First of all, even if I accepted the author's pro forma denunciation of the so-called red-baiting that occurred during the 50s and 60s, and approved of his castigation of "McCarthyism"-which I don't-the charge could not be applied to any of John Tierney's statements.
This man is a moderate, rational libertarian, along the lines of a John Stossel, who-to the best of my knowledge-was still in the employ of The Old Gray Lady, a paper that has published the work of James Reston, Walter Duranty, Sydney Schanberg, Tom Wicker, Anthony Lewis, among a variety of other writers, whose political orientation has ranged all the way from Stalinist apologetics, to hard core, reflexive defense of new leftism, to tacit sympathy for Islamic terrorists and their state sponsors.
So the notion that Tierney is some sort of reactionary is preposterous on its face.
Secondly, it's not simply "one group" of those that were enumerated by Mr. Tierney that is intimately connected with the CPUSA, the Sparticist League, SWP, and other criminal socialist elements, but all of those groups, save MoveOn.org, which is still radical enough to have vociferously opposed both Operation Enduring Freedom and OIF.
Finally, I don't think that Tierney should be faulted for exposing the truth, any more than the scientist who exposed the origin and extent of the SARS virus should have been chastised by the PRC government.
Someone who sheds light on the darkness that shrouds internal diseases, which are intent on doing us harm, should be commended, not rebuked for his perseverance.
I beg to differ. >>
me too, look no further than Hollywood, certain members of the catholic church, the media, academia and the public school system. they have systematically infiltrated most institutions in American which influence people the most.
bttt
"Secondly, it's not simply "one group" of those that were enumerated by Mr. Tierney that is intimately connected with the CPUSA, the Sparticist League, SWP, and other criminal socialist elements, but all of those groups, save MoveOn.org, which is still radical enough to have vociferously opposed both Operation Enduring Freedom and OIF."
I agree with you in spirit. But I do believe that it is time to re-evaluate the identity of the core of evil in the world. In my view (with correlates with Golitsyn on this point), Putin is the guy most "in charge" of evil in the world. That is to say, the Russians set up a worldwide network of spys and agents of influence (journalists, academics, etc.) and they still run it. The Russians set this up under Communism, but there is no more Communism in Russia. Russia is run by KGB (FSB) guys. The KGB was an organ of the Communist government---but they don't run Russia as a Communist country. Russia is supplying Iran with nuclear power plants and intercontinental ballistic missle technology---and Iran is the center of world terrorism. So Russia is still up to its old tricks.
The Chinese Coomunist government is the #2 center of evil in the world. But they are not really running their country as Communists anymore either, way too much capitalism to say that---though the "Communist government" will always exert complete political control---until overthrown.
Cuba and N. Korea---still real communist countries---are minor.
I call the new center of evil in the world the Organized Hard Left (OHL). I think American Left is a semi-independent branch of the Russian organization. The Russians set it up and still run it---but loosely---not like under Stalin. The Democratic Party is now largely under OHL control. The goal of the OHL---guided by their hidden Russian masters---is to damage America. Naturally, few members of the American OHL know of the importance of this connection.
***....It is because America is a democracy and the people endorse it, that the left's anti-American, but "progressive" agendas can only be achieved by deceiving the people. This is the cross the left has to bear: The better world is only achievable by lying to the very people they propose to redeem.
Despite the homage contemporary leftists pay to post-modernist conceits, despite their belated and half-hearted display of critical sentiment towards Communist regimes, they are very much the ideological heirs of Stalinist progressives, who supported the greatest mass murders in human history, but who remember themselves as civil libertarian opponents of McCarthy and victims of a political witch-hunt. (Only the dialectically gifted can even begin to follow the logic involved.)
To appreciate the continuity of communism in the mentality of the left, consider how many recent Hollywood promotions of the industry Reds and how many academic apologies for Stalinist crimes (in fact, the vast majority of recent academic texts on the subject) have been premised on the Machiavellian calculations and Hegelian sophistries I have just described.
Naturally, today's leftists are smart enough to distance themselves from Soviet Communism. But the Soviet dictator Nikita Khrushchev was already a critic of Stalin forty years ago. Did his concessions make him less of a Communist? Or more?
On the other hand, conservative misunderstanding of the left is only in part a product of the left's own deceits. It also reflects conservatives' inability to understand the religious nature of the progressive faith and the power of its redemptive idea. For instance, I'm often asked by conservatives about the continuing role and influence of the Communist Party, since they observe quite correctly the pervasive presence of so many familiar totalitarian ideas in our academic and political culture. Though still around and sometimes influential in the left, the Communist Party has been a minor player for nearly fifty years. How can there be a communist left (small "c" of course) without a Communist Party?
The short answer is that it was not the Communist Party that made the left, but the (small 'c') communist Idea. It is the idea, as old as the Tower of Babel, that humanity can build a highway to Heaven. It is the idea of returning to an Earthly Paradise, a garden of social harmony and justice. It is the idea that inspires Jewish radicals and liberals of a tikkun olam, a healing of the cosmic order. It is the Enlightenment illusion of the perfectibility of man. And it is the siren song of the serpent in Eden: "Eat of this Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, and you shall be as God."
The intoxicating vision of a social redemption achieved by Them-this is what creates the left, and makes the believers so self-righteous.
And it did so long before Karl Marx. It is the vision of this redemption that continues to inspire and animate them despite the still-fresh ruins of their Communist dreams.
It is this same idea that is found in the Social Gospel which impressed the youthful Hillary Clinton at the United Methodist Church in Park Ridge, Illinois. She later encountered the same idea in the New Left at Yale and in the Venceremos Brigade in Communist Cuba, and in the writings of the New Leftist who introduced her to the "politics of meaning" even after she had become America's First Lady. It is the idea that drives her comrades in the Children's Defense Fund, the National Organization for Women, the Al Sharpton House of Justice and the other progressive causes which for that reason still look to her as a political leader.
For these self-appointed social redeemers, the goal-"social justice"-is not about rectifying particular injustices, which would be practical and modest, and therefore conservative. Their crusade is about rectifying injustice in the very order of things. "Social Justice" for them is about a world reborn, a world in which prejudice and violence are absent, in which everyone is equal and equally advantaged and without fundamentally conflicting desires. It is a world that could only come into being through a re-structuring of human nature and of society itself. ...***
http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a39611fde5615.htm