Posted on 02/05/2004 10:04:17 PM PST by kattracks
Today, Feb. 6, Ronald Reagan will turn 93. Liberal reporters, some still gnashing their teeth, will note the event. Many are remembering his Cold War leadership, but few know how the presidential fortitude that led to victory over the Soviet Union emerged from Reagan's Hollywood battle against communism.
That saga began in the 1930s, when -- as journalist Oliver Carlson put it -- Hollywood's "drawing room tables were stocked with the works of Marx, Lenin, Stalin. ... The astrologers, spiritualists, mystics and fortune tellers who had so long adorned Hollywood salons were unceremoniously dumped overboard. In their places came spokesmen for the Communist Party. ... Liveried chauffeurs sat at the wheels of sleek high-powered limousines while their owners graced some nearby picket line."
What began as a fad had, by the 1940s, hardened into a blacklisting organization. As director Sam Wood testified in 1947, Hollywood Communists had "a well-organized system (to) deprive people of work whenever they can." The president of the Story Analysts Guild (she also headed the story-reading department at Paramount) was a Communist; Esquire film critic John Moffit noted in 1947 that "members of this guild prepare very bad synopses of all material submitted by people who are not Communists, and they damn thoroughly in their reports any stories that are not friendly to the Communist line."
The screenwriter known as the "commissar" of Hollywood, John Howard Lawson, wrote in his book "Film in the Battle of Ideas" that "cultural workers" must "throw off the shackles of bourgeois ideology ... their vision must be transformed and made new if it is to serve a new purpose." Lawson offered advice for waging such guerilla warfare: "As a writer do not try to write an entire Communist picture, (but) try to get five minutes of Communist doctrine, five minutes of the party line in every script that you write."
Lawson also told young actors, "It is your duty to further the class struggle by your performance. ... If you are nothing more than an extra wearing white flannels on a country club veranda, do your best to appear decadent, do your best to appear to be a snob, do your best to create class antagonism." Lawson particularly wanted a "campaign against religion, where the minister will be shown as the tool of his richest parishioner."
Lawson's rant was louder than his results. The Hollywood left deprived some conservatives of work and fostered some class antagonism but could do little more than that -- unless it gained control over both the screenwriters and actors guilds. It came close, but Ronald Reagan and a few others decided to fight. Reagan, formerly an FDR Democrat who spoke out against fascism, encountered criticism from liberal friends when he expressed concern about communism, as well -- and that made him suspicious.
Soon, as Reagan saw how Communists operated with the help of liberal "useful idiots," he began to understand the shortcomings of liberalism. The threats he received while serving as president of the actors guild led him to see communism as a form of terrorism. At police request, he wore a .32 Smith & Wesson for seven months. Later, he noted that, "Our Red foes even went so far as to threaten to throw acid in the faces of myself and some other stars, so that we ‘never would appear on the screen again.'"
Opposition built determination in Reagan, and by 1951 he was reporting "frustration and failure in the party's bold plot to seize control of the talent guilds and craft unions. ... Never again can the Communists hope to get anywhere in the movie capital." But that was too optimistic. In the 1950s, Hollywood leftists gained sympathy because the tactic of "blacklisting" that they had developed was briefly used against them.
By the 1960s, the Hollywood left was firmly in control once more. Conservatives once again had trouble finding work -- but journalists did not report that. One conservative, Ronald Reagan, did find useful work, and the rest is history.
Marvin Olasky writes daily commentary on Worldmagblog, a Townhall.com member group.
©2003 Creators Syndicate, Inc.
Few may know, but those who have read Peter Schweizer's 2002 book Reagan's War: The Epic Story of His Four-Year Struggle and Final Triumph Over Communism are not among them. It leaves no doubts about the wisdom and strengths of Reagan.
I still find Reagan's quote in his 1984 debates with Mondale as pithy an expression for getting to the point as any. This was when Mondale, as the Democrats are doing now, was trying to wrap his questionable stand on national defense policies in the American flag. Mondale said Reagan was questioning his patriotism, and Reagan responded (more or less) "I do not question your patriotism, but I do question your judgement".
Earlier in this campaign, Gallup polls (1983) showed he had been trailing "every major Democratic candidate who was looking to run against him". This was because his hard-line foreign policy seemed not to be popular with the American people (a foretaste of what we are hearing about Bush).
This too was the tone of Carter's notorious efforts with ambassador Dobrynin to gain Soviet help to see that Reagan lost the election. Even House Speaker Tip O-Neill got into the act, telling Dobrynin that Reagan was "a dangerous man". Ernest Hollings (oh he of recent notoriety) added "It wasn't the Kremlin that scared him, it was Reagan".
Now all of this would have been tragic, had it worked. As it was, it did not and irony of ironies, as Schweizer says, these efforts probably helped Reagan "by increasing Soviet fear of him".
This Liberal Democrat running from security issues is of course exactly the issue now, with first Dean, and then Kerry trying to wrap and conceal their lack of judgement regarding the war on terrorism within the cloak of the American flag. Reading Reagan's quotes here and elsewhere truly emphasizes how clear thinking he was and how well-formed his opinions were.
His quips were so effective and to the mark because he had thought extensively of the issues. Reading Skinner, Anderson & Anderson's 2001 book Reagan, in His Own Hand shows his tight thinking and expression at its best. His words were no fluke or accident, but arose out of a well prepared mind. This book provides an inside look to how intensely Reagan prepared for the series of radio addresses he did in California after his failed attempt to gain the Republican nomination for the 1976 elections. It also gives the talks in full, making for truly inspiring reading.
None of this is intended to ignore or denigrate the contributions of Peggy Noonan and his other speechwriters. But Reagan was "good on his feet" precisely because he had thought through the issues.
Would that our current President had Reagan's ability of dealing with his opponents. Reagan could never be accused of being a doormat before the likes of Kennedy, HRC, Dean, Kerry et.al.
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