WSJ Bookmarks: The Age of Anxiety, by Haynes Johnson - McCarthyism launches ideological Republicans

Wall Street Journal ^ | October 14, 2005 | MARK GAUVREAU JUDGE

[OESY]

In "The Age of Anxiety," Haynes Johnson makes a depressing observation: "Although McCarthy and the leading players of his time… have long since passed from the scene, McCarthyism remains a story without an ending."

...McCarthyism... has become an all-purpose incantation, referring to everything from genuine political repression to folks not buying a singer's records.... Calling someone a McCarthyite has become a form of McCarthyism.

...Mr. Johnson ignores the genuine threat that communist spies posed to the U.S.; he elides the justified anticommunist efforts of the 1930s and 1940s with the abuses of McCarthyism; and he compares McCarthyism with modern-day conservatism.

Mr. Johnson is so eager to slip under the warm mantle of preening anti-McCarthy virtue that he contradicts himself. "How many Americans flirted with Communism," he writes, "or became Communist, during the hopelessness and anger of the Great Depression, cannot be accurately determined.... Americans were in a mood to demand changes in the social and economic order."... One wonders whether Mr. Johnson would excuse home-grown National Socialists on such grounds.

A few paragraphs later he quotes John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr in their book "Venona." After examining decoded transcripts and spy archives, Messrs. Haynes and Klehr conclude that several hundred of the "bright young idealists" of the New Deal joined the Communist Party....

You would think that such observations would give Mr. Johnson pause, goading him to make certain distinctions. But no. He cites the 1930s Pledge of Allegiance requirements and the policies of the Truman administration -- e.g., Executive Order 9835, which authorized inquiries into the politics and associations of federal employees -- alongside McCarthy's charges as if they were all part of the same, continuous over-reaction.

But Truman's policies, including the FBI's infiltration of the American Communist Party, did much to counter the communist and fellow-traveler threat....

[OESY]

THE AGE OF ANXIETY, By Haynes Johnson, (Harcourt, 624 pages, $26)

Ann Coulter's book "Treason" is the antidote to "The Age of Anxiety" and the film "Good Night, and Good Luck."

[Vaquero]

Bring back HUAC!!!

and God Bless Tail Gunner Joe......

[Gay State Conservative]

McCarthy's claim that there were Communists in important government positions was,after all,correct.One need only study the biography of a certain Henry A Wallace for confirmation.
.

[IronJack]

Three words for Mr. Johnson:

McCarthy. Was. Right.

[PhilipFreneau]

Haynes Johnson, a regular on the PBS News Hour, is also the author of "The Best of Times: America in the Clinton Years" No, the title is not in jest. Haynes really means it! Haynes is a hard-core, left-wing activist, which makes him about as morally bankrupt as one can get.

[T. Buzzard Trueblood]

Calling someone a McCarthyite has become a form of McCarthyism.

Chuckle.

[porkchops 4 mahound]

"Tail Gunner Joe" was right.

His sin was an excess in pursuit of Liberty. That is the Liberty of the United States of America, and that of the rest of the world, from the bloody machinations of that very real monster, world wide Communism.

"Tail Gunner Joe" was right.

Which is why the left hates him so and will never abandon the Commie myth our "Hate America Firsters" love so much.