Posted on 11/05/2007 8:37:40 AM PST by AwesomePossum
Book Description Accused of creating a bogus Red Scare and smearing countless innocent victims in a five-year reign of terror, Senator Joseph McCarthy is universally remembered as a demagogue, a bully, and a liar. History has judged him such a loathsome figure that even today, a half century after his death, his name remains synonymous with witch hunts.
But that conventional image is all wrong, as veteran journalist and author M. Stanton Evans reveals in this groundbreaking book. The long-awaited Blacklisted by History, based on six years of intensive research, dismantles the myths surrounding Joe McCarthy and his campaign to unmask Communists, Soviet agents, and flagrant loyalty risks working within the U.S. government. Evans’s revelations completely overturn our understanding of McCarthy, McCarthyism, and the Cold War.
Drawing on primary sources—including never-before-published government records and FBI files, as well as recent research gleaned from Soviet archives and intercepted transmissions between Moscow spymasters and their agents in the United States—Evans presents irrefutable evidence of a relentless Communist drive to penetrate our government, influence its policies, and steal its secrets. Most shocking of all, he shows that U.S. officials supposedly guarding against this danger not only let it happen but actively covered up the penetration. All of this was precisely as Joe McCarthy contended.
Blacklisted by History shows, for instance, that the FBI knew as early as 1942 that J. Robert Oppenheimer, the director of the atomic bomb project, had been identified by Communist leaders as a party member; that high-level U.S. officials were warned that Alger Hiss was a Soviet spy almost a decade before the Hiss case became a public scandal; that a cabal of White House, Justice Department, and State Department officials lied about and covered up the Amerasia spy case; and that the State Department had been heavily penetrated by Communists and Soviet agents before McCarthy came on the scene.
Evans also shows that practically everything we’ve been told about McCarthy is false, including conventional treatment of the famous 1950 speech at Wheeling, West Virginia, that launched the McCarthy era (“I have here in my hand . . .”), the Senate hearings that casually dismissed his charges, the matter of leading McCarthy suspect Owen Lattimore, the Annie Lee Moss case, the Army-McCarthy hearings, and much more.
In the end, Senator McCarthy was censured by his colleagues and condemned by the press and historians. But as Evans writes, “The real Joe McCarthy has vanished into the mists of fable and recycled error, so that it takes the equivalent of a dragnet search to find him.” Blacklisted by History provides the first accurate account of what McCarthy did and, more broadly, what happened to America during the Cold War. It is a revealing exposé of the forces that distorted our national policy in that conflict and our understanding of its history since.
In 1940, communism was at the height of its prestige, and tens of thousands of intellectuals thought it the wave of the future. Even Stalin’s deal with Hitler was defended. In “It didn’t happen here, Lipset relates that the Communist Party was part of the New Deal Coalition which, ironically, included Catholics. The Socialists did not. They had scruples. The Communists did not. It was the American version of the common front, one broken only by Catholic opposition to the Spanish liberal government.
In 1940, communism was at the height of its prestige, and tens of thousands of intellectuals thought it the wave of the future. Even Stalin’s deal with Hitler was defended. In “It didn’t happen here, Lipset relates that the Communist Party was part of the New Deal Coalition which, ironically, included Catholics. The Socialists did not. They had scruples. The Communists did not. It was the American version of the common front, one broken only by Catholic opposition to the Spanish liberal government.
I know.
Ann's latest book wasn't so great, being mostly a thin repackaging of earlier material. I wanted her to work harder and get us real new stuff. But she made up for it - I saw the announcement of Evans' book in her column. I just finished reading it, and it is excellent.
Besides correcting a thoroughly falsified record, the book is remarkable for (1) showing the stakes, especially the role of espionage and policy infiltration on the loss of China (Evans' screamer line on the subject is that if the State department didn't lose China to the commies, it wasn't for lack of trying) (2) showing how much Hoover and the FBI knew at the time (the FBI literally taped Dems from Truman Justice fixing cases to get off State department staffers caught red-handed passing military secrets to the Chicoms) and (3) stressing the role of Eisenhower and "moderate" Republicans in destroying McCarthy in the end. He buried the Dems, it was RINOs who got him.
Don’t blame Ann, she is just trying to earn a living and she is running out of fresh ideas.
I thiunk it is still true that McCarthy made a mistake in going after the Army. That was Ike’s family. Beyond that, Ike was trying to dampen down anti-communism, because he was engaged in a battle with Matt Ridgeway about the size of our forces. Maintaining SAC was cheaper than Ridgeway’s Big Army.
McCarthy was wrong to attach Marshall for failings that were in fact Acheson's. That POed Ike royally, and he never trusted anything McCarthy did after that. He then sicced men on him that he knew to be utterly dishonest and unscrupulous. Because Ike, despite his demeanor in public, was one tough bastard - the last being the operative word. As a general, he wasn't even close to Ridgeway, incidentally.
What it really highlights is the way the worst of the left prospers automatically from RINOs trying to trim conservatives. It never results in the moderate and popular conservatism the RINOs have in mind when they throw conservatives overboard. It results in the right losing power, and the left then wrecking things.
Maybe Ridgeway was right, maybe not. After all, we had an army of more than 800,000 which proportionate was larger than what we had ten years later during the Viet nam War. The question really wars: how would we use this force? Stalin’s death changed the political calculus. No way we could match the Soviets man for man. We didn’t try during Reagan;s time. Back around 1985 I talked an an Air Farce guy who was bragging about he could do the Soviets if they came through the Fulda gap. Take out the Soviet Air Froce and then slaughter them. Didn’t believe them until I saw what they did in 1991.
Senator McCarthy is an American Hero. We need a man like him in the Senate today.
“Ann Coulter already debunked the myths in her book ‘Treason’. Interesting to note it was published about six years ago as I seem to recall.”
True, but its nice to see her points validated by yet another book.
They’re all right, of course. McCarthy may have been a buffoon in many ways, but he was completely right in his assertion that there were communist agents and sympathizers in the government. Hell, Venona proves this.
Good point about another book, and hell yes it does about Venona.
Hollywood was infested with them. And they played for keeps. That’s why Reagan carried a pistol with him—one with real bullets.
:}
McCarthy was into boxing in his early years. It was his stage where he could put on the gloves and duke it out. He relished that sport. When he got on a committee floor or in front of the camera the boxer would step in. Unfortunately for him, that style was not suited to the public forum of government and politics. On the inside he could be a kind, sensitive individual. If he would only have used THAT style from the beginning his substance may have risen to the surface and he could have been respected for his efforts to provide the truth.
This book literally made me cry. For decades the powers that were of whom I venerated no longer stand on my good side. FDR, Truman, Ike, and Nixon sold out and played the game. Barry Goldwater tried to right the ship but he lacked the ammunition. Thank God for Ronald Reagan. Even though he was a Democrat in the days of McCarthy someone like him in the White House would have joined forces with Joe and driven out all the poison from the previous two decades.
I got the book and read it. It is a real eye opener.
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