the campus I am leaving students behind an Iron Curtain where they will have no adult to stand up for them or educate them in histories and ideas that would make them proud of their country,” he wrote on his magazine’s Web site.

While at MSU, Horowitz outlined his reasoning why the liberal hiring practices at the nation’s universities is cause for society’s downfalls.

He then went on to illustrate how student groups such as MSU’s Black Student Alliance promote racism with their extreme leftist stances and claimed they were wrong for referring to him as a racist.

Racist or not, Horowitz’s downfall is that - like me on Saturday - he is constantly looking for a person or, more commonly, a group of people to blame for his own and society’s problems.

So, what’s so bad about that?

Perhaps, the Rev. Jerry Falwell’s remarks on “The 700 Club” following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks will help illustrate my point.

“I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For the American Way, all of them who have tried to secularize America. I point the finger in their face and say ‘You helped this happen,’” Falwell said.

Still don’t see the problem with this type of hate speech?

Try this. Perhaps, somewhere in a history class you came across a German leader named Adolf Hitler.

He was that guy who is responsible for telling German people that Jews other “less-than Aryan” humans were responsible for the country’s economic woes post World War I.

In a nutshell, that is what led to the Holocaust - a massacre of 6 million people because of their faith affiliation.

And that is why blaming people for yours and society’s problems is wicked and immoral.

Now, to be fair to Horowitz - who I blamed for my own problems last weekend - I highly doubt he is below the level of common human decency it would take to sympathize with Hitler. And he told The State News in a letter that he has called Falwell a “conservative jackass” for his “bigotry against gays.”

But that doesn’t change the fact he singles out groups by pointing his finger.

Although I may end up hating myself to admit it, I discovered Horowitz does have some intelligent points to offer the marketplace of ideas. But it’s hard to find them while muddling through the borderline hate speech and outrageous claims of conspiracy theories that make up the bulk of his rhetoric.

Horowitz is right when he claims his voice deserves to be heard in the marketplace of ideas, as do all voices. But preaching blame and hate doesn’t work.

When engaging in a serious debate one should attack issues, not people. Attacking a group of people makes them defensive and causes hate to breed more hate. The world doesn’t need to breed another Hitler. The first one hurt enough.

With that said I want to apologize to Horowitz for blaming him for my misfortune Saturday. I guess sometimes things just happen and there isn’t anyone to blame.

Matt Treadwell is the State News opinion writer. Reach him at treadwe7@msu.edu.